Critical playback issues on Plex iOS since UI redesign (update)

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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Hello everyone,

For the past two months, I’ve been experiencing major and recurring issues with the Plex app on iOS, which started right after the latest UI redesign. I’m posting here after extensive troubleshooting on my end, and I strongly believe the issue lies within the app itself.

Environment

  • Plex Server: self-hosted (latest Plex Media Server)
  • Hostname: domain.tld
  • Remote access: via Cloudflare (HTTPS)
  • Primary client: iPhone (iOS 18.5, model iPhone16,1)
  • Plex App: Plex for iOS v2025.18.0
  • Connection: fiber (stable and tested)
  • Playback: Direct Play enabled, no transcoding
  • Storage: local SSD, no I/O issues

Issues encountered

  • Extremely slow playback start
    → Up to 5 minutes to start a movie, even with Direct Play.
  • Seek resets to beginning
    → When trying to skip forward in a movie, the playback jumps back to the beginning.
  • Random playback interruptions
    → Playback switches from playing to buffering, then paused or stopped without user interaction.
  • Unstable behavior across all tested iOS devices
    → Same issues on multiple iPhones, over Wi-Fi, 4G, 5G, and LAN.

Logs to support the issue

I’ve analyzed session logs (attached) and here are a few concrete examples:

  • Seek resets to earlier timestamp:
16:42:27.429 - State: playing, Playback: 1631 ms, Progress: 10000/6996000 ms
16:42:29.080 - State: buffering, Playback: 3310 ms, Progress: 2977000/6996000 ms
16:42:37.406 - State: playing, Playback: 11633 ms, Progress: 1454000/6996000 ms

→ The client tries to play at 2977s, but jumps back to 1454s for no reason.

  • Unstable playback state:
State: playing → paused → buffering → stopped

→ Erratic transitions without user action.

  • Direct Play confirmed:
Streaming Resource: Reached Decision id=342 codes=(MDE=1000,Direct play OK.)

What I’ve verified

  • Stable bandwidth (tested with speedtest and iperf)
  • No disk or CPU issues on the server
  • Cross-tested on multiple networks and devices
  • Playback via Plex Web works flawlessly

I believe the issue lies with the Plex iOS app, likely since the recent UI redesign. I’m looking to find out if other users are experiencing the same problems, and whether a fix is planned.

Thanks in advance for any feedback or solutions.

1 Like
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Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS server
Plex 1.41.3.9414
Plex iOS App ver. 2025.18.0
Home WiFi ~ 300Mbps speeds

I’m not seeing any lag in the startup of playback with Movies or TV Shows on my iPhone15 if I start from the beginning. They start in 1 second or so.
If I try to resume a playback from the middle of a movie or tv show, it does not play. I have to manually scroll the time bar back to zero. Then it starts right up. Then I have to manually move it the the time that I want playback to start. It doesn’t have an issue restarting the playback from that point. I’m running Plex 1.41.3.9414 and reluctant to update at this point. I suspect the issues you’re seeing are a combination of issues with the current Plex server and iOS updates.

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Did you figure out a solution? I’m experiencing the same.

4

I’m still running Plex 1.41.3.9314
The update of Plex iOS App to ver. 2025.20.0 fixed it for me. I can restart playback of a movie or tv show from where I left off and it restarts just fine. Ver. 2025.21.0 is also working okay for playback. What’s not working is Live TV → What’s On Now → TV Show link just gives me an error message.

5

Hello,

Indeed, I managed to solve the issue - it wasn’t caused by the latest Plex updates, but rather by a feature I had enabled on my firewall. I had set up SSL/TLS inspection, but websites often check for HSTS and request latency, which can lead them to detect a potential man-in-the-middle attack. As a result, this triggers certificate errors on the receiving end (Plex, in this case).

To fix this, you usually need to exclude certain domains from SSL/TLS decryption by marking them as trusted. Since this wasn’t clearly indicated in my firewall, it took me a while to figure out that the problematic domain was plex.bz.

In case it helps others who want to enable SSL/TLS inspection, here are the domains I’ve excluded:

*.plex.tv
*.plex.direct
*.plexapp.com
*.plex.bz

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