Ability to better differentiate renderers

Feature requests
1

Feature description:

The ability for Symfonium to better differentiate between different renderers.

Problem solved:

Allows better targeting when there are multiple renderers available, i.e. if Plex HTPC and PlexAmp are both available

Brought benefits:

Makes it easier to choose the renderer that the user wants to use.

Other application solutions:

 
Plexamp can differentiate between Plexamp and Plex HTPC running on the same machine by labeling each renderer accordingly, i.e. “Plex HTPC for Windows” or “Plexamp” and additionally displays the Plexamp logo to the right of the device name. See “Screenshot/Mockup 1” for reference.
 

Additional description and context:

 
It may be an edge case but I run both Plex HTPC for Windows and Plexamp on the same machine. The reason I run both apps on the same machine is because Plex HTPC is atrocious for playing music.

For example if I use Plexamp on my phone to cast to/play music on Plex HTPC then Plex HTPC will randomly stop playing music part way through the play list, it might stop after one track or ten tracks it’s totally random.

Unfortunately Plex developers don’t care enough to fix the issue (there is soooo many things broken with Plex, don’t get me started on the enshitification of Plex) and the one developer that did help on the Plex forums had no experience with Plex HTPC so they were unable to help resolve the issue and instead recommended the best solution is to install Plexamp on the HTPC and cast from Plexamp on my phone to Plexamp on the HTPC. This solution has been rock solid and I have had no problems since I started using this solution.

I use Plex HTPC because it’s still good for playing videos, i.e. movies and shows.

I run both apps at the same time and Plexamp runs in the background while I have Plex HTPC in the foreground, i.e. the Plex HTPC window is displayed on top of all the other windows.

The issue in Symfonium is that Plex HTPC and Plexamp are both labelled “HTPC Remote player” (see “Screenshot/Mockup 2” for reference) and I have no idea which menu item points to “Plex HTPC” and which one points to “Plexamp”. If I want to use Symfonium to cast to Plexamp, I have to close the app, close Plex HTPC, then launch Symfonium again so the app can only see “Plexamp”.

It would be great if the Symfonium app could tell the difference between the two apps on the HTPC and label them accordingly like Plexamp does. See “Screenshot/Mockup 3” for reference.

I much prefer to use Symfonium over the Plexamp app becasue I like Symfonium better, specifically the home screen widget (side note it would also be awesome to be able to customise the home screen widget the same way the now playing screen can be customised) and the features and flexibility of the app. I worry that the Plexamp app will eventually be enshitified in the same way that plex developers enshitified and totally fucked up the Android Plex app and broke the ability to cast videos to Plex HTPC from the Android Plex app like I was able to with the old/previous version of the Android Plex app.
 

Screenshots / Mockup:

 

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 11080×2340 179 KB
 
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 21080×2340 381 KB
 
Screenshot 3
Screenshot 31080×2340 495 KB
 

2

Provides logs to see the data sent, but you can change the names that the plex clients returns in their configuration.

3

Hi Tolriq, cheers for that information I have now given Plexamp on the HPC a new friendly name, “Plexamp HTPC” and I can see that Symfonium is now seeing Plexamp on the HTPC and reporting it as " Plexamp HTPC".

However it appears this may have turned into a bug report, let me know if you prefer me to raise this as a bug in a separate thread.

So if both Plex HTPC and Plexamp are running at the same time on the same machine and I choose to only cast to “Plexamp HTPC” Symfonium will connect to both “Plexamp HTPC” and “HTPC” (i.e. Plex HTPC) Symfonium will connect to both and “HTPC” and “Plexamp HTPC” will fight with each other about who plays the music. If only “HTPC” (i.e. Plex HTPC) or “Plexamp HTPC” is running then Symfonium works as expected, i.e. it only sees and connects to the one renderer.

Here is the troubleshooting that I performed to replicate the issue:

29/10/2025 @ 11:37 - Rebooted HTPC and phone
29/10/2025 @ 11:38 - Enabled Debug mode in Symfonium
29/10/2025 @ 11:39 - Launched Plexamp on HTPC (Note: Plex HTPC is set to launch on boot, and I manually launch Plexamp when I want to use it)
29/10/2025 @ 11:40 - Launched Symfonium and cast to Plexamp HTPC

Result: Symfonium connected to both “HTPC” (i.e. Plex HTPC) and “Plexamp HTPC” when I chjose to cast to “Plexamp HTPC”. Did not work as expected, i.e. I was expecting Symfonium to only connect and cast to “Plexamp HTPC”

29/10/2025 @ 11:42 - Rebooted HTPC and phone
29/10/2025 @ 11:43 - Launched Symfonium and cast to “HTPC Remote player”

Result: Symfonium could only see “HTPC”, worked as expected.

29/10/2025 @ 11:45 - Rebooted HTPC and phone
29/10/2025 @ 11:47 - Exit Plex HTPC, launched Plexamp on the HTPC, launched Symfonium on phone and cast to “Plexamp HTPC”

Result: Symfonium appeared to connect to both “HTPC - Remote player” (i.e. Plex HTPC) and “Plexamp HTPC - Remote player” but after force closing Symfonium and relaunching it indicated that it was only connected/casting to “Plexamp HTPC”, worked mostly as expected.

29/10/2025 @ 11:59 - Uploaded logs.

Edit: I should also mention the Plex server is running on the same machine as Plex HTPC and Plexamp.

4

Thanks, yes the internal unique ids are not unique in that case causing the issue will fix.

5

Awesome, glad to hear there’s a fix coming. Cheers!