Currently, downloads stop whenever the screen turns off or the app is moved to the background. This makes it very difficult to download larger files unless I keep the screen on and Plex open in the foreground, which is inconvenient and drains the battery.
It would be extremely helpful if Plex could allow downloads to continue in the background or when the device screen is off, similar to how other media and file apps handle background transfers.
Is this feature planned for a future update? If not, I’d like to request that it be considered, as it would greatly improve the usability of Plex downloads on mobile devices.
Thank you for your hard work and for considering this improvement.
I wonder in what exact setup and context you’re experiencing this. There’s been another suggestion which had been closed as implemented (with confirmations from users that it’s now working for them).
Not sure about ios but downloads does work in the background on Android. I queued an entire season of a show, turned off my screen and left it for 10 minutes. Came back and the lock screen showed only a few files had downloaded but opening the app i see everything finished.
For ios I remember looking into this and the api for background downloads only works on 1 file. Basically the api allows an active download to finish but won’t start s new download. I don’t have an ios device anymore but try queing 1 episode or movie and see if that works in the background. It should. Then try multiple and you’ll see it only does 1.
Unless it’s a battery killing feature of a device specific flavor os Android, it doesn’t seem like this works. Transcoding happens (which is both not a function of the device as it’s handled on the server, and a real irritation in that it causes downloaded content to balloon - 10x to 20x the size of the original files) but the downloads do not continue in the background or with screen off, and do not resume unless you log back in to the app.
The thing is - we have implemented this in some manner on both Android and iOS. Now - this is not me stating that it will work in all instances for every person checking it out, but we did some pretty decent research on how backgrounding works on both platforms before building this up for how it exists today. There are all kinds of variables that could potentially affect this, so YMMV for how well it works but I just picked up my phone, kicked off a download, backgrounded my app, then turned the screen off, waited a few minutes and when I checked the file was fully downloaded (Android pixel). Some of the work that was done here includes implementing messages from the server back to the app once any transcoding finishes. We are also working on some improvements around downloads - specifically I know that the quality screen is getting some updates to make it easier to use among other work.
As for this thread - we can keep it open a little bit for discussion, but as this is implemented then at some point this might be a better discussion in a forum area like Mobile Devices so that we can try and understand some of the variables/situations where this might not be working for some people and get the info collected to try and enhance it for more situations/devices/os/etc.
