The Best Way to Stream from Android to PS4.
If you have an Android device and a PlayStation 4, you might be wondering what is the best way to stream photos and videos from your phone or tablet to your PS4? If you do a Google search, you get all sorts of results with many different possible solutions.
I tried most of them and was surprised to find that nothing works! The main solution was to download an app that would turn the Android device into a media server, but one app was no longer available (Skifta) and the other worked, but it didn’t allow me to play any of my videos (iMediaShare)!
Instead of using apps that I had never heard of, I decided to try a few familiar names in the media server business: Kodi, Plex, Tversity. During my research, I realized that Kodi doesn’t have a PlayStation 4 app, and Tversity doesn’t have an Android app. All that remains is Plex, which has an app in both stores.
In this article, I’ll show you how to use Plex to stream your local photos and videos from your Android device to your PlayStation 4 for free. Plex has subscription plans as well as a small one-time fee to “activate†your mobile app, but none of that. not needed if you just want to stream local videos from your device to PS4.
Before we start, you need to create a free Plex account. Visit the website here and click Register. Once you get your username and password, let’s install Plex on PS4.
Install the Plex app on PlayStation 4
To install the app on your PS4, you need to go to the PlayStation Store and then scroll down until you see a section called Apps. On the right, select Popular.
Scroll down until you see a Plex thumbnail. It will be a few lines down before you see it.
Select Download and wait for the app to install. Once complete, you can either select Start or return to the home screen, select TV & Videos, and then scroll down until you see the Plex icon.
When you open the app on PS4, you will need to click the Login button in the bottom right corner. If you haven’t created a Plex account yet, do so now.
The next screen will show the code and ask you to visit https://plex.tv/link to add the PlayStation to your Plex account.
Visit the website and you will first need to sign in to your Plex account. Then you will need to enter the code that is displayed on your TV into the text box.
Finally, click on “Link” and if everything went well, you should see the message “App linked”.
On the TV screen, you will see that Plex is connected and it will immediately start searching for the Plex server. You will see a screen with a large error message.
Don’t worry about it right now! We need to install the app on our Android device, configure it, and then return to this screen. Just so you know, as soon as the app on your phone or tablet is set up, we’ll select Go Home, not Try Again.
Install the Plex app on your Android device
On your Android device, open the Google Play Store and search for Plex. Go ahead and install the app.
Open the app and you will be prompted to sign in or register. Go ahead and sign in to the app using your Plex account credentials. Then the next screen will try to force you to purchase a subscription or activate the device, and you do not need to do either. Just click “Stay in trial mode” at the very bottom.
This will take you to the main Plex screen, where you will see a message stating that no servers were found. This is fine because we don’t need to set up a full Plex server. All we are going to do is make our application act as a server, and its content will be photos and videos stored on a phone or tablet.
To properly configure the app, you must first click on “Grant permission” so that other Plex apps can access the camera media. Once you’ve done that, you need to click on the three horizontal lines in the upper left corner and then click on “Settings”.
You will see another menu with additional options. Here you need to click on “System”.
Finally, in the system settings screen, we need to make sure all items are checked. Most importantly, we need to check the boxes for “Advertise as Server”, “Show Media from Camera” and “Network Discovery”.
Accessing media on PS4
Now we can go back to PS4 and select “Home”. If everything is configured correctly and both of your devices are connected to the same network, you should see your Android device showing up in the upper right corner along with local photos and local videos.
For example, if you select Local Videos, you should get a list of all videos that are currently stored on your Android device.
In my tests, videos played right from my Nexus 6 and the video streaming was smooth. Obviously, this only works for videos that are stored directly on your Android device. As mentioned, this was the best and most reliable way to get my photos and videos on PS4 for free. If you know a better way, let us know in the comments. Enjoy!
–