Plex’s recently released Skip Intro feature aims to do just that: skip the repetitive sections the kick off TV shows. Like similar features on services like Netflix, the idea is to make your binge watching more efficient by skipping past the parts you know already — one can only hear the Friends theme song so many times during the day. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to set up the Skip Intro on your Plex server and level up your streaming.
What You’ll Need
First off, you’ll need to be a Plex Pass member to use the Skip Intro feature. If you haven’t signed up, Plex charges $4.99 per month for a subscription, but a yearly plan averages out to around $3.33 per month. There’s also a lifetime plan at $119.99.
If you’ve cleared that hurdle, you’ll also need to make sure your Plex Media Server is at version 1.19.3.2793 at the very least.
So far, so good? Next, the new feature is currently supported on player apps for the following devices:
- Amazon Fire TV (v8.0.1 or newer)
- Android mobile (v8.0.1 or newer)
- Android TV (v8.0.1 or newer)
- Apple TV (v2.18 or newer)
- iOS (v6.12 or newer)
- macOS (desktop) (v1.11 or newer)
- Roku (v6.5.4 or newer)
- Web version (v4.34 or newer)
- Windows (desktop) (v1.11 or newer)
Plex says support for more devices is coming, but for now, you’ll need to use one of the above options to take advantage of the feature.
Setting up Skip Intro
If you’ve gotten this far, you’re ready to have your library analyzed. Plex says it focuses on recurring audio cues to identify theme songs or other consistent intros. It also bases its settings on a season-by-season basis for shows that tweaks their intros over time.
To get started, open the Plex Web App and head to Settings. From there, select Server and then Library. You should see a Generate Intro Video Markers with a dropdown menu that offers the following options:
- Never: As you might imagine, this one means not running the intro analysis feature.
- As a Scheduled Task: By picking this one, intro analysis occurs during regular server maintenance.
- As a Scheduled Task and When Media is Added: This one tells the server to scan whenever you add new media in addition to regularly scheduled maintenance times.
Beyond those settings, you can also apply the feature to specific libraries if you have more than one. When you’re editing a library, just head to the Advanced tab and ensure Enable Intro Detection is, well, enabled.
You can also manually engage intro analysis by opening the Options menu for a season or episode and selecting Analyze.
Using the Skip Intro Feature
This is the easy part. Once you start watching your content and the app senses an intro is coming up, you’ll see a Skip Intro button appear in the lower-right corner. If you select this option, it should skip ahead and restart a few seconds before it thinks the intro is about to end. That way, it should ease you into the rest of the show without accidentally cutting off the first few seconds.
Right now, the feature doesn’t work on intros shorter than 20 seconds, or if the intro happens more than 10 minutes into an episode. Also, if you have more than one copy of a given episode, the feature will only work on one of those copies.
Of course, it’s worth pointing out this is a brand-new feature for Plex, and the company points out it’ll continue refining and improving the option over time, and as it works to bring the tool to more devices and platforms.
For now, though, if you give the new feature a try, let us know how it goes. Does it perform as expected, or have you spotted bugs or quirks that mar the experience? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.
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