Plex Now Showing

A full-screen cinema marquee display for Home Assistant that shows what's currently playing on Plex. Designed for wall-mounted tablets using Fully Kiosk Browser.

Features animated chase bulb lights, a red curtain banner, poster art with title overlays, and automatic switching between your dashboard and the Now Showing page.

  

Features

• Cinema-style marquee with animated chase bulb lights around the border
• Red curtain banner with "NOW SHOWING" text
• Full-bleed poster art from the currently playing media
• Title, episode info (for TV), and playback state overlays
• Tap for info — tap the poster to see synopsis, content rating, duration, and media file details (resolution, codec, audio, bitrate, file size)
• Landscape mode — optional flag to fit the entire poster on widescreen displays
• Filters to a specific Plex user or specific player so other users' playback doesn't show up
• Idle state when nothing is playing
• Optional automation to switch a Fully Kiosk Browser tablet between your dashboard and the Now Showing page

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What You Need

• Home Assistant with the Plex integration configured
• A Plex Media Server on your local network
• Fully Kiosk Browser (optional) — for automatic switching between your dashboard and the Now Showing page

Files

File	Description
www/now_showing.html	The full-screen marquee page
automations/plex_now_showing_display.yaml	Automation to auto-switch a tablet when playback starts/stops

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Setup

Step 1 — Copy the file

Place www/now_showing.html into your Home Assistant www directory:

<config>/www/now_showing.html

You can do this via the File Editor add-on, Samba, SSH, or the VS Code add-on.

Step 2 — Configure your credentials

Open now_showing.html and update these values near the top of the <script> section:

const HA_URL = 'http://YOUR_HA_IP:8123';           // Your Home Assistant URL
const HA_TOKEN = 'YOUR_LONG_LIVED_ACCESS_TOKEN';    // HA long-lived access token
const PLEX_USERNAME = 'your_plex_username';          // Your Plex username (filters to only your playback)
const PLEX_PLAYER = '';                              // Optional: lock to a specific player (e.g., 'media_player.plex_plex_for_lg_tv')
const PLEX_URL = '';                                 // Optional: Plex server URL for media file info
const PLEX_TOKEN = '';                               // Optional: Plex token for media file info

PLEX_PLAYER is optional. When set to a specific media_player entity ID, the page will only show media from that player. When left empty, it shows media from any active player for your Plex user. You can find your player entity IDs in Developer Tools → States by searching for media_player.plex_.

PLEX_URL and PLEX_TOKEN are optional. When configured, the info overlay will show detailed media file information (resolution, codec, bitrate, audio format, file size). Without them, the info overlay still works but only shows what Home Assistant provides (title, synopsis, duration, content rating).

To create a long-lived access token:

1. Go to your HA profile (click your name in the sidebar)
2. Scroll to "Long-Lived Access Tokens"
3. Click "Create Token", give it a name, and copy the token

Step 3 — Open it

Navigate to http://YOUR_HA_IP:8123/local/now_showing.html in a browser to test it. If Plex is playing something, you should see the poster appear.

Step 4 (Optional) — Set up the automation

If you want a Fully Kiosk Browser tablet to automatically switch to the Now Showing page when playback starts:

1. Copy the contents of automations/plex_now_showing_display.yaml into your automations.yaml file, or recreate it through the HA UI
2. Update the following values in the automation:

What to change	Where in the file	How to find yours
Plex session sensor	entity_id: sensor.tnas (appears 3 times — trigger + 2 conditions)	Go to Developer Tools → States, search for your Plex server name. Look for a sensor.* entity that shows the number of active sessions (e.g., sensor.plex_myserver, sensor.tnas). Its state will be a number like 0 or 1.
Fully Kiosk device ID	device_id: YOUR_FULLY_KIOSK_DEVICE_ID (appears 2 times)	Go to Settings → Devices, find your Fully Kiosk tablet, and copy the device ID from the URL (the long string after /device/).
Now Showing URL	url: in the first action	Change to http://YOUR_HA_IP:8123/local/now_showing.html
Dashboard URL	url: in the second action	Change to the URL of the dashboard you want to return to after playback stops (e.g., http://YOUR_HA_IP:8123/lovelace/0).

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How It Works

• Polls Home Assistant's API every 5 seconds for active Plex media_player entities
• Filters to only your user's playback sessions
• Displays the current media's poster art as a full-bleed background
• Shows title, episode info (for TV), and playback state
• When nothing is playing, shows an idle "Waiting for playback" state
• The automation triggers when the Plex session count sensor changes — it waits 5 seconds then loads the page, or waits 10 seconds after playback stops to return to your dashboard

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Tap for Info

Tap anywhere on the poster while media is playing to show an info panel. It slides up from the bottom and shows:

• Title and episode info
• Media type (Movie / TV Series), content rating, and duration
• Synopsis (pulled from the Plex integration's media_summary attribute)
• Media file details (requires PLEX_URL and PLEX_TOKEN to be configured):
  • Resolution (e.g., 1920×1080)
  • Video codec, profile, and bit depth (e.g., HEVC Main 10bit)
  • HDR / Dolby Vision (if applicable)
  • Audio format (e.g., English EAC3 5.1)
  • Bitrate (e.g., 4.2 Mbps)
  • Container and file size (e.g., MKV, 2.3 GB)
• Player name

The panel auto-dismisses after 8 seconds, or tap again to close it.

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Customization

Setting	Where	Default
Poll interval	POLL_INTERVAL in script	5000ms (5 seconds)
Plex username filter	PLEX_USERNAME in script	Your Plex username
Specific player only	PLEX_PLAYER in script	Empty (any player for your user)
Landscape mode	LANDSCAPE_MODE in script	false (poster fills screen, may crop)
Plex server URL	PLEX_URL in script	Empty (media file info disabled)
Plex token	PLEX_TOKEN in script	Empty
Marquee text size	.marquee-text h1 font-size in CSS	clamp(3.5rem, 10vw, 8rem)
Bulb size	.bulb width/height in CSS	28px
Bulb spacing	spacing in createOuterBulbs()	42px
Chase animation speed	setInterval(animateChase, ...)	500ms

Landscape Mode

If you're using a landscape/widescreen display instead of a portrait tablet, set LANDSCAPE_MODE = true. This fits the entire poster on screen with letterboxing (black bars) instead of cropping to fill.

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Troubleshooting

• Blank poster: Check that your HA token is valid and the Plex entity_picture URLs are accessible from the device
• Only seeing other users' playback: Update PLEX_USERNAME in now_showing.html to match your Plex username
• Automation not triggering: Verify your Plex session count sensor exists and changes value when playback starts/stops

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Related

Looking for a dashboard card showing recently added media? Check out recently-added-media-card — a unified Lovelace card that supports Plex, Kodi, Jellyfin and Emby.

Want to show upcoming movies and TV episodes alongside your recently added media? Check out coming-soon-card — a companion card powered by Radarr, Sonarr and Trakt.

Using Kodi instead of Plex? Check out kodi-now-showing.

Using Jellyfin? Check out jellyfin-now-showing.

Using Emby? Check out emby-now-showing.

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Credits

Built by Sam Russell — AI used in development.