Server Version#: 4.47.3
Player Version#: unknown, should be latest
I have a very simple Plex setup. Just music, no video or anything, on a Seagate NAS. Listening on my desktop is fine and listening on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy 21) is fine. On my wife’s phone, a Galaxy S9, there are problems.
When she’s playing music through Plex, it will often just stop. I don’t know if it’s buffering or what, but she has to hit play to make it go again. Often it will do this several times during a single song. The phone isn’t going to sleep, the app is just stopping. After it does this for a while, if she hasn’t given up in frustration, it will sometimes then work fine.
I don’t believe it is issues with the WiFi signal (nothing else on her device behaves this way) and it doesn’t happen on my phone (though I mostly listen on the desktop.)
We’re the only ones using the server, and I have logs of this happening while just she was listening, so I don’t think it’s something caused by someone else accessing the server.
I captured all the logs from a day when I knew it was happening and can send them along with details of times it happened and tracks playing.
Please try to reproduce the problem. When it happens, note the time and the title of the song that stopped. Grab the Android log and attach it to your next comment along with the time and title info.
My wife, on a Samsung Galaxy S10 amusingly, also has had trouble with music cutting off randomly. She felt it was somewhat related to the screen going to sleep, as if it’d play what it had buffered after the screen went off but eventually stop. I don’t have logs at the moment, but I’m interested in this thread. If the issue persists I’ll grab logs.
I’m not sure why we’re all writing for our wives but mine has the exact same problem on her Pixel 4A 5G. I too have examined everything and can not find any cause. It happens regularly.
I was listening to the album Black Celebration by Depeche Mode. In the first log, it happened at the end of “Fly on the Windscreen”. Player just stops as if pause were pressed, but it wasn’t. Not phone sleeping, either.
In the second log, it happened twice: once after “Sometimes” and once after “Stripped”. At no time did I pause the music manually.
This happens regularly for my wife (also Samsung phone), who accesses the server with her phone more often than I do. I am usually listening on my laptop (through the web interface), and this does not happen.
Is there any movement on this from Plex? Any Plex people want to chime in? @anon18523487?
This is pretty much a show stopper for me. Plex is currently the only method we have for listening to our music. If my wife is too frustrated by it to use it, my next step is to ditch it and look for a replacement. If this can be fixed, then I’m down for a Plex Pass. But as it is, the Plex player doesn’t work on our phones and the Plex company doesn’t seem interested in the issue.
Sorry, did not see your earlier post. Looking at those logs, it shows the app lost the connection to your server so it was unable to play the next song. It appears to have lost connection to not only your server, but the entire network. It recovered after a bit of time.
Can you check your router and see what the lease time fir IP addresses are? It’s possible your router is resetting the IP and it’s too aggressive causing the connection loss. Set it to he longest possible period and see if that helps.
No, because you can see in the log that it happened twice within less than a half hour. If the app stopped playing once every 2 days, it would be much less of a problem, but this happens constantly.
I’ll run some tests and try to confirm or eliminate signal loss as a cause.
Tried playing music from my phone while sitting right next to the router. Attaching logs.
