I’ve been having issues with this for months. I run Plex in a Docker on unRaid NAS. I have Pihole ad blocker at home, that also does DHCP.
I wish this worked. 
it used to. Now it doesn’t.
I’ve tried Emby and Jellyfin as well. Emby has sync, but the pay structure doesn’t really work for me. Jellyfin is still open-source, which I like a lot, but hasn’t figured out offline sync yet.
https://alternativeto.net/software/plex/
Jellyfin.org
Emby.media
I’d like to add my voice to request an urgent fix to the Downloads functionality. While Sync wasn’t perfect, it worked on a basic level. “Downloads” has never worked correctly since it’s inception and I can’t understand why it hasn’t been fixed and even worst why devs haven’t addressed/acknowledged us here.
I am able to download videos in original quality, but as soon as I try to transcode to a lower quality to save space the downloads error out.
I’ve tried using Cloudflare DNS, but that makes no difference. It seems like the transcode just stops.
Server is running in a docker container on Unraid and the client is the iOS app on an iPad.
2 Likes
One more lifetime Plex Pass user here reporting this bug and hoping that Plex acknowledges and fixes the underlying problem.
- Using the Plex client app for Android all downloads fail 100% of the time on multiple client devices
- Using the PlexAmp client app for Android all download succeed 100% of the time on the same client devices
- Plex server is running latest version of Plex on latest build of Windows 11
This is core functionality that needs to “just work.” Plex broke it and needs to fix it.
Hey Plex - what’s going on here?
I get the impression quite a few Plex users are developers, coders or engineers. I think it’s a reasonable request the root cause why it can’t be fixed is reported. Or just fix it already.
has there been an update about this?
where do I go to change my dns to the google?
yet another frustrated plex pass (for life!!!) user.
i wouldn’t had bought the pass sub. if i knew the download feature was so heavily defective.,
ill add that the “original” setting on ipad COMPLETLY fixed the situation like a charm. unfortunately, my phone is android.
please plex, give us a sign that you acknowledge the issue
I am facing the same issues in downloading to my iPad from a Server running on my iMac on a very fast LAN network. Also a Plex Pass for Life user. I am very angry that Plex staff doesn’t even bother with responding with any information on this incredibly broken feature that is affecting so many of their customer. Shows how much they care about us. 
We are still working on fixing bugs with Downloads. The recent Plex for iOS app 8.5 has a fix related to this. Please let us know (including logs) if you still have issues with 8.5.
Yes. There are certainly still Download issues with the latest iOS app v8.5. Some shows download. Some don’t. No helpful error info on what is causing the failure. I’ve checked for subs files, as indicated by possible issues caused by that. Not there. Also, there is no transcoding, and the download file is set to the original format and size. The latest iPad debugging log is attached.
PlexDebugInfo-8.5-3006 (2022-07-01 09.31.31 +0100).zip (4.3 MB)
@anigupta Can you tell me what failed? The last thing I see in your log is for the Daily Show which worked.
2022/07/01 09:31:10.546 (150 MB) (1154239)
PMKLogging.m:29 | Download complete: 586be6749d9d8be31602daec92989733332c659a “The Daily Show (1996) - 2022-06-20 00 00 00 - Episode 06-21.mkv”, Size: 1095.71 MB, Speed: 111.62 Mbps
Are you downloading multiple episodes? It’s possible the failure is with 1 specific episode, so you will see an error, but the one video I see in the log did appear to successfully Download.
I have set it to download 3 unplayed episodes. I was downloading 2 episodes. It gives an error on both the episodes once the download cycle is complete. It is the same with every other show that fails. It shows the error after the first episode being downloaded, but the download continues. At the end it will show “Error downloading X episodes”. No episodes were downloaded successfully. The show doesn’t show in my downloads library.
Also, the episodes play fine in the Plex app. Could the errors be made more informative? Or the logs? Should I switch on verbose logging and recreate this error?
I’m still having major issues with this. The only way I can get a full download to work is keeping plex in the foreground during download. If I background the app and try and use any other app on my iPad then I get download errors and they will not resolve without cancelling the download and starting a brand new one.
So, I’ve had success in fixing this issue. I shared a few logs with the Plex rep here. What seemed to have solved the download fail issue is uninstalling Plex completely from my iPad and reinstalling it. I started with a small download, one episode, of a show that failed earlier. Since then I’ve had no failures. I’ve been able to download movies and entire seasons. Not sure what changed, since I was running the latest version of the app before and after. Maybe the database gets corrupted?
But, yes, you must keep the downloads screen open for downloads to complete successfully. The background activity seems to not be working as expected with Plex.
Hope this helps!
1 Like
It is still broken.
And to others with helpful replies… I appreciate those who have found the DNS rebinding solution but it is not accessible or viable for me and I suspect that is true for 90% of Plex users.
Maybe we should all ask for our Plex pass money back? I remember when Plex forked from XBMC in the days of Boxie… I’ve been here from day one. I think that makes this feel so disappointing - it is like an active hostility towards users.
1 Like
The DNS rebinding issue should have been solved a while ago with an update in the iOS app. If you are still having this issue, something else is going on. Please reproduce and provide logs.
Not sure when things were changed/fixed, but downloads seem to be generally working for me after reinstalling the app (android).
Have there been improvements to the UI as well? (a separate library is created for downloaded content now?) Not sure if/when this was changed as I never really got passed the original problem, but I have to say it works very well.
I do have an issue with downloading large playlists. I see download initialising then nothing happens. Restarting the app doesn’t help. There’s plenty of space on my sdcard to accommodate the files (with 192 kb/s encode) but alas it never starts.
