PLEX on My Cloud Home - Cannot Add New Libraries

Dear Support Team

I recently invested (like many others) in purchasing a “WD My Cloud Home” device that what was advertised to run many other applications including Plex with an option to customize/tailor the settings to suit our requirements.

Having bought the device, with all enthusiasm I setup my Plex Media Server on the WD My Cloud Home, which created a Plex directory with default sub-directories for each category (home movies, movies, music, photos etc.)

All these steps were relatively painless to follow, till I discovered that I cannot add any libraries or modify the default ones to include any sub directories to classify any of my media content as its missing the “Add folders” tab.

Creating a new library is possible on the Plex web app however neither an option to add/point the physical library is available nor a physical drive folder is created on the WD My Cloud Home. Thus proving it impossible to create/sort any media file other than dumping it all under the default generic folders created on the WD My Cloud Home. PMS doesn’t appear to recognize custom library folders on the WD My Cloud Home drive. This makes having custom libraries apart from the defaults impossible.

For example, I can add as many “Movie” type libraries as I want, but they will all point to the “Shared Movies” directory inside the Plex folder, and as a result, will display the same content. This seems very limiting, and from the little bit of documentation I can find, this seems to have been done by design. Does anyone know a way around this, or if this will change in the future?

I’ve tried all that possible to see if it was relative to the way I set it up, but failed to find a solution till I stumbled by the same experience and issues posted by a lot number of users. I understand that this is a limitation has been reported by

It appears that this was an intentional omission and a significant limitation for people who have invested a hefty amount in purchasing a falsely advertised product, as seen from the Section titled “Can I create my own libraries?” on the link

WD’s intervention to enhance the existing limitation and adding the provision to select a folder on the drive to associate with a library would be highly regarded and appreciated as this is a must for anybody who wants to make use of their valued investment to organize media/libraries into more than the default built-in libraries “Movies, Photos, Music, TV Shows, Home Movies”.

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I echo this complaint about limited functionality with the Plex server app. I don’t know if this is a Plex limitation, or a WD limitation; but it does not seem like this is a full solution if the media organization is a dumbed down experience.

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Also want to add my voice to this. Being limited to the 5 pre-configured entries is very restrictive. I just set up my Cloud Home server and was not aware I wouldn’t be able to add folders.

As a basic example for me, I have movies and TV shows appropriate for my son, which I would want in a separate library, that his user can access. Then I have all my other movies and TV shows which I want accessible to my user. Simply adding a folder in the Plex folder on My Cloud doesn’t work.

So either make the WD Plex app automatically add new folders as a library type, or allow us to specify the folder for a library type.

Just in case anybody finds this topic and wonders about workarounds, here is what I used:

I applied a label “Kids” to all of my son’s movies/shows, then edited his managed user, removed the pre-set restrictions and added a custom restriction of “Allow only Label: Kids”. Then I was able to add the rest of my movies/shows to the pre-set libraries and rescan. His managed user will only see the “Kids”-labelled movies/shows while any other user will see everything.

There’s a support article on it here: Restrictions on Library Access | Plex Support

I also would like to complaint, I used the old WD and my computer as server but recently bougt the new WD My Home after reading on their info that Plex is supported. I expected it to work as before, just without my PC as server, I want to be able to close my pc and still access the files with plex. BUT the problem is the libraries are sooo rectricted, this works very bad, - I thought buyig A Newer and more expensive WD the compability would be better, but tis is several steps BACKWARDS and the costum libaries is something I REALLY NEED. Please see if something can be done, this is NOT good enough. REALLY NOT

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I doubt this will change. From what I’ve found about the My Cloud Home it’s not really a NAS like other products. It’s file upload is restricted to using the WD Discovery app and Plex is very limited on it. I’ve made my peace with it, as I’ve outlined above that was the only real customisation I wanted, but I agree being able to add custom libraries based off folders instead of pre-set 1 folder per library type would be great.