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How to remove unwanted items from Plex’s “Recently Added” sections

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Originally published on Medium.

How to remove unwanted items from Plex’s “Recently Added” sections

There’s a lot of conflicting and outdated information on this topic. With my typical combination of hyperfocus, trial-and-error, and a lot of swearing, I’ve worked out the current procedure (December 2023, PMS version 1.40.0.7775, macOS, YMMV).

Person frustrated at a computer screen Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

Why do I need this?

You need this if your Plex dashboard’s “Recently Added Movies” (or TV Shows) section suddenly shows items you added months or years ago. PMS doesn’t offer a way to flag an item as “not recently added” or “don’t show this in the Recently Added section.”

Do I need to be an expert hacker?

You need to be comfortable with the macOS Terminal. I’ll give you some copy-and-paste commands to use, but just be aware this is not for the beginner.

Will you fix my Plex and/or Mac if I break it?

No.

  1. Stop PMS. Click and hold the Plex icon in the Mac’s Dock and select Quit.
  2. Back up your database and settings. Here is guidance from Plex on how to do this. In current versions of PMS on macOS, the database is at:
    `/System/Volumes/Data/Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db`
3.  Launch Terminal and open the Plex database in Plex’s custom SQLite3:
    `$ /Applications/Plex\ Media\ Server.app/Contents/MacOS/Plex\ SQLite “/System/Volumes/Data/Users/$USER/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Server/Plug-in Support/Databases/com.plexapp.plugins.library.db”`
4.  Find the offending item (substitute a word in the title for TITLE here):
    `sqlite> select title from metadata_items where title like ‘%TITLE%’;`
5.  You’ll see a response showing the title(s) matching your query. Look at the `added_at` timestamp to confirm this is the issue. It should show something much more recent than when the item was actually added, possibly even a future date/time.
    `sqlite> select datetime(added_at, ‘unixepoch’, ‘localtime’) from metadata_items where title like ‘%TITLE%’;`
6.  Figure out what timestamp you want the item(s) to have. For mine, I just wanted the `added_at` timestamp to be the same as the file date (i.e., when I acquired the file and added it to Plex in the first place). You can use [EpochConverter](https://www.epochconverter.com/) for this. For example, January 20, 2021, at noon EST, is `1611162000` in Unix Epoch time.
7.  Fix the `added_at` timestamp on the problem item(s).
    *** WARNING: THIS WRITES TO YOUR PLEX DATABASE. IF YOU TYPO IT, OR THERE’S A NETWORK INTERRUPTION WHILE THE CHANGE IS BEING WRITTEN, OR YOUR CAT JUMPS ON THE KEYBOARD AT THE WRONG SECOND, THERE COULD BE BAD CONSEQUENCES. DID YOU BACK UP YOUR DATABASE? ***
    `sqlite> update metadata_items set added_at = ‘TIMESTAMP’ where title like ‘%TITLE%’;`
8.  Double-check that the `added_at` timestamp is now correct:
    `sqlite> select datetime(added_at, ‘unixepoch’, ‘localtime’) from metadata_items where title like ‘%TITLE%’;`
9.  Exit SQLite3 with `.quit`, and launch Plex. You should re-scan the Movies library. Check the “Recently Added” section. The item(s) you fixed should no longer be present.

Good luck! Feel free to comment about whether this helped. Again, though, I can’t offer technical support. Make sure to back up your database!

Sources:

-   [https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/ml98am/how_do_i_fix_recently_added_being_stuck_due_to/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/ml98am/how_do_i_fix_recently_added_being_stuck_due_to/)
-   [https://web.archive.org/web/20230208003624/https://getsysadminblog.com/2019/09/30/plex-fix-stuck-items-in-the-recently-added-dashboards/](https://web.archive.org/web/20230208003624/https://getsysadminblog.com/2019/09/30/plex-fix-stuck-items-in-the-recently-added-dashboards/)
-   [https://michielvanerp.wordpress.com/2021/08/22/plex-fix-recently-added/](https://michielvanerp.wordpress.com/2021/08/22/plex-fix-recently-added/)
-   [https://support.plex.tv/articles/202915258-where-is-the-plex-media-server-data-directory-located/](https://support.plex.tv/articles/202915258-where-is-the-plex-media-server-data-directory-located/)
-   [https://www.epochconverter.com/](https://www.epochconverter.com/)
-   [https://support.plex.tv/articles/201539237-backing-up-plex-media-server-data/](https://support.plex.tv/articles/201539237-backing-up-plex-media-server-data/)

Cat sitting next to a laptop computer Photo by Dillon Kydd on Unsplash