Put your iphone to airplane mode, what do you see? All albums and artists are missing from the home screen -right?
See, your local music is another source, not any different than music stored on PMS/NAS drive. The difference is its a local source. What I am suggesting is that the application should behave the same regardless of the sources local vs remote. When you are off-line from cellular the app should scan your local source for albums and artists and the same goes for radio stations sources. You should not need to select âdownload sectionâ.
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Correct, but thatâs what Iâm trying to explain. These are shown separately on purpose so the user will know exactly where the music is playing from.
The app could automatically switch to using the local files, but when the internet connection is restored, the user could forget they were looking at the local content and not find the content that wasnât downloaded. Or if the connection automatically switched back, they could start streaming not realizing they were back on a cellular connection and use up their data allowance.
I donât suggest we remove link to âdownload sectionâ but make the experience unified on the home screen. As I mentioned, it should not matter which source, remote or local, the home screen should automatically show available sources. What this means is that as soon as remote(cellular) connection is back users would see remote source. In such case there is no mistake what users see. We could make it even better and provide users with the choice on the home screen to select the source - remote and local. We could show some sort of indicator on the Home Screen to inform the user about the sources it shows if this is your concern.
Download section in the app is very limited when it comes to user experience vs Home Screen. There is no sorting by Album or Artist and there is no Radio Stations. Having the same experience on the Home Screen for all music sources would be good for the users since it is unifying how the application is working.
Most important to remember is that cellular charges for many users can be substantial and users would prefer local sources as much as possible, this should be a default Home Screen search and play. Users should not be ask to remember switching to âDownload sectionâ.
My suggestion that I am proposing would fix that for good.
Keep in mind that the info for the home screen are generated by the server. No server, no home screen. The local app is not able to produce this information. Thatâs also why Radio Stations doesnât work. It would take a lot of work to get the client to be able to reproduce what the server can do. Not saying this wonât happen in the future, but itâs not a simple fix.
Yeah, that would explain a lot. Some major architecture client app changes would need to be done to do this. In the long run I hope that both Plex and plexamp would go this direction considering Mobile apps should be real client-server apps. Thanks for the explanation.
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I agree that the âDownloadedâ section of Plexamp is very barebones and lacks most of the functionality of the main app. Hereâs an example of how Iâve used local vs streamed in the past that illustrates how a shift in experience might be helpful:
In the past when I used iTunes and then MediaMonkey, I would have my PC sync my iPhone with numerous playlists, including smart playlists that compiled collections based on ratings, genres, dates, etc. This would populate the device with thousand of songs from hundreds of artists and albums (at a specified reduced bitrate). Then, using my iPhoneâs local music player app, Iâd have all of that media available and be able to sort it and play it as I saw fit. If a playlist had a few songs off of every album by an artist, I could shuffle that artist or one of their albums and it would play the songs available. Then for discovery or listening to whole albums Iâd switch to my music streamer of choice. Ideally, Plexamp would fulfill both of these functions.
With Plexamp in its current state, if I download a playlist, the only way to play the music is from the downloaded playlist. You cannot search for artists or albums or songs that are available offline. I would love to be able to use the full interface to browse the offline music.
Furthermore, if the playlist is updated, the download is not synced automatically but must be manually activated by the user. It would be helpful to have the option for this to happen automatically (perhaps even a sub-option for deleting downloaded content that has been removed from the playlist, should the user desire) whenever the user connects to a network.
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Currently, when accessing the downloaded tracks in plex amp, you go to the dedicated section where it lists your downloaded Album or Playlists.
Being able to navigate your downloaded tracks in the same way you would navigate the online would make finding and managing your downloads much easier.
I have made an example (using the webapp) to explain what I mean:
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Thereâs already an existing feature suggestion discussing an option to browse only the downloaded content inside the regular library section (e.g. toggling into an âoffline modeâ to hide all items which arenât available locally). I suggest you comment/vote in that thread in order to help us avoid distracting or cannibalizing votes.
Unless Iâm missing some unique aspect of your suggestion Iâll close this thread as a duplicate.
Nope, I seemed to have missed that whilst checking for duplicates, you can close this thread and Iâll vote there.
Thanks
This is my MOST desired feature.
I donât have great internet in my area so my server isnât always readily available or can have miserably slow speeds. I am also often in areas with no service or internet.
Opening Plexamp and having most of the UI unusable is depressing. I want my friends to use Plexamp too, but asking them to navigate to a downloads page where there is no good organization are steps too far for lots of people who arenât already invested in Plex for other reasonâespecially when itâs so much simpler on other streaming providers.
