Media streaming platform Plex today announced the launch of its Plex Media Server beta with native Apple Silicon support.
The new version of the Plex Media Server is a “Universal” build for Macs, meaning it includes native support for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. The current release version of the Plex Media Server runs under Rosetta 2.
Since the introduction of the Apple M1 chip for macOS, users have asked for Plex Media Server to natively support “Apple Silicon”. The existing Mac server versions run just fine under Rosetta2, but native is always better, right? Well, here it is!!!
We present, the Plex Media Server “Universal” build for macOS. This new package includes Plex Media Server for both Intel and Apple Silicon architectures, so you don’t have to worry about what you are installing.
Please note that this is a preview release. This needs to be installed manually for now and it will not auto-update to newer releases.
Important Note: You will need to manually re-install an official public or beta version of Plex Media Server to auto-update to the Universal build once is it officially available.
What changes should I expect?
You should notice improved transcoding speeds. PMS running under Rosetta2 was already pretty fast, so the change may not be significant. However, as the code is now native, it should be more stable and more efficient on the CPU.
Known Limitations:
- auto-update does not work
We have done extensive testing on our own M1 devices. There are no other known issues related to this new build.
You will need to manually re-install an official public or beta version of Plex Media Server to auto-update to the Universal build once is it officially available. It can be downloaded from the Plex website.
