Server Version#: 1.32.5.7328
Player Version#: 4.111.1
I left a video paused in the background when I unplugged my laptop overnight. My battery was drained in a few hours, MacOS logs showing Chrome as the main contributor. Chrome task manager shows the Plex Web using 20-30% battery use with the playback still paused. The video is stored locally, the Plex server is running on my same Mac, not showing any significant battery use.
Is there a specific reason why you don’t have the specific app “Plex for Mac” installed? Chrome in general is a battery hog, but also running Plex in a browser and always has been. You were better off closing out that Chrome tab and opening it back up later to Plex Web to resume playback. Plex Web has always had bad caveats when using a browser.
Better yet: don’t pause. Always Stop. The playback position will be stored on the server nonetheless.
Both suggestions are helpful and appreciated, but also unintuitive. Plex Web is built into the server so one might assume it’s good enough for occasional use, and I don’t even mind the CPU/memory cost when it’s actually playing something.
“Pause” is literally front and center, and defaulted to the space button, so a lot more intuitive to use than “Stop”. In this specific case I fully intended to resume playback in 30 sec, I just got distracted and never did. I probably wouldn’t have pressed “Stop” even if I knew I could just resume with one extra step.
I’d say even with the workarounds suggested the high CPU usage on pause is a genuine bug, ie what is Plex doing while it’s not told to do anything?
It’s keeping the playback session alive, with periodic polling of server data. That’s why you need to use stop and not pause.
Thanks for the explanation. Maybe it could stop doing that polling after a few hours?
My point is - pause/resume is super quick, so I will use that if I plan to continue in 2 minutes. If I forget for an hour however I probably won’t mind to pay the extra click for a stop-based resume. Especially if the alternative is my battery drained for “no good reason”.
Thank you, exactly what I was looking for.
Unfortunately you are right. The playback session disappears on the server side but keeps spinning in the web player tab.
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