Plex YouTube Cleaner

A small Bash script to automatically remove watched YouTube videos from a Plex library.

This script was created for a very specific use case:

• I download YouTube videos using the open-source tool ytdl-sub.
• Those downloads are added into Plex as a dedicated "YouTube" library (of type TV Shows).
• To keep Plex uncluttered, I wanted a way to automatically delete watched episodes while keeping unwatched ones intact.
• The script is designed to run on Unraid with a Plex installation, where the available system packages are limited.
  Therefore, it has minimal dependencies: only bash, curl, and jq are required (both included in Unraid by default).

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Features

• Connects to your Plex server via the Plex API.
• Identifies the library section by name (YouTube by default).
• Lists all watched episodes (viewCount > 0).
• Runs in dry-run mode by default – nothing is deleted until you explicitly enable it.
• Optionally deletes the episodes directly from Plex once confirmed.
• Outputs clean, human-readable logs of what would/will be removed.
• Leaves unwatched or partially-watched episodes untouched.

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Requirements

• Plex Media Server with "Allow media deletion" enabled in the settings.
• Dependencies: bash, curl, jq.
• A valid Plex token and the server's base URL.

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Usage

1. Copy the script to your Unraid server (or any machine with network access to Plex).
2. Make it executable:

   chmod +x plex-delete-watched-youtube.sh

3. Run in dry-run mode (default):

./plex-delete-watched-youtube.sh

This will list all watched YouTube episodes that would be deleted.

4. Actually delete them:

./plex-delete-watched-youtube.sh --delete

5. You’ll be prompted for confirmation.

To skip the prompt:

./plex-delete-watched-youtube.sh --delete --yes

Configuration

The script uses sensible defaults but can be overridden with environment variables or CLI arguments. PLEX_URL – Plex server URL (default: http://YOURIP:32400) PLEX_TOKEN – Your Plex auth token LIB_TITLE – Library title (default: YouTube) PAGE_SIZE – API fetch size (default: 200) Example:

PLEX_URL="http://myserver:32400" \
PLEX_TOKEN="abc123" \
LIB_TITLE="YouTube" \
./plex-delete-watched-youtube.sh --delete --yes

License

This project is released under the GPL-3.0. Contributions, forks, and improvements are welcome!