Plex app for Windows 10 gets anonymous application metrics to help drive future improvements

Vu Anh Nguyen

Plex Home Page

Home theater owners should be familiar with Plex – a popular media server/playback software suite for all types of media, and a viable alternative to the previously dominating Windows Media Center suite, now discontinued in Windows 10. Plex has been an early staple of the Windows Store both on PC and mobile, and has continue to evolve along with the platform. The newest update, however, is following a trend that may sound negative to some users.

Specifically, the new update, pushing the app to version 2.1.2.30, introduces “anonymous data collection metrics to help drive future improvements”, which can be disabled in the Advanced section of the app’s Settings menu. There is no information to specify what kind of data is collected, but most likely it’s simple anonymous usage metrics, bug reports and other usability information.

plex-data-collection-windows-10

While metrics collection for app improvements is now a part of every modern piece of software, it continues to be a sensitive issue among privacy advocators and paranoid users; Microsoft has come under fire a lot recently for its policy on Windows. It’s great that Plex is being partially transparent about data collection, but the company will most likely get some backlash with this new update.

Besides the new data collection feature, the app also get some compatibility fixes for Windows Phone, including startup performance improvements, landscape UI fix, and other general usability and stability improvements.

Plex
Plex
Developer: Plex
Price: Free