SyncLounge (Previously PlexTogether) is a tool to sync Plex content across multiple players in multiple locations.

While we run a live version available at synclounge.tv, the project can be built and deployed completely seperate from synclounge.tv. We also provide a handful of public SyncLounge Server instances that everyone is free to use.

Live Version

How it works

SyncLounge aims to keep multiple viewing sessions in sync regardless of whether the clients are in the same room or across the globe. To do this SyncLounge utilizes a middle-man server to communicate between each of the SyncLounge clients. Users choose their Plex client, decide on a SyncLounge Server and Room name and join up. Your friends/family can do the same. Whoever joins the room first will become the host.

The host has complete control over a room. Commands they send to their client will be sent through to other people in the room (Play, Pause, Seek etc). If the host starts playing something different, SyncLounge will search all of your available Plex Media Servers for an equiavalent copy, even if it is not from the same Plex Media Server as the Host.

Features

• Syncing between Plex Clients over the Internet
• SyncLounge Player
  • Plays content directly within SyncLounge.
  • Built specifically for syncing.
• Settings to tune SyncLounge to your environment
  • Client Polling Interval - Sets how frequently SyncLounge will poll the client for new information.
  • Sync Flexability - Sets the acceptable distance away from the host in milliseconds.
  • Sync method:
    • Clean seek - Seeks straight to where the host is.
    • Skip ahead - Seeks 10 seconds ahead, pauses and then resumes 10 seconds later.
  • Plex Media Server blocking - allows you to restrict the servers SyncLounge searches for content.
• Autoplay content
  • SyncLounge will automatically search all of your available Plex Media Servers for content that is similar to the Host.
• Plex Media Server Browsing - find, search and fling content to Plex Clients from within SyncLounge.
• Metadata fetching from Plex Media Server
• Chat to others in your room
• Password locked rooms
• Invite others via generated short link
• Movies and TV Shows (Music not supported)

FAQ

• I have to login to Plex.tv on the site, how come?

  • SyncLounge uses your Plex account to fetch details about your Plex Clients and Media Servers to use within the app.

• Won't you have access to my username, password and Plex account?

  • All of your details are stored client side (in your browser). Absolutely none of your confidential data is sent to our server. You can verify this by inspecting the Network tab within Chrome developer tools or if you would like you can deploy SyncLounge yourself - read the 'Building and deploying' section below.

• What is sent then?

  • When you've connected to a SyncLounge room, a few details are sent back and forth to the SyncLounge Server to enable syncing. The data sent contains the following:
    • Plex Username
    • Plex User Thumbnail URL
    • Content playing title (Eg. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring)
    • Current timestamp (Eg. 00:35:02)
    • Maximum timestamp (Eg. 03:48:18)
      • Host content ratingKey
      • Host machineIdentifier
    • Playerstate (Eg. paused, stopped, playing)
    • Client response time (Ping time between you and your Plex Client)
  • SL Server address, SL Server Room and SL Server Room Password are sent to the WebApp when you join a room to create shortened invite links.

• What about the public server provided by SyncLounge? Is my data safe?

  • We log absolutely nothing to disk. Data is kept within the room instance until you leave or the server restarts. We have enabled SSL on our public servers but if privacy is a concern for you we strongly suggest running your own server. For more details read the 'Building and Deploying' section below.

• Speaking of SSL, why isn't the site served over HTTPS?

  • By default SyncLounge is server via HTTP. While we do offer HTTPS, doing so forces modern browsers in to blocking all HTTP connections. This effectively stops all communication with Plex Clients which are all HTTP.

Screenshots

Head to the website

Supported Plex Clients

Theoretically, all Plex Clients that implement the Plex Client Protocol will work. As some clients have this implemented slightly differently, compability with SyncLounge may vary. If you have access to one of the untested clients please let us know so we can update our list below.

Some low powered clients may be hard to achieve a perfect sync with (for example: Raspberry Pi clients).

Unsupported

• Plex Web Player (Chrome/Safari/Firefox)

Supported

• Plex Media Player
• Plex Home Theater
• OpenPHT
• Rasplex
• Roku
• Android
• Nvidia Shield
• iOS (iPhone & iPad)
• AppleTV

Broken

• Xbox One
• Xbox 360
• PS3
• PS4

Contributing

Please use the Issue tracker here on Github for Issues & Feature requests. We'll gladly merge Pull requests if you're keen to get hands on with the development.

Building and deploying

Arguments and ENV variables

The following can be used to change some of the settings in the application. Arguments are passed to the application by using --<argument>=<value> when running the application. ENV variables are mostly for Docker but can be set locally on your system.

Argument	ENV	Description
webroot	WEB_ROOT	Change the base URL of the web app. Ex - /lounge
webapp_port	WEB_PORT	Change the port the web app uses. Defaults to 8088
accessUrl	WEB_ACCESSURL	Set the URL the web app uses for things like invites. Ex - http://mysynclounge.com
autoJoin	AUTOJOIN_ENABLED	Set to true to enable auto joining. Defaults to false
autoJoinServer	AUTOJOIN_SERVERURL	Set this to the server URL you want the user to auto join. Required if auto join is enabled. Ex - http://mysynclounge.com/slserver
autoJoinRoom	AUTOJOIN_ROOM	Set this to the room name in the server that you want the users to auto join. Optional
autoJoinPassword	AUTOJOIN_PASSWORD	Set this to the room's password, if it has one. Optional
authentication	AUTHENTICATION	Configure authentication for the server. See below for more information. Optional
customServer	CUSTOM_SERVER	Override the custom server entry in the servers list. See below for more information. Optional
servers	SERVERS	Set your own servers list. See below for more information. Optional
serverroot	SERVER_ROOT	Change the base URL of the server app. Ex - /server. Defaults to /slserver
server_port	SERVER_PORT	Change the port the server app uses. Defaults to 8089

