Plex allows you to host your own collection of movies, TV episodes, and music to stream on all your other devices, and even share your library with friends and family. However, Plex Media Server is about to drop support for old Windows PCs and Macs.
Plex Media Server is the application that streams a media collection to other devices, and usually runs on a NAS, dedicated home server, or other device that is left always running and connected to a home network. The server application works on a wide range of hardware and operating systems, but Plex is now ending support for versions of Windows older than Windows 10 version 1607, as well as macOS versions older than 10.13 High Sierra.
The first version to drop the older operating systems will be Plex Media Server 1.32, which is planned for release on April 10, 2023. The change means that Plex won’t support server PCs still running Windows 7 or 8 (including 8.1), as well as some old Macs that may not be able to run newer versions of macOS. Plex isn’t alone in dropping old Windows versions — Microsoft ended extended updates for both 7 and 8 earlier this year, around the same time as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge both ended support.
Plex said in a forum announcement, “While older versions of the Server may continue to run in these now-unsupported environments for the time being, we encourage everyone to upgrade their systems to at least Windows 10 (version 1607) or macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) to ensure that both your operating system and Plex Media Server continue to receive critical security and feature improvements moving forward.”
The good news is that you can still watch Plex content on an old PC. You shouldn’t be using Windows 7 or 8 at all, because Microsoft isn’t fixing security vulnerabilities on those versions anymore, but streaming Plex content should still work through the web app. Firefox is the only major web browser still supporting Windows 7 and 8, so ideally you should at least be using that. Firefox also still works on macOS versions as early as macOS 10.12.
If you have a home server still running an old operating system, you’ll have to migrate to a newer Windows release or switch to Linux to keep up with Plex updates.
Source: Plex Forums