Downloads randomly deleting sync'd shows from device

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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Server Version#: 1.25.0.5220
Player Version#: 8.25.1.28703 (7bcafd43)

So I’ve had this issue ever since I tried the downloads feature. My wife is using my old Android Tablet and brings it to work. She’s a nurse and works a couple nights in a row. During her nights, she likes to hop on and watch some shows.

Prior to her using my old tablet, I used to manually copy files over onto her even older tablet, and she would use VLC to watch them. This worked fine, but required me to actually go in delete the files, find the next set for her, and transfer them over, etc.

Now with Plex on my tablet and the new downloads feature, I was able to hop on, sync about 5 episodes for her and all was fine. She tried it her first night, worked great, only watched 1 episode of the 5 that were synced over. Her following night she was too busy, and was unable to watch any episodes. She has 5 days in between her sets, and then works 2 days until she works 2 more nights… so ~7 days later, she’s on her next set of nights, and she opens up the tablet, and goes to access her downloads. This should still show 5 episodes, 1 watched, 4 unwatched. Instead downloads simply showed her “No files”. I was unable to help remotely, and when I looked at the device the following day, there was genuinely no files on it, and I had to resync / download everything.

I went ahead and synced up an entire seasons worth of her show, and her next night she was fine. No issues… Come the following set, the same issue, she opens up her tablet and is greeted with “No files”.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here. I see no settings about how long these downloads stay on the device for, or how long they remain synced. I’ve tried digging through the FAQ about anything about this, but I can’t find anything out.

The device in question is an Android Nexus 9, it’s as up to date as it can be (I realize it’s EOL and no longer supported). Plex version should be latest one available from the store (again I’ll update version once it’s recharged)… the downloads feature works, but at some point, it ends up just wiping everything out and not able to find any downloaded content.

Edit: Added Android Plex version

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When you download a show or a season, there is an option on when to delete them. Although, this is supposed to be based on days from being watched, so only the watched one should have gotten removed. This may be a bug. I’ll have to look into this. Could you grab the logs from the Nexus 9 and send those to me?

Does your wife have her own Plex user or does she just use yours? If it’s yours, did you watch those episodes? The app will match up the watched status between the downloaded and server versions.

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I’m trying to remember what options I chose, but I’m fairly certain I chose the “never” delete option. Maybe I didn’t the first time we encountered it, but I’m confident I chose that the second time around.

As for the logs… where would I find those? I did see in the settings panel there is a Help & Support option. In there it has “Network logging” but that’s unchecked. I assume this is what you’re looking for, right? I did just turn that on in the meantime.

She uses my own Plex account, however she’s the only one watching this series. No one else in the household is watching it, or marking episodes that she’s not watched as watched.

Lastly… as I’m looking at the tablet right now, I’m currently unable to get the download prompt to open up. I just booted the tablet up fresh, it has ~65% battery, and opening any movie or TV show, clicking “Download” just does nothing. No prompts, no downloads, nothing. I tried individual episodes, seasons, and movies. I did try to force close the app, and restart. I also disabled the new download feature (relaunched the app), and then re-enabled it (relaunched the app), and still no luck. Not sure what’s going on here now.

I updated my post above, but the Android version is showing as v8.25.1.28703 (7bcafd43), and when viewing the app in the Play Store, it doesn’t indicate that there is any newer version to download / update to.

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There are a couple of ways to get the logs. They are explained in android logs. Any method is fine. It’s best if you reproduce the issue just before getting them. Try downloading just 1 thing. It’ll also help if you provide the server logs too. I may not need them, nit better to have them.

8.25.1 is the latest so you are good there.

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Ok, I’ll see what I can do about reproducing the issue and gathering those logs.

I’m currently downloading the next 5 episodes for her. When I downloaded, I told it to download next 5 unwatched episodes, and to never delete the episodes.

She’s got a night shift tonight so hopefully it all works for her. If not, I’ll have some logs hopefully.

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I thought you weren’t able to download anything.

Lastly… as I’m looking at the tablet right now, I’m currently unable to get the download prompt to open up.

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Ah, I fixed that… I uninstalled the app, and reinstalled it and logged in fresh, etc.

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@anon18523487 Sorry for the lack of updates here. My wife only uses the tablet and watches her shows at work with it during her night shifts. She didn’t work he nights her most recent set and is currently getting ready to go in for her first night tonight.

Looking at the tablet, she’s once again lost her episodes that were last synced. Her last night shift that she worked would have been Nov17/18. Since then, she tends to just come home and the tablet is likely still powered on, so it just dies out and will need to be charged. She hasn’t used the tablet since her last night shift, and we’re currently charging it now.

That all said, I do have the logs from the tablet as of ~30 minutes ago, and I just grabbed the logs from my server.

Should I simply upload them here to this thread, or should I email you the logs directly?

Thanks

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Either is fine.

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@anon18523487 Here are the logs
Plex Media Server Logs_2021-12-05_16-23-01.zip (2.9 MB)
plex-log-solor.403_041550.zip (966.0 KB)

That aside, an additional issue I’ve noticed. Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I was having problems downloading the files. I was no longer getting the usual prompt, etc.

