Show a "Leaving Soon" Shelf in Plex

A deletion nobody saw coming is the complaint every automated cleanup gets. Librariarr can keep a Plex collection in sync with a rule set’s matches, so everything scheduled for removal sits on the home screen as Leaving Soon for the length of the action delay, soonest first. Someone who wants a title watches it, and it drops out of the rule and the shelf on the next detection run.

Note

Collections are a Plex feature. On Jellyfin and Emby the rule set still works; only the shelf is unavailable.

Attach a collection to a delete rule set

The shelf belongs on the rule set whose action is enabled, not on a separate one: ordering by action date reads that rule set’s pending actions, and a rule set with its action switched off has none.

1. Open the rule set — the one from Automatically Delete Unwatched Media, say — in Lifecycle → Rules.

2. Turn on Sync matches to a Plex collection and choose Create new collection…. Name it Leaving Soon.

3. Set Sort order to Action date, and turn on Display on home screens so it appears where people look. Display in library recommended adds it to the library’s own recommended row.

4. Give the rule set an action delay long enough for people to react — two weeks is a reasonable default — and Save. The collection is created on Plex, and filled, by the first detection run that matches something.

Or import the whole thing: the Rule Set Library has the unwatched-movies rule set with this collection already attached.

What your users see

• The collection holds every current match, in the order their deletions are scheduled. Matches with no pending action — from a rule set feeding the same collection with its action off — sort last.
• A title someone watches stops matching on the next detection run; its pending deletion is cancelled and it leaves the shelf.
• A title you protect with an exception is removed from the collection at once, on every server that holds a copy — no need to wait for the next run.
• When nothing matches, the collection is removed from Plex rather than left empty.

One shelf, several rule sets

Collections are shared definitions. A second rule set — say, the Seerr requests nobody watched rule set — can sync to the same Leaving Soon collection by picking it from the dropdown. The shelf then shows the union of both rule sets’ matches, still ordered by action date across all of them. A collection belongs to one library type, so movies and series need two collections; both can be called Leaving Soon.

If the shelf stays empty

Matches on the Matches page but an empty collection on Plex usually means the items could not be resolved to Plex rating keys. The Plex Collections section lists the causes; System → Logs names the exact Plex request that failed.