How to Use Plex Collections to Organize Your Library

By Jason Loomis · September 1, 2026 · 9 min read

A well-organized Plex library does not just have good metadata -- it has collections. Collections group related media together: a film franchise, a director's filmography, movies by genre, holiday specials, or any custom grouping you can imagine. They make browsing more intuitive, reduce visual clutter, and give your library a curated, polished feel.

This guide covers everything you need to know about Plex collections: creating them manually, using automatic collections, building smart filters, adding custom artwork, and organizing your library like a pro.

What Are Plex Collections?

A collection in Plex is a named group of media items that appear as a single entry in your library. When you click on a collection, it expands to show all items inside it. Collections can optionally hide their individual items from the main library view, reducing clutter.

For example, instead of seeing all eight Harry Potter movies listed individually in your library, you can create a "Harry Potter" collection that appears as a single poster. Click it, and all eight films are inside, sorted in order.

Collections work for movies, TV shows, and music. They do not currently work for photo libraries in the official Plex app (photo organization relies on folder structure and albums).

Automatic Collections

Plex can create collections automatically based on metadata from its agents (Plex's own agent or TMDb). When enabled, Plex detects that certain movies belong to a franchise and groups them automatically.

How to enable automatic collections

1. Open Plex Web and navigate to your movie library
2. Click the three-dot menu and select Manage Library > Edit
3. Go to the Advanced tab
4. Find Use collection info from and select your metadata agent
5. Set Minimum items for automatic collections (default is 2)
6. Save changes and scan your library

Plex will now automatically create collections for detected franchises: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, James Bond, and hundreds of others. The minimum-items setting controls how many movies from a franchise you need before a collection is created -- set it to 2 if you want collections even for incomplete franchises, or higher if you only want them for franchises where you have most of the films.

Pros and cons of automatic collections

• Pro: Zero effort. Plex detects franchises from metadata and creates collections automatically.
• Pro: Stays up to date. When you add a new movie from a franchise, it joins the collection automatically.
• Con: You cannot control which collections are created. Plex may create collections you do not want.
• Con: Naming and grouping depends on the metadata source, which is sometimes incorrect or inconsistent.

Manual Collections

Manual collections give you full control. You choose exactly which items belong and how the collection is named and displayed.

Creating a manual collection

1. In your library, select the items you want to group (use the checkbox selection mode or select multiple items by holding Ctrl/Cmd)
2. Click Add to Collection from the selection menu
3. Enter a name for the new collection or select an existing one
4. Click Add

You can also create a collection from a single item's detail page by clicking Edit > Tags and adding a collection tag.

Adding and removing items

To add items to an existing collection, repeat the process above and select the collection name. To remove an item, open the collection, hover over the item, and click the remove button, or edit the item's tags and remove the collection name.

Smart Collections with Filters

Smart collections use filters to automatically include items that match specific criteria. They update dynamically -- when new content matching the filter is added to your library, it appears in the collection automatically.

Creating a smart collection

1. Navigate to your library in Plex Web
2. Click All (or the filter icon) to access the filter bar
3. Set your filter criteria (genre, year, rating, resolution, etc.)
4. When the filtered results appear, click Save as Smart Collection
5. Name the collection and save

Useful smart collection ideas

• 4K HDR Movies: Filter by resolution (4K) and HDR tag
• Highly Rated (8+): Filter by audience or critic rating above 8.0
• Unwatched Classics: Filter by year (before 1990), rating (7+), and unwatched status
• Recently Added: Filter by date added (last 30 days)
• Holiday Movies: Filter by genre (Holiday) or use a manual tag
• Short Films: Filter by duration (under 60 minutes)
• Director Collections: Filter by director name for your favorite filmmakers

Custom Collection Artwork

Default collection posters are auto-generated from the items inside the collection, which usually looks messy. Custom artwork makes collections look professional and polished.

Adding custom posters

1. Navigate to the collection in your library
2. Click the pencil icon (Edit) on the collection
3. Go to the Poster tab
4. Upload a custom image or paste a URL
5. Optionally, add a custom background image in the Background tab

Where to find collection artwork

• The Poster Database (theposterdb.com): The most popular source for Plex collection posters. Thousands of matching sets created by the community.
• MediUX (mediux.pro): Another excellent source with high-quality poster sets.
• r/PlexPosters: The subreddit dedicated to custom Plex artwork, with frequent new submissions.
• FanArt.tv: A community-driven site with movie and TV artwork in various formats.

For a cohesive look, use poster sets from the same artist. Many poster creators on The Poster Database make matching sets for entire franchises, so your Marvel collection, DC collection, and Star Wars collection all share a consistent visual style.

Sorting and Display Options

Sort order within collections

By default, items inside a collection are sorted by release date. You can change this to alphabetical, rating, or custom sort order. Custom sort is useful for franchises where you want a specific viewing order (for example, the chronological MCU order rather than release order).

To change sort order: open the collection, click the sort dropdown, and select your preference.

Collection display mode

Collections have three display modes that control how they appear in your library:

• Default: Collection appears alongside individual items. Items in the collection also appear individually in the library.
• Hide items in this collection: Individual items are hidden from the main library view and only visible inside the collection. This reduces clutter significantly.
• Show items in this collection: Forces items to appear in both the collection and the main library, even if the library default is to hide them.

To change display mode: edit the collection, and toggle the Collection Mode setting.

Library-level collection settings

You can set a default collection display mode for an entire library:

1. Go to your library settings (Manage Library > Edit > Advanced)
2. Find Collection mode
3. Choose between Disabled, Hide items in collections, or Show collections and their items

Best Practices

Keep it simple

Do not create a collection for everything. Too many collections make your library harder to browse, not easier. Focus on franchises (5+ movies), thematic groupings that help users find content, and smart collections for dynamic filtering.

Use consistent naming

Name collections consistently: "Marvel Cinematic Universe" not "MCU" or "Marvel Movies." This helps with sorting and searching. If you use automatic collections, Plex's naming is generally consistent, but you can rename any collection manually.

Hide items in large franchise collections

If you have the entire MCU (30+ movies), hiding those items from the main library and only showing them inside the collection dramatically reduces visual noise. Your library goes from 30 individual MCU posters to one clean collection poster.

Use Plex Meta Manager for automation

For power users, Plex Meta Manager (PMM) is a command-line tool that automates collection creation, custom artwork assignment, and metadata management using YAML configuration files. It can create dozens of collections with matching artwork in minutes, far faster than manual setup.

Pin important collections

In Plex Web, you can pin collections to the library home screen as dedicated rows. Pin your most-browsed collections (Holiday Movies, Recently Added, 4K HDR) so they appear prominently when users open the library.

Collections and Photos

Plex's collection feature does not extend to photo libraries in a meaningful way. Photo organization in Plex relies on folder structure and auto-generated albums based on date or EXIF metadata. For a better photo browsing experience, Phlix provides a chronological timeline and year scrubber that makes navigating large photo libraries fast and intuitive -- features that neither Plex collections nor the official app's photo view offer.