You can use other Command-line interface (CLI) tools for this. I prefer Terminal because it’s built-in to my Mac and is pretty lightweight and distraction free.

If you’re following our Complete Guide to creating a Headless Plex Server with Plexamp endpoints using a Raspberry Pi you should already be familiar with how to SSH into your Raspberry Pi, but if you need a refresh you can visit the guide How To SSH or Secure Shell into your Raspberry Pi

On your computer launch your command-line interface app (Terminal, in my case) and enter the following command, where username is the SSH username and hostname is the hostname you created in Raspberry Pi Imager:

ssh username@hostname.local

Then hit Enter and follow the prompts as you normally would.

By default the Plexamp package assumes the username is going to be pi, so that’s what’s been added to the plexamp.service file. If you’ve set up your Raspberry Pi with the Username pi, you can probably skip to the next step. Otherwise, if you have a different username, you may run into some issues getting Plexamp to run at start up.

If you don’t know your username, enter the following command in terminal:

whoami

Hit Enter and you’ll see your username listed.

If the username is pi, you can skip the rest of this step. Otherwise, open the plexamp.service file with the following terminal command:

nano plexamp/plexamp.service

Scroll down to the line that says User=pi and update that to the username you set up in Raspberry Pi Imager and used to SSH into the Raspberry Pi.

You may also need to update the path in WorkingDirectory, and in ExecStart. Anywhere that pi is used will probably need to be replaced with your own system username.

NOTE: Some Operating Systems may require a different filepath to be used in plexamp.service.

• If you’re using DietPi you may need to remove the /home directory (see this comment)

With some recent changes to the way that Node is installed, some users have had to rely on Node Version Manager (NVM) to ensure they are installing the correct version of Node.

As of Plexamp version 4.10.1, Headless Plexamp requires NodeJS 20 to run. Using NVM could mean that your Node path will need to be updated.

Check if you’re using NVM with the following Terminal command:

nvm -v

If you see a version number returned, you’re probably using NVM. If you see some variation of  nvm: command not found you can skip the rest of this step.

Check your Node version with the following command:

node -v

Now, open the plexamp.service file with the following terminal command:

nano plexamp/plexamp.service

You’ll want to change this line:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/node /home/pi/plexamp/js/index.js

To this, instead:

ExecStart=/home/pi/.nvm/versions/node/v20.12.0/bin/node /home/pi/plexamp/js/index.js

NOTE: This assumes you’re using our guide to Install Headless Plexamp for your Raspberry Pi to create a Plex endpoint, in which case v20.12.0 is the correct Node version. If your version is different then you should replace that part of the line.

Also, remember to use your actual username ( in this example the username is pi )

Now, let’s configure your Raspberry Pi to automatically launch Plexamp on start-up. Navigate into the plexamp folder with the following command:

cd plexamp

Hit Enter

Then run through these 4 commands in Terminal:

sudo cp plexamp.service /lib/systemd/system/

Hit Enter

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Hit Enter

sudo systemctl enable plexamp

Hit Enter

sudo systemctl start plexamp

Hit Enter

Reboot your Raspberry Pi with the following command:

sudo reboot

Hit Enter.

Give the Raspberry Pi a minute to reboot. If everything went according to plan you should now see your new Plexamp client in the list of available devices without having to manually launch the player.

You can also access your Headless Plexamp in your web browser by visiting the following url:

http://#.#.#.#:32500

Remember to replace the IP address from this example with your Raspberry Pi’s own IP address.

You can find the IP address for your Raspberry Pi by entering this command in Terminal:

hostname -I

Hit Enter

Now that you’ve enabled your Headless Plexamp player to start automatically when you power on your Raspberry Pi, it will be useful to learn how to keep your Headless Plexamp Player up to date.

I’ve written a separate guide that will walk you through that process here: How to enable updates for Headless Plexamp on Raspberry Pi – get the latest Plexamp features