Plex and Plexamp are superior to other platforms for lots of reasons but there are some aspects theyâre missing that the other major companies do that give them their universality with users. This is one of them, imo.
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I have an old android that has no service or internet access outside the house that I installed plexamp on. Downloaded some albums while at home to take and listen to at work. Open plex amp assuming I would be able to just access right from the library like EVERY OTHER APP handles downloaded content and surprise instead of integrating it into the library it needs a whole separate place.
So my current solution is to use the regular plex app, which is slower than snot. Create a quick link that is directly to my downloaded library which displays just like it would if you were online.
I dont know who they put in charge of the UI or made the decisions that 3/4 of the plex amp app was useless offline but boy did they make some a dumb choice. Cant use home, library or search if youre offline. Whew boy.
Renewing this request. At the moment the downloaded section serves as basically a clunky placeholder for what could be a great, well-integrated feature.
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Happy to find this request, but disappointed it is so old but still so relevant. I use Plexamp on my iPhone a lot on the subway or travelling. I so want to use the âCoreâ app when offline (organization, search, metadata, etcâŠ). Iâve almost stopped using Spotify completely and really enjoy Plexamp/Plex, but this is a major pain point.
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Iâm genuinely happy to see that so many users are asking for this â clearly, Iâm not alone here, not even close.
But honestly, itâs quite frustrating to see that this has been requested for years now, and still⊠silence. No comments, no roadmap hints, nothing from the team. Please donât let the only response eventually be: âSorry, not on our roadmap.â
Weâre not asking for anything fancy â just a basic toggle to make Plexamp behave in âoffline modeâ, so that the main library view shows only downloaded content.
Same UI, same filters, same experience â just limited to whatâs actually available offline.
The current âDownloadsâ tab is, frankly, just a workaround. With a growing collection of albums, it becomes more and more painful to navigate â itâs simply not usable as a proper library view.
And letâs not forget: many of us requesting this are paying Plex Pass users, myself included. Weâre not asking for something beyond what weâre already supporting financially. This isnât a niche request â itâs a core usability issue for anyone who listens on the go, commutes, or travels without stable internet.
So once again: PLEX team, please hear us. Give us at least a sign youâre considering it, or tell us honestly why itâs not happening.
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I think that people think that because something seems simple, it is.
Youâre asking for an app to switch seamlessly between a local database, and an online database, dependent on whether the user wants to be in Offline mode or not.
Every switch/toggle/option makes an app increasingly complex, and increases dev and testing effort.
Iâm with you, Iâd love that when offline I can search in the app and it would only show downloaded content, but I think that this would be a major project, not just adding an additional control and a different view.
Plus it depends if Plex see the product working the way we think it should. If they donât, then theyâre never gonna change it. Elon has expressed in the past that Plexamp downloads it for taking a few things on the go, not to allow you to download your whole library.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. I agree â implementing a proper offline mode isnât as simple as just adding a toggle. But itâs also clear that Plexamp already has mechanisms in place to differentiate between online and downloaded content. The fact that you can choose to âprefer downloaded mediaâ when playing from the normal library shows that the app can already switch between local and remote sources under the hood.
This suggests that the system likely maintains metadata or flags to distinguish between whatâs on the device and whatâs on the server â which means filtering the library based on that status doesnât seem out of reach conceptually.
Personally, I donât want to download my entire library either â just a curated portion. But even that subset is large enough to make the current âDownloadsâ tab frustrating to navigate. Many others have voiced the same issue, which makes it clear this isnât just a niche request.
User behavior evolves. Even if the original intent for Plexamp downloads was different, itâs worth recognizing how people are actually using the app now. Listening to that and evolving with it is what keeps products great â and loved by their community.
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No problem.
But youâre actually talking about 2 separate libraries (online and offline) from the appâs perspective. The reason I believe this to be true is that (for example) if you download the same track on two different playlists, it downloads two copies of the same track, it doesnât download one track and associate it with both the Playlists so it would have to deal with edge cases like that.
This is one of the reasons Iâm so surprised that Music has been removed from the main Plex app. Plexamp wasnât designed for mass usage as we keep being told, so it wonât be ready.
It did. This should have changed with 4.12.1.
Thanks @tom80H I wasnât aware of that. from the wording, would it be correct to assume that any existing downloads could be duplicated? The behaviour would only change on removal and download?
Pls fix the downloads.
