Remove Video From Plex's "Recently Added" Section

Question

Is it possible to remove videos from Plex's "Recently Added" section? I'd like to add some old videos to my server for posterity but not have them appears as newly added.

Answer 1

When I initially sought an answer to this question, I looked on support forums, including Plex's own and Reddit. All answers said it was either not possible or suggested editing the metadata_items table of the SQLite database directly (yuck). I have since found a better way to do this, but those support threads are now locked, so I'm unable to share this solution there. Hopefully answering this question here helps others find it.

This actually is possible and quite easy via the REST API. First, pip install plexapi. Then use the following script to update the addedAt field of your video of choice.

import os
import sys

from plexapi.myplex import MyPlexAccount

USERNAME = os.environ.get("PLEX_USERNAME")
PASSWORD = os.environ.get("PLEX_PASSWORD")

account = MyPlexAccount(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
plex = account.resource("<YOUR_PLEX_HOSTNAME>").connect()

library = plex.library.section("<YOUR_PLEX_LIBRARY_NAME>")
video = library.get(title="<YOUR MOVIE TITLE>")

updates = {"addedAt.value": "2018-08-21 11:19:43"}

video.edit(**updates)

That's it! What we're doing here is changing the addedAt value to be something that is older, since "Recently Added" is sorted by this date, so we're moving the video to the back of the line.

Answer 2

alexdlaird suggestion worked very well for me! I had to make one change, and I believe that's because I have 2FA on my Plex account:

import os 
import sys
import plexapi

from plexapi.server import PlexServer
baseurl = 'http://plexserver:32400'
token = 'YOUR PLEX TOKEN'
plex = PlexServer(baseurl, token)
library = plex.library.section("Movies")
video = library.get(title="MOVIE NAME")
updates = {"addedAt.value": "2018-08-21 11:19:43"}

video.edit(**updates)

Answer 3

I was faced to this situation and while gathering documentations to modify the SQL db, I thought about another solution and it did the trick for me. As previously said, all support threads regarding this issue are closed elsewhere so I'm posting it here for others to eventually find it :

• Stopped Plex Server
• Disabled the server (computer) internal clock automatic sync
• Set the internal clock manually to a year before
• Started Plex Server
• Added the movies
• Scanned the library
• Movie got added to the library without showing into recently added BUT the metadata from moviedb where not able to be loaded (probably caused by the difference in time and date between my server and moviedb server)
• Stopped Plex Server
• Restored the internal clock automatic sync
• Started Plex server
• Updated all metadata of the library (actually I did it manually for each as I didn't know if I had some custom metadata somewhere else in the library)
• Enjoyed !