The first thing I wanted from Plex on a watch was to exist. The second thing was not a tiny version of the larger Plex app; it was a way to stop music already playing elsewhere before the situation became concerning. Finding a phone, unlocking it, opening the right app and navigating to the right player is technically possible. It also takes a while when the wrong thing (or something) is coming out of a speaker or someone nearby’s noise cancelling headphones.

I made Plex Wear, a standalone Wear OS app for Plex music. It signs in directly with Plex, shows my music libraries, albums, playlists and recent tracks, then plays on the watch. It works without a companion phone app. I left the rest of the Plex interface to Plex rather than squeezing it onto a round screen. It would have been nice if they’d made a wearOS app themselves though.

The basic job is simple: open the app, pick music, play it. Tracks can be cached or downloaded on the watch, which is handy for an offline run. Plex has it’s own remote control and can list active Plex sessions and pause or resume another player without becoming the playback device itself, no idea why that may be useful.

As has been my wont recently, this was built with Codex. If you want this exact thing, the code is on GitHub. Plex Wear is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Plex.