Fixing Plex's 'Not authorized' error

When setting up Plex, it’s possible that it may fail to automatically link your Plex instance to plex.tv and you will see this error screen:

To address this issue, you should:

Go to: Claim | Plex
Login (if necessary) and copy/paste the ‘Claim Code’ which will look similar to: claim-abcRS99Z-UlzT8ZZs3mR

Note: this ‘Claim Code’ expires after 5 minutes, so it’s important to immediately proceed with the following steps:

On Windows:

  • Open Powershell or use PuTTY

On Linux/Mac:

  • Open the Terminal app

SSH into your Umbrel using this command:

ssh umbrel@umbrel.local

Note: your SSH password is the same as when you login into Umbrel through a browser (at http://umbrel.local)

Replace CLAIM_CODE_HERE in the command below with the ‘Claim Code’ you got when you completed the above

sed -i 's/VERSION=docker/VERSION=docker\n      - PLEX_CLAIM=CLAIM_CODE_HERE/' ~/umbrel/app-data/plex/docker-compose.yml

e.g.

sed -i 's/VERSION=docker/VERSION=docker\n      - PLEX_CLAIMclaim-abcRS99Z-UlzT8ZZs3mR/' ~/umbrel/app-data/plex/docker-compose.yml

Paste the command into your Terminal app. When you press <enter>, it will not output anything, this is normal

We need to restart the Plex app, using this command:

sudo ~/umbrel/scripts/app restart plex

Finally, open the Plex app in Umbrel (http://umbrel.local/), and you should see Plex’s user interface with film titles:

5 Likes

Nice one thanks

1 Like

This does work for me, thank you!. I opted to manually add the - PLEX_CLAIM= line below the - VERSION=docker line. Worked the same way. Thanks!

This works great!