Set Up Plex Media Server on a Raspberry Pi 5

Your Living Room Deserves Better Than a Streaming Subscription

Plex turns your personal media collection into a polished, on-demand streaming service – accessible from any device on your network, or anywhere in the world with a Plex Pass. The Raspberry Pi 5, with its quad-core Cortex-A76 processor and up to 8GB of RAM, is now genuinely capable of running Plex Media Server without the thermal throttling and sluggishness that plagued earlier Pi models. For anyone tired of paying multiple streaming bills for content they half-watch, self-hosting your own library is a direct and satisfying alternative.

This guide walks through a complete Plex Media Server installation on a Raspberry Pi 5 running Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit). You will need a Pi 5 with at least 4GB RAM, a microSD card (32GB minimum, 64GB recommended), an active internet connection, and external storage for your media files – either a USB drive or a network share. SSH access is assumed throughout.

Prepare the System Before Installing Plex

Before touching Plex, get the operating system fully updated. Log into your Pi via SSH and run the following commands. A clean, current system prevents dependency conflicts that can turn a straightforward install into an hour of troubleshooting.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Once that completes, install the apt-transport-https package, which allows the package manager to fetch packages over HTTPS – required for pulling from the Plex repository. Also confirm that curl is available, since you will use it to import the Plex signing key.

sudo apt install apt-transport-https curl -y

Add the Plex Repository and Install the Server

Plex maintains its own APT repository for Debian-based Linux systems. Adding it directly means you can update Plex through standard system updates rather than manually downloading new packages each time. Start by importing the Plex GPG signing key so your system trusts packages from that source.

curl https://downloads.plex.tv/plex-keys/PlexSign.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/plex.gpg > /dev/null

With the key in place, add the Plex repository to your sources list. The command below writes the repository entry using the signed key you just imported.

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/plex.gpg] https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb public main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

Now refresh the package index so the system sees the new repository, then install Plex Media Server.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install plexmediaserver -y

The installation creates a plex system user automatically. Once it finishes, enable the service so it starts on boot, then confirm it is running.

sudo systemctl enable plexmediaserver
sudo systemctl start plexmediaserver
sudo systemctl status plexmediaserver

You should see active (running) in the output. If the service failed to start, check the journal with sudo journalctl -u plexmediaserver -e for specific error messages.

Give Plex Access to Your Media Files

Plex runs under the plex user, which means it can only read files that user has permission to access. If your media lives on a USB drive mounted at something like /mnt/media, you need to make sure the plex user can reach it. The cleanest way is to add the plex user to the group that owns the drive, or to set read and execute permissions explicitly.

For a USB drive formatted as exFAT or NTFS and mounted at /mnt/media, confirm the permissions with ls -la /mnt/media. If the directory is owned by root or your regular user, run the following to open read access to all users – or adjust ownership to the plex group directly for tighter security.

sudo chmod -R 755 /mnt/media
sudo chown -R plex:plex /mnt/media

Complete Setup Through the Web Interface

Plex’s initial configuration happens through a browser. If you are accessing the Pi from another machine on the same network, you first need to create an SSH tunnel so the browser can reach the Plex setup page, which only accepts connections from localhost during first-run. From your local machine, run this with your Pi’s IP address substituted in.

ssh -L 8888:localhost:32400 pi@YOUR_PI_IP_ADDRESS

Then open a browser on that same machine and navigate to http://localhost:8888/web. Plex will prompt you to sign in with a free Plex account and then walk you through naming your server and adding media libraries. Point each library at the correct folder path on the Pi – for example, /mnt/media/Movies for films and /mnt/media/TV for series. Plex will scan the folders, match your files against its metadata database, and pull in posters, descriptions, and episode information automatically.

After the initial setup is complete, the SSH tunnel is no longer needed for regular use. You can access your Plex server from any device on the local network by going directly to http://YOUR_PI_IP_ADDRESS:32400/web. Remote access outside the home network works through Plex’s relay servers with a free account, though direct connections – which are faster – require port forwarding on your router or a Plex Pass subscription for the relay priority.

Keep Performance Stable on the Pi 5

The Pi 5 can handle direct-play of most H.264 and H.265 content without breaking a sweat, meaning files stream to compatible devices without any conversion. Transcoding – where Plex converts a file in real time because the client device cannot play the original format – is where the Pi 5 shows its limits. Software transcoding of 4K H.265 at high bitrates will push the processor hard, and running multiple simultaneous transcode streams is likely to cause buffering. The practical fix is to ensure your media files are encoded in formats your target devices support natively, which eliminates transcoding entirely.

Keep an eye on temperature under load. The Pi 5 runs warmer than its predecessors, and sustained transcoding without active cooling can trigger thermal limits. A quality heatsink case or the official Raspberry Pi 5 Active Cooler keeps thermals in check during extended streaming sessions. Beyond cooling, consider setting up a static IP address for the Pi on your router so the server’s address never changes – there is nothing more disruptive than a streaming session dying because the Pi picked up a new DHCP lease.