Plex has made it easier to skip credits

Good news content bingers: Plex has just released Credits Detection, a new feature that allows users to automatically skip the credit sequences for TV shows and movies. Announced via a blog post on Wednesday, Credits Detection is now live and will display a Skip Credits button on a number of different Plex players running on Apple TV, Android TV, iOS, macOS, Windows, Xbox, Roku, and beyond.

If you’re a Plex user then you may have noticed that the service already had the ability to skip intros for multi-episode shows. The new Skip Credits feature works similarly for TV shows and movies — automatically detecting where an outro or credits sequence starts and displaying an on-screen button that allows you to skip them, either directly to the end or to hidden mid-credit scenes when available. Plex explains that the new tech is more sophisticated, but warns that the option to skip might not always appear.

“We’ve worked hard to tune a machine learning algorithm to make sense of several inputs (text detection, the presence of black frames, and a few other secret ingredients) to come up with a reliable set of markers when credits begin and end,” reads a Plex Blog post on the new feature. “It’s a tricky problem, and there may still be some cases where it doesn’t go exactly to plan, but those cases should be few and far between at this point.”

Plex says that the Skip Credits feature works automatically for all free-to-watch content it provides, and enables the feature by default for all library items stored on Plex Pass users’ personal Plex Media Servers running version 1.31.0 or newer.

A full list of supported player apps and instructions for how to adjust Credit Detection (including disabling the feature and manually analyzing content for credits) can be found on the Plex support page. In our early tests, we found the Skip Credits feature is available on some content albeit with inconsistencies, with one movie viewed via the iOS app detecting end credits, but not the movie’s introduction sequence.

There are bound to be a few issues at launch, but it’s early days. There are still streaming platforms like Crunchyroll that frustratingly only provide these skip functions on a small selection of its available content, so I’m intrigued by Plex’s automated detection being available server- and library-wide. I also appreciate that Plex has at least given users the option to disable the feature entirely for those that don’t want an intrusive “Skip Credits” or “Skip Intro” button ruining their viewing experiences.