I’ve been using Plexamp over the last few years on several phones and been loving it, it’s a really nice experience
However, as of late, it doesn’t seem the media controls from bluetooth devices are working correctly… I’ve tried it on 4 different bluetooth headphones:
Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds Gen2 → Pause works reliably, but play doesn’t work for about 5 seconds after pausing. That is in Plexamp, in the Plex app itself it doesn’t start playback at all anymore when I use the earbuds’ physical / touch controls
Anker soundcore AeroClip → Pause works reliably, play doesn’t work at all in Plexamp (or Plex)
Nothing Ear (Open) → Pause works reliably, play works when I try it a 2nd time (as in, the first one doesn’t get registered) (Same behavior in Plex)
SONY WH-1000XM6 → Pause works reliably, play works after the 2nd time as well (Same behavior in Plex)
I’m running a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with One UI 8.0 / Android 16.0. Plexamp version 4.12.4
I’ve also had a glance at the logs and I couldn’t spot anything out of the ordinary (as in, something like a “Received ‘play’ command, failed to execute” or similar). I’ve attached them though just in case there is some helpful insight in there.
Another thing I’ve noticed that in some of the respective apps for the earbuds / headphones they also have media controls and those behave in a similar way where pausing works fine, but trying to hit play has the issues as described above.
Been 2 weeks, tried a few things like restarting my phone a couple of times, making sure I’m on the newest One UI version (8.5 is on the horizon, I’ll definitely check with that again once I get it) but so far no luck.
Also no new Plexamp version since, so that rules out the other things I tried being helpful in fixing it…
Seeing as the last update to the Plexamp mobile apps was back in July 2025 (last year), I’m really hoping this can be looked at (or perhaps is already fixed?) for the next version…
Seeing as elan mentioned that there is “Lots of other stuff in the pipeline” in the Desktop app update as recent as April 13th, I’m hopeful. But not knowing when the next Mobile app update is, not even a way to join the Android beta program for example, is unfortunately not giving me a lot of hope
Yes, it happens both with the app in the foreground and also in the background (e.g. phone locked)
I’ve tried with other apps such as Spotify and YouTube Music. It works fine in those…
As mentioned in the first post, the Plex app itself is also having the same issues with the buttons
I’ve also tested the Samsung Music app and also one more Bluetooth device (an Anker Soundcore Boost) and the behavior is similar there.
The Samsung Music app works fine with all my devices - the Bluetooth speaker doesn’t do the play pause reliably in Plexamp.
I’ve been a bit outdated on the actual Plex app (Version 10.something) and it didn’t work on that, however I finally updated to the newest version (2026.9.0) and it seems to work fine with at least one of my Bluetooth devices so far (will update once I’m back home with the other ones tested)
Leads me to believe there has been some change in how Android handles media playback buttons / calls and Plexamp being about 1 year out of date could have something to do with it? Not sure. Makes me hopeful for the next big update at least
