Hide iTunes Extra’s in Plex

I’ve got a Plex Server running on top of my iTunes installation to more easily stream media to my iPad and iPhone. It’s more stable than using the Shared tab in the Movies app, and it’s available while out of the house too. One thing that always bothered me was the fact that Plex showed a lot of garbage in the Movies list. Especially clips from iTunes Extra’s were an issue. They did not have a nice image, have an ugly title, aren’t playable due to DRM and frankly there were just too many clips to keep things organised.

Yesterday I discovered that Plex, similar to Git, has a .PlexIgnore option. You can add a file to the root folder of your movie folder and via a specific syntax add rules that make Plex ignore certain files. Since iTunes Extra files are contained in a bundle that has an .ite extension, this could be applied easily.

Hide iTunes Extra’s

• Go to root of your Movie folder in Finder. (If you index more than one folder: rinse and repeat)
• Open Terminal and type cd and drag the Movie folder into the Terminal window.

• Press Enter/Return and type nano .PlexIgnore
• Press Enter/Return again. This opens up a text editor within Terminal.
• Now you specify which files Plex should ignore.

• Add the following text: */*.ite*/* This will make Plex ignore all files or folders that have an extension .ite or are within a folder with that name.
• Next, close and save the file by typing Control X and pressing Y followed by ENTER
• Your Plex installation will now reindex your entire library and all iTunes Extra’s related content will disappear from view, with the original files untouched!

Some more options

You can do a lot more with .plexignore. Hide all episodes from a TV series you once saved but don’t want visible anymore. Or hide all files containing Trailer, or Cam.

Sadly, it only looks at filenames at the moment. I’d love a way to hide all Purchased and DRM protected media. But that’s currently not possible.