Callsheet version 2026.5 is slowly rolling out in the App Store. I wanted to take a moment and highlight some changes; particularly those around Plex integration.

Bug Fixes

First, some great bug fixes.

Due to ✨ reasons ✨, mostly of the self-created variety, Callsheet would often show an error message with the not-particularly-actionable message cancelled. Now, not only are the error screens far prettier, but this particular one should happen far less often — perhaps even not at all!

Additionally, due to some poor reasoning/assumptions on my part, there were some users who were finding their preferences around their Discover layout and/or Region override and/or Language override were constantly getting lost. Thanks to some beach prompting, those occurrences are finally fixed. This one really bugged me; I’m glad to have finally gotten it nailed down!

Some other, smaller, fixes:

• Scroll position resets on wide layouts (iPad/Mac/vision) when switching between Cast & Crew
• Rarely, Callsheet would show a person as pinned who you had not pinned
• Rarely, bonus free searches would be lost when the app restarted
• Fixed a typo in English (Simplified) 🇦🇺

Improvements

Aside from the vastly improved error presentation, there are two highlight features of this release.

Pin Caching

When I wrote Callsheet, I treated iCloud as the only source for pinned items. I did not store anything locally. While this usually works, iCloud definitely has hiccups from time to time. When such a hiccup happened, my users would [justifiably!] be deeply alarmed, because Callsheet told them all their pins were gone.

Now, Callsheet caches pins locally. I still think of iCloud as the source of record, but at least now Callsheet doesn’t just “🤷‍♂️” if it can’t talk to iCloud.

Now Playing Improvements

Additionally, when Callsheet knows you’re actively watching a title, whenever possible, it will show how far you are through the title when looking at the details for that title. This is best shown as an example:

Here, you can see I’m watching The Hunt for Red October, and if you look at the bottom of the poster, you can see I’m three-quarters of the way through it. Also note that instead of showing RUNTIME, Callsheet will show ENDS AT. If you tap the ENDS AT, you see a popover with more information about how long the film is, and how much you’ve already watched:

I’ve already found this to be surprisingly useful when sitting on the couch watching something. I find it’s less disruptive to see how far I am through something by looking at Callsheet, rather than messing with the Apple TV remote.

Plex Connectivity

When I initially did the Now Playing support in Callsheet, I only supported Channels and Plex. This was because I was staunchly opposed to only supporting mechanisms where users would not have to do any sort of login or other authorization flow.

In the meantime, Plex gets ever-crappier, and I have slowly started migrating to Jellyfin. Jellyfin doesn’t have [a reliable] zero-configuration option, so I broke my rule in 2026.4.

Now that I’ve allowed myself a login flow, I figured I’d see if I could do something similar for Plex.

In Callsheet 2026.5, you can choose between two mechanisms for connecting to Plex:

• Passive
  This is the default, and the way it’s always been. No login required.

• Active
  This is 🆕, and requires you to log into Plex in a similar (but actually easier!) fashion to Jellyfin’s Quick Connect.

Both of these approaches have tradeoffs, best summarized in this table:

In short, Passive mode [occasionally] works with Apple TV clients that also have their Advertize as Client setting flipped on. And this is only if your device and the Apple TV are on the same network, as the process starts with UDP multicast.

However, Passive mode communicates directly with Plex clients, so it can show what that client is playing back no matter what. Even if you’re playing something back from someone else’s Plex server.

Active mode says to your server “hey what am I playing right now?”. This has the advantage of working extremely reliably, and also working even if you’re not on the same network as your server. However, if you’re watching media from someone else’s server, it will not show up in Callsheet.

Generally speaking, if you’re willing to go through the login dance, I find the Active mode to be far more reliable, and also faster. Your mileage may vary.

You can find out more about all this on the Callsheet website.

Upgrading

I just hit the “go” button on version 2026.5; furthermore, for iOS/iPadOS/macOS, I am doing a staggered release. The best way to see if you can upgrade is to go to Callsheet in the App Store and see if you can hit an Update button.

For all six of you visionOS users, it should be available as soon as the update to the App Store’s cache finishes.