Playvior

Playvior is a small, open-source desktop tool for exporting and importing video playlists in Plex Media Server — move your playlists between servers, back them up, or share them with someone else's Plex library.

It comes in two forms:

• A desktop GUI (gui.py) — sign in, pick a server, check off playlists, and export or import with a couple of clicks.
• Two standalone command-line scripts (export_playlists.py and import_playlists.py) for scripting or headless use.

Both share the same underlying logic, so they always behave identically — the GUI is just a friendlier front end onto the same tested code.

Playvior runs on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Screenshots

Why

Plex has no built-in way to move a video playlist from one server to another, or to back one up outside the server itself. Playvior exports a playlist to a portable JSON file and can re-import it onto any server, matching items by external IDs (IMDb/TMDb/TVDB) first and falling back to title/year or show/season/episode matching when a clean ID match isn't available.

How matching works

Each exported item carries Plex's own GUID and every external GUID Plex knows about (IMDb, TMDb, TVDB). On import, Playvior tries those first — they survive a metadata agent change or a retitled file — and only falls back to matching by title + year (movies) or show/season/episode (episodes) if no ID match is found on the target server. Anything that still can't be matched is reported, not silently dropped.

Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• customtkinter — GUI only
• plexapi — both GUI and CLI

Install everything with:

pip install -r requirements.txt

or, if you only want the command-line scripts and not the GUI:

pip install plexapi

Installation

Prebuilt installer (no Python required)

Grab the installer for your OS from the Releases page:

• Windows — PlayviorSetup-<version>.exe
• macOS — Playvior-<version>.dmg (unsigned — see note below)
• Linux — Playvior-<version>-x86_64.AppImage (chmod +x it, then run it)

These are built automatically for every release; see packaging/README.md for how, or to build one yourself. The macOS and Windows builds aren't signed/notarized (that needs a paid developer account), so macOS will call the app "unidentified developer" and Windows SmartScreen may warn on first launch — in both cases there's a one-time "run anyway" option to bypass it.

From source

git clone https://github.com/animizm/Playvior.git
cd Playvior
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

GUI

python gui.py

Sign in with your Plex account (this opens a browser window for Plex's own login/approval flow — Playvior never sees your Plex password, see PRIVACY.md), pick a server, then use the Export and Import tabs to choose which playlists to move and where.

Command line

Export every video playlist on a server to one JSON file per playlist:

python export_playlists.py --output ./exported_playlists --mode separate

Or as a single combined file (handy for a full backup):

python export_playlists.py --output ./exported_playlists --mode combined

With no --baseurl/--token, both scripts open a browser window for Plex's PIN-based sign-in flow. If your account has more than one server, add --server-name "My Server" to pick one non-interactively. To connect directly instead (e.g. for automation), pass --baseurl and --token.

Import playlists from a previously exported file:

python import_playlists.py --input ./exported_playlists/playlists_export.json

Useful flags:

• --select "Playlist One,Playlist Two" — import only specific playlists out of a combined file (default: import everything in the file)
• --on-conflict skip|replace|rename — what to do if a playlist with the same title already exists on the target server (default: skip)

Run either script with --help for the full list of options.

Exported file format

Exported files are plain, human-readable JSON — feel free to inspect, edit, or version-control them. The format is documented implicitly by export_playlists.py's export_playlist() function; the short version is a schema_version, some metadata about the source server and export time, and a list of items, each with its title, type, external GUIDs, and (for episodes) show/season/episode info.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss any significant change before putting time into a PR.

License

Playvior is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE for the full text.

Privacy

See PRIVACY.md for what Playvior does (and doesn't) do with your data.