Current Missing Features & Bugs with the iOS App Experience Preview

[kesawi]

@mitchellth

No matter what I set it to, my preview client seems to be trying to go to 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct:32400. That address doesn’t resolve anywhere.

What does your custom server access url look like for the local plex server? No matter what I set it to, my preview client seems to be trying to go to 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct:32400. That address doesn’t resolve anywhere.

Based on my experimentation, Plex clients will generally always use the plex.direct URL address first over the custom URL. If you disable remote access you will still have a local plex.direct URL and the custom URL so clients will only use the custom URL if they are outside of you LAN (even if you have separate VLANS).

The 10-27-30-23.xxxxxxxxxx.plex.direct address should be resolving in DNS. The plex.direct domain resolves any address that comprises of an IP address and 32 character subdomain. So even a dummy address such as 123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct should resolve to 123.123.123.123.

Have you tried resolving the address using nslookup rather than trying to access it via your browser? For example using Google DNS:

nslookup 123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct 8.8.8.8
Server:  dns.google
Address:  8.8.8.8

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    123-123-123-123.12345678901234567890123456789012.plex.direct
Address:  123.123.123.123

@mitchellth

Unless the custom server url takes 30+ minutes to update, which is possible.

I’ve found the PMS URL is updated to plex.tv API server pretty much instantaneously when something changes. Provided the plex.direct URL returned is in the valid structure it will resolve in DNS even if the IP and subdomain aren’t valid.

PMS is also smart enough to present the correct SSL certificate depending upon whether it’s accessed via the custom URL or plex.direct URL.

@mitchellth

I believe I have figured out more of the issue after further testing. It appears that Plex direct connections within the preview app don’t play nicely with different VLANs.

I have no issue, but I’m using the Android preview rather than iOS. I’m currently able to access my PMS via a VPN which sits on a different VLAN.

@cwin2000

You should only have to publish http://10.27.30.23:32400 assuming that’s the private IP of your server.

This gets published automatically by Plex and a user shouldn’t need to specify it under the custom URL.

@mitchellth

For some reason for app.plex.tv it is able to properly detect that the plex.direct url doesn’t work and falls back to my plex.example.com address (which points at my wan) and everything works as it should there, so it seems like a bug within the iOS preview app since the logs say that its detecting the plex.direct address as the best connection to my server despite not being able to use it to connect to it at all.

Have you checked what URLs are being published by the plex.tv API? Have a look at this post for how to check.

I suspect you have a DNS resolution issues which is impacting the plex.direct addresses and also some potential firewall and NAT relfection configuration issues which are preventing access.