Server Version#: 4.56.4
Player Version#:8.16.2.24953
Hello - The android Plex app has again stopped responding to Play/Pause commands from a bluetooth device (my Apekx headphone device, HondaLink). Volume and track controls work, just not Play/Pause.
I’ve posed this before and the solution was to give Plex permission to my contacts (??? it worked)
In Android 8.1.0 I don’t seem to have a option to give Plex that permission.
Any ideas?
Thanks
When you want to allow a device (headphones,car) to access your contacts, you have to go to the Bluetooth menu, press and hold on the connected devices and it will present you the option.
I’m pretty sure this isn’t necessary. Here’s the results of my tests:
Android 8.1
Headphones Sony
Pause and Play working
Next doesn’t work
Back start over the movie (not 10 seconds rewind)
When in my car, phone connected via bluetooth to my car, I an skip but the whole thing gets wonky. The radio shows nothing, or even worse the radio shows my musiciolet song that was last being played…with the counter counting up, but it is plex actually playing.
I’ve found the plex mobile app to be weak at best. It is buggy as all getup and the fact it has no widget is a real downer. I’d be fine with no widget if the car controls worked…but alas they don’t.
I just got a new phone. Plex on this phone has the same behavior 
Mine does the same thing (I’m also using Musicolet, love it!)
+1 for this issue as well. And it seems the Windows Plex app is having issues with controls as well. Could it be an issue in the coding that is not seeing Plex as a media player and hence the controls are not functioning properly?
I have constant playback issues with Plex. Latest server version, latest Android app, on a Pixel 2 (and it gives me enough issues that I usually chalk crashes up to the old phone rather than actually blaming Plex). Trying to find solutions and I find posts from 2019 describing the exact same issues that were eventually fixed by rebooting the phone and Bluetooth device.
I know that usually works for me too, but after a couple hours playback, or a day or two, or a random app crash after five minutes… Eventually, Plex starts crashing or failing to respond again.
I thought I had finally solved my issues a week ago when I turned off the “remember audio playback location” setting on my server, and uninstalled, rebooted phone, then reinstalled the app… but I’m experiencing issues again.
Basically when one track ends and the next begins, Plex “forgets” to output audio to Bluetooth until I wake up my phone and try to pause or rewind 10 seconds then it usually starts outputting audio. Sometimes it decided it doesn’t want to respond, or refuses to output audio to my Bluetooth device (headphones or car). Could this be related to the version of Bluetooth?
All the time Plex app will freeze, so that the audio is playing, but time slider isn’t moving, and it takes tapping the pause button three or four times to get a response. Occasionally (less often after turning off “remember playback position” setting) I’ll get a pop-up message that “playback for this item has failed”, and the app will reload. Well now the app reloads the fancy Plex animation everytime it’s opened from the background, so I never know if the app is crashed or not. Another oddity, that I think has improved since turning off the playback position setting is there are usually only one or two items in the hidden notification, rather than twenty. Why the notification is hidden, I don’t know, but it doesn’t usually respond when I try to interact with it, so I usually leave it alone. If anything, messing with the notification makes things worse by crashing the notification without a way to close it.
Back to the playback/new track pausing issues, I don’t remember experiencing this when “Sweet Fades” was on by default after reinstalling the App. Maybe Sweet Fades fixes the issue, or maybe that was a coincidence due to the fresh install. I’ve since turned off Sweet Fades because I don’t like it.
Hopefully this helps and we can get this fixed.
Same issue here. Google Pixel 4a 5G with Plex 8.19.
It works randomly with both my Toyota car and my Aftershokz headset.
I also have these issues once I got a new phone. At first I thought it was the phones bluetooth. But, other music apps have no problem. This only happens with PLEX . Very frustrating because I just paid for the lifetime pass and now it’s barely useable. How can we tell if Plex is working on this or not?
I doubt they are working on anything unfortunately. They don’t seem to care too much about audio…they are more about video.
+1 to this issue, experiencing the same issues with the android app (Pixel 4XL) Music stops randomly, seems to loose connection, not responding to bluetooth devices, etc. Hope to see a fix soon.
While I think this is a harsh statement, I agree that it’s probably mostly true, except for the Plex Lab team.
I have found their dedicated music player, Plexamp, is significantly better for audio playback than the main Plex app.
It’s not perfect, and still randomly drops Bluetooth audio on my car, but it’s far less frequent than the main Plex app. And I don’t think I’ve encountered any issues with controlling Plexamp with my Aftershokz headphones yet.
So for anyone looking for Plex music library functionality, I highly recommend looking to Plexamp, even though I’d prefer to not have extra apps when it should all work seamlessly in one.
I got the app upgrade hoping it would fix the issue. It did seem to change a little. Now the pause/play button works but the double click doesn’t got to next track. This is happening on the Plex app and the Plexamp app.
I have found that the problem seems to be in the digital lines. When I use the usb-c headphones or bluetooth headphones I can’t jump to the next track with the double click. But , if I use an analog line it works just fine. Again, it works fine either way on other music apps.
Didn’t mean it to be harsh. But truth is truth, so I guess we’re stuck.
I am installing the plexamp app from plex labs. Hopefully this works a bit better than the Plex player app. Fingers crossed.
Thanks for the heads up on the app.
Well, I have to say this plexamp Android app is 1000% better than the standard app. Had 2 40 minute drives last night. No disconnect. No mix up where the radio was lost. And I skipped songs seamlessly.
I would like to see a widget for Android. But will use as is for now
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