Authentication

To enable authentication, the following setting and format is used

"authentication": {
    "mechanism": "plex",
    "type": ["server", "user"],
    "authorized": [
      "PLEX_SERVER_MACHINE_ID",
      "PLEX_USER_EMAIL",
      "PLEX_USER_NAME",
    ]
  }

• mechanism specifies how SyncLounge should authenticate a user. This is mostly for future-proofing to allow other authentication mechanisms to be provided. Defaults to none.
• type is mechanism dependent. Since plex is the only one currently, either or both server and user can be specified.
  • server checks against the plex server machine ID (PLEX_SERVER_MACHINE_ID). If the user has access to a server matching any of the IDs in the authorized list, they will be granted access.
  • user checks against the user's email (PLEX_USER_EMAIL) or username (PLEX_USER_NAME). If either matches a value in the authorized list, they will be granted access.
• authorized is a list of information for who is authorized.

Customize the server list

Customize the Custom Server entry

Adding this to your settings will override the the custom server in the server list.

"customServer": {
  "name": "Custom Server 1",
  "location": "Custom Location",
  "url": "https://mycustomserver.com/server",
  "image": "https://mycustomserver.com/logo.png"
}

Customize servers list

The servers list can be modified with your own list of servers. If this setting is provided, it will ignore the customServer setting above. Also, if only one server is provided, it will automatically join it! A server entry can also handle a default Room, with or without password. If set, SyncLounge will attempt to auto-join the room when the server is selected by the user.

"servers": [
  {
    "name": "Custom Server 1",
    "location": "Custom Location",
    "url": "https://1.mycustomserver.com/server",
    "image": "https://mycustomserver.com/logo.png"
  },
  {
    "name": "Custom Server 2",
    "location": "Custom Location",
    "url": "https://2.mycustomserver.com/server",
    "image": "https://mycustomserver.com/logo-2.png",
    "defaultRoom": "DefaultRoom"
  },
  {
    "name": "Custom Server 3",
    "location": "Custom Location",
    "url": "https://3.mycustomserver.com/server",
    "image": "https://mycustomserver.com/logo-3.png",
    "defaultRoom": "DefaultRoom",
    "defaultPassword": "DefaultPassword123"
  }
]

Docker

This is the official Docker container for SyncLounge: https://hub.docker.com/r/starbix/synclounge

The following tags are available:

• latest / alpine: webapp and server based on alpine
• server: only server based on alpine
• dev: development version of webapp and server based on alpine
• nginx: latest + nginx reverse proxy

docker run \
  --name=synclounge \
	-p 8088:8088 \
	-p 8089:8089 \
	-e DOMAIN=example.com \
  starbix/synclounge

Use this for the nginx tag:

docker run \
  --name=plextogether_nginx \
	-p 80:80 \
	-e DOMAIN=example.com \
  starbix/synclounge:nginx

Building and running the webapp:

• Make sure you have Node v8.4.0+ installed

  • git clone https://github.com/samcm/synclounge
  • cd synclounge
  • npm install
  • npm run build
  • node webapp.js --accessUrl=http://example.com

• The SL web app will be running at http://ip:8088.

Running the server:

• Make sure you have Node v8.4.0+ installed

  • git clone https://github.com/samcm/synclounge
  • cd synclounge
  • npm install
  • npm run server

• The SL server will be running at http://ip:8089/slserver.

Deploying:

• To run both the SyncLounge webapp and the SyncLounge server through a web server like nginx you will need to make sure you proxy websockets. Example nginx.conf:

  server {
      listen 80;
  	server_name example.com;
  	location / {
  		proxy_pass http://localhost:8088;
  	    proxy_http_version 1.1;
  	    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  	    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  	}
  	location /slserver {
  		proxy_pass http://localhost:8089/slserver;
  	    proxy_http_version 1.1;
  	    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
  	    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  	}
  }
  

Developing

You need:

• Node v8.4.0+

  • git clone https://github.com/samcm/SyncLounge
  • cd synclounge
  • npm install
  • npm run dev

• Once Webpack has finished compiling, navigate to http://localhost:8080 in your web browser.

  • Hot reload is enabled
  • Suggested to install Vue.js Devtools

Issues

If you run in to any issues:

• Raise an Issue here on Github. Try to be as detailed as possible by including details such as:

  • Operating System
    • Web Browser name and version
  • Plex Media Server details
    • Version
    • Operating System
    • Location (Local/Remote)
  • Plex Client details
    • Name
    • Version
    • Network connection (Wired/Wifi)
    • Platform

• Join the Discord Server and raise your issue.

Contributors

samcm - Developer

gcordalis - User Interface

Brandz - Design

TheGrimmChester - Developer/Tester

MagicalCodeMonkey - Developer/Tester

Starbix - Docker Support

kg6jay - Tester

Contact

Discord Server

Twitter: SyncLounge

License

SyncLounge is licensed under MIT License. See the LICENSE.txt file. SyncLounge is in no way affiliated with Plex Inc.