After making my post above, I let the device charge a bit before before syncing everything for my wife. I tried to download the files and got the same behavior. Button was visible, but pressing “Download” did nothing. Not on the individual episodes, nor the season, or the show. I tried to clear the cache, and tried again. That didn’t work. I cleared both cache and data. Logged back in and still had no success. Finally I went ahead and uninstalled the Plex app, and then reinstalled. Logged back in and it worked on the first attempt.

I have no idea what’s causing this behavior, but it’s obviously less than ideal.

Unfortunately I did not think to gather the logs from the Android device prior to me uninstalling it, and I assume the uninstall wiped those logs. I can gather the logs again from the server, though unsure those will show anything. I notice when the download prompt shows up, it does say “communicating with server” or something to that extent before it shows the download window. When my downloads feature has bugged out and refuses to show me, I don’t even get that notice saying that it’s communicating with the server.

Anyways, let me know what else I can give you… next time the download issue happens, I’ll think to record a video of it happening and grab the logs before I uninstall the app.

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Wait, so what am I looking at? If this log is after the reinstall and things are working, I won’t be able to see the problem. Would you happen to remember the last thing you had downloaded for your wife that vanished? If so, can you provide me the xml info for that episode?

The only thing I noticed in your logs is that you also have access to a shared server. When you couldn’t download something, is it possible you were browsing the shared server instead? That server owner hasn’t enabled Downloading for you so that could explain why it didn’t work.

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The logs I sent over are before I uninstalled the app, and before I attempted to download the files. So whatever the download issue that happened, it happened within the lifespan of those logs.

To further clarity, these logs were created at
4:18pm EST (Android App)
4:23pm EST (Server Logs)

I uninstalled the app and reinstalled it around 5pm EST.

As for the shared server, yes I have access to it, though I know I was looking at my server, and my files. On the tablet, I’ve customized the view to hide the other server from the nav menu by default, and when I navigated to the show, I didn’t search, but rather clicked through the menu / navigation to find the show on my server.

For the XML files you’ve requested, here are 3 copies of the XML file for 3 different episodes.

Edit: Forgot to include the .xml files.
XML Files.zip (6.1 KB)

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Ok. According to the XMLs, these episodes were watched. The last time were:

These are GMT
Ep2 - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 7:58:53 AM
Ep3 - Friday, November 19, 2021 7:09:45 PM (watched twice, this is the last)
Ep4 - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 10:09:24 AM

You may be able to see more info in your Plex Dashboard history on which device this was done from.

Edit - These times line up with just before your initial post. So it looks like Downloads properly removed these played items. Just need to figure out why these are getting marked watched if you or your wife are not actually watching these episodes. Your logs don’t go back that far so your dashboard history may be the only clue.

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Okay, looking at my Plex Dashboard, I can see the following:

image
image2138×197 37.4 KB

So that seems to line up.

That said… when I download these files, I’ve specifically told it to Never to delete downloaded episodes. I did this to track what she has watched and hasn’t watched, and what needs to be added, etc. Some nights I’ll add 5 episodes, and she’ll only watch 1 or 2 episodes through her 2 night shifts. I would expect that next time we look at the tablet, it should show 2 episodes watched, 3 unwatched. Instead we’re always presented with “No downloads”.

There does seem to be something going on where it’s not respecting the “Never” option to never remove the files, and it’s also ignoring as to whether or not they were even watched yet.

I’ll monitor this again over the next couple nights and see what happens.

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I’ll do some more testing but this is working for me as expected in recent tests I’ve done.

Is it possible your wife is deleting the download job thinking it will get rid of some episodes? Deleting the job will delete every episode, watched or unwatched.

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My wife isn’t very tech savvy… I understand that could also mean she does something without realizing it, but knowing her, she’d be scared of deleting something without understanding it, and to my knowledge all she does is turn on the tablet, open plex and watch her show .She doesn’t try to do anything else with it, or explore further in plex than what I’ve shown her to do.

That aside, I was unfamiliar of any job that would be visible on the front end. Where would I end up seeing this?

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Downloaded videos are shown in their own “Downloads” library that is listed in the sidebar. This is the same page where you see “No Downloaded Content”. At the bottom of this page are 2 tabs, “Items” and “Library”. Items will show the items downloaded in a list, these are the jobs I’m referring to.

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Ok, great. I’m confident that she hasn’t deleted those items. I assume had she deleted them, there would be no syncing back with watch date/times the next time she connects to wifi, right?

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The watched status would have already been updated in the app so it would still sync up with the server even after the files are gone.

I’ve done some more testing and with the delete option set to “never” it is correctly NOT removing those episodes for me.

  • downloaded next 3 unwatched episodes
  • mark 2 of them watched
  • refresh Downloads
  • 2 more episodes get Downloaded (automatically)
  • Downloaded library shows 5 episodes, 2 watched, 3 unwatched

I’ve performed the above several times with different shows and get the same results. If that “never” policy isn’t working for you I’m going to need to see the app logs after the next time things vanish.

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Ok, the only other variable I can think of here is that she has a tendency of not turning off the tablet and just letting it die out.

She worked her first night last night, and I checked it just now. The downloads are still there. She’ll work her next set tonight, after which she’ll come home, the tablet will stay in her bag until her next set in ~7 days. During this time the tablet is powered on. I imagine this is how it syncs when home, etc. Sometime over the course of the next day or two, it’ll completely die out.

It’s possible the one variation here is the tablet itself is actually being completely drained of battery. I have no idea why that would cause any different behavior, but that’s all I can think of at this point.