Plex compatible · Owns no files · Sponsor beta Oct 15

Your debrid and Usenet library
in every Plex app.

Your movies and shows stay with your debrid service or Usenet provider. rex presents that library to Plex clients (official or compatible) as a normal server with posters and seasons and your watch history.

No scanning A new release shows up in your library the moment its source tells rex about it. rex never reads a file to find out what it is.

How fast it feels on a real library →

Become a sponsor How it is set up

The closed beta for sponsors opens October 15. The first public release and the source code land on Halloween October 31. After that the public release ships every 30 days on the last day of the month and runs 30 days behind the sponsor builds.

A movie library of public domain films with posters, shown by rex in the official web app

01 / What it does

The apps you know.
The library you already have.

It looks like any other server.

Once you add it to your account it shows up in the apps next to your other servers. Movies and shows get posters and summaries and cast and seasons. Watched state and Continue Watching and playlists and collections and edits and Fix Match all work and survive a restart. Each file starts on the audio and subtitle languages your Plex account asks for. Search Subtitles checks the subtitle you pick against the file and fixes its timing when it is off. Movie editions and the full server Dashboard also work with a free claiming account.

Apps on your home network find it on their own when it runs on port 32400.

Many sources. One library.

Each source sends rex the files it has and keeps it up to date. zurg does this for you today and anything that can run ffprobe can do it too. A debrid account and a Usenet account each behind its own zurg end up in one Movies and one TV library.

The same film from two sources becomes one title with two versions.

It streams straight from the source.

When you press play rex reads the file from where it lives and hands it on. Nothing is downloaded first. Files play in their original quality. Delete a title in the app and it is deleted at its source too.

Give it FFmpeg and it also converts what a device cannot play. With a graphics chip a converted film starts in about 2 seconds even on a small Intel box.

02 / Screens

What you see
in the apps.

Real screenshots of rex in the official web app. The library is public domain films and open movies streamed from a plain web server. Nothing is touched up.

Recommended view of the Movies library with Recently Added and Top Movies in Comedy rows — **Recommended rows like any server.** Recently Added and genre rows fill in by themselves as titles arrive.

Movie page for Sintel with poster and summary and cast and the file details — **Every title gets its page.** Poster and summary and cast and the file it plays.

Season page for The Beverly Hillbillies season 1 with cast — **Shows come in seasons.** Each episode sits where its source placed it and On Deck knows where you stopped.

Night of the Living Dead playing in the web app player — **Press play.** The file streams straight from its source in its original quality.

03 / Speed

How it feels
on a real library.

0.43s

Library on screen

From a click on Library until the posters are drawn

0.26s

To open a title

A movie page or a show page with its seasons

1.1s

Search results

From typing a word until results show with posters

Measured on a laptop with an eight core processor. The library was a real one with 4014 movies and 660 shows holding 34258 episodes. Each figure is the middle of seven runs of the official web app in Chrome on the same machine with a fresh browser every run. Your own times depend on your machine and your connection. rex used about 760 MB of memory during the run.

04 / Limits

The things it will not do.

Movies and TV only.

Music and photo libraries stay empty. There is no Live TV and no DVR.

A server is not a subscription.

Plex Web plays away from home with free claiming and viewing accounts. Other apps have not been playback tested. App eligibility and cloud features and Plex Home access still belong to Plex. Converting video needs no pass.

Offline downloads lose text subtitles.

A file that plays as it is keeps its subtitles. When rex converts an MKV or MP4 the subtitle you picked comes along. The Plex apps for Android and iOS get a text subtitle as a track and every other app gets it drawn into the picture. Lines too dense to read in time such as an opening song's karaoke can be left out the first time. A subtitle you uploaded comes along too. A download for offline viewing still leaves text subtitles out.

It needs a source that probes.

Sources send container and stream details before a title appears. zurg does this and a big library takes a few hours the first time. Optional FFmpeg analysis reads source media and stores generated images locally. Downloads also use local storage.

Outside your home needs your own address.

The web app only connects over HTTPS and rex has no relay. rex-direct gives it one with a single port forward. Or give it a certificate for a hostname you own. Without a public IP at home use Tailscale or a small VPS that forwards to rex. Skip tunnels that cap bandwidth and keep a Cloudflare tunnel out of the way because it makes every play start read the whole file.

05 / Access

Sponsors first.
Everyone 30 days later.

rex opens as a closed beta for sponsors on October 15 and reaches the public on October 31 along with its source code. The public release ships once every 30 days on the last day of the month. It carries the sponsor builds from 30 days before.

Closed betaSponsors · Oct 15

Every build the day it is made

Linux and macOS and Windows

The zurg nightly that feeds it

Get access

Sponsoring happens at gatekeeper. It covers rex and the zurg nightly. Link your GitHub account there and an invite to the rex repository arrives by email. GitHub sends 50 invites a day, so yours can take a few days in the first weeks.

PublicFree · Oct 31

A new release on the last day of each month

Builds 30 days behind sponsors

The source code

Free

06 / Setup

Up and running.

Download the build for your machine and unpack it. There are builds for Linux and macOS and Windows. Linux needs Ubuntu 22.04 or newer.
Start rex once with its LAN IP. Nothing after this restarts it. The first start makes an empty Debrid Movies and Debrid TV library and names the server after the machine. rex never needs your Plex token or a TMDB key.
Add it to a fresh free Plex account made just for rex with a code from plex.tv/claim and share it with your own account. rex tells Plex its address the moment it is claimed and gets its own HTTPS address too. Do it before zurg sends anything so titles arrive with their posters. rex plays nothing until it is claimed. This step is at your own risk.
Add rex's LAN IP to zurg and restart zurg. It needs a zurg nightly from October 17 or later. zurg sends rex its whole library and then every change. With your optional DMM API key zurg also asks DMM exactly what each file is. A zurg folder such as anime gets libraries of its own when you give it rex_shows or rex_movies in zurg's config from its next nightly after October 22. What it already holds moves there with its watch history. Every other folder stays in Debrid Movies and Debrid TV. Rename them in Plex as you like. A library you delete stays deleted until you add it again with Add Library. Only this machine and your home network and Tailscale can push to it.
Outside your home the apps want an HTTPS address. rex-direct gives every claimed rex one and needs a single port forward. Or start rex with a certificate for a hostname you own.

Use a build with the movie and TV capability update. It adds supported server features rather than a Plex subscription. See the capabilities and requirements for Downloads and skipping and thumbnails and audio processing and local controls.

SETUP Linux · macOS · Windows

# start it once (the first start makes the library)
rex --catalog rex.db --announce-url http://<rex's LAN IP>:32400

# claim it on a fresh Plex account with a code from plex.tv/claim
curl -X POST "http://<rex's LAN IP>:32400/myplex/claim?token=claim-xxxx"

# zurg config.yml
rex_url: http://<rex's LAN IP>:32400
dmm_api_key: <your DMM API key>   # optional: DMM's exact matches, else zurg reads the name

# outside your home forward port 32400 to rex

Your debrid and Usenet libraryin every Plex app.

The apps you know.The library you already have.