Is it possible to have Sonarr trigger a refresh of just the relevant TV Series for a newly downloaded episode in Plex Media Server (PMS) vs the current full library update that it triggers?
Reason being a full library update is really slow, and unnecessarily scans every TV show in the library.
Eg.
Since Sonarr knows it just downloaded XYZ.S##E##.720p.HDTV.X264-RLSGRP, is it possible to instruct PMS to just refresh Series XYZ?
No, to my knowledge Plex does not have a feature to rescan only one series.
It is possible for an external app to trigger a refresh of a specific Plex library section rather than the full media server library (ie scan the TV Shows section but not the Movies, Home Movies, Kids TV etc). However the only way to refresh / rescan an individual TV show is through Plex Web and clicking the Refresh button inside a show. This will rescan files on disk and also download new metadata. I don’t think this function is exposed via the API though.
More detail here:
We only rescan TV shows, not any other sections. Unfortunately if its not exposed via the API its not very useful to us because we can’t assume Plex and Sonarr are on the same system and Sonarr would be able to execute a command against it.
Thanks for the responses. Pretty much confirms what I already suspected which is that Plex does not support this functionality at this time. Hopefully it’s something they will add or open up in future. The current implementation is not granular enough IMHO. Or fast enough. One or the other would be an acceptable solution.
Just to clarify: I did mean a section update initially. Plex seems to use section and library interchangeably. Ie. You have a Movies Library, TV Library, Music Library etc. and each one constitutes its own section. So the full library update I was referring to was for the TV Library only. Thankfully at least targeting just that is possible!
A single series refresh does work when triggered via the command line using Plex Media Scanner.exe and obviously through the web interface, but this doesn’t help much for automation purposes since both need to be done manually.
I’ll submit a feature request to Plex and see where that leads.
fanboy:
In PLEX
Settings>Server>Library> Click Show Advanced at the top
Then find the check box for “Run a partial scan when changes are detected” and check it.
It works for me. normal scan of entire library takes 5-10 min or so but with that checked shows are hitting my recently added list within a minute.
Thanks, but unfortunately the Automatic Refresh and Partial Scan settings only work for media that is local to your Plex Media Server installation. Like many others, all my media is on network storage.
My media is shared network folder and PLEX runs on a VM separate from my Sonarr VM and it updates just fine. Maybe because the ESX host that shares the folder is the same ESX host that the VM’s run on. Or I’m just lucky I guess.
It could also be your platform, and how it handles file system changes. I don’t know anything about ESX to comment specifically. My entire system is Microsoft.
From Plex regarding automatic library updates:
Note: This function relies on the computer’s operating system providing the “Something Changed” trigger. Some operating systems don’t provide this trigger and content mounted via a network will also typically not work.
and
Note: In most cases, this should work for content on local filesystems. It will generally not work for network shares mounted via SMB, NFS, AFP, or similar.
Were you referring to updates just fine ala automatically, or updates just fine when a refresh is triggered? Mine does update without issue when a refresh is triggered, it just takes too long.
It could also just be a purely numerical factor too. If you don’t mind me asking, how much data are you talking about your system having to scan? My TV section is currently sitting at about 6TB and 1200 folders.
At the end of the day though I think it boils down to Plex enabling more granular refreshing via the Web API, like Kodi. An update in Kodi triggered via Sonarr for a newly downloaded episode completes in seconds, because it can target just that show. Of course, a complete library refresh in Kodi also completes magnitudes faster than the same action in Plex, so there are some other underlying fundamental differences in the mechanisms used. However, a show refresh in Plex certainly completes fast enough. Being able to trigger it via notification would solve this issue.
You got me currious so i did some digging.
System:
ESX host running Hyper-v. ESX host manages and shares network folders for all media via "shared folders"
1123 HD movies
134 TV Shows
VM: MediaManager Running Sonarr/Sab/uTorrent etc
VM: PLEXServer running PLEX (i plan on putting plex on my mediamanager but for my initial testing with Plex i spun up a new VM incase i didn’t like it)
I went through the logs from Sonarr and PLEX and your right. Sonarr adding a file doesn’t make PLEX update. i had 1 file added and plex found it 1.5 min after. i had another added and plex found it 13 min after adding. My guess is when i was playing around with how PLEX worked that Sonarr added a file right before a scheduled update window for PLEX kicked off and it just made it appear that PLEX was finding files as soon as Sonarr added them. Now i’m sad 
BUT its always good to learn how environment functions so now i know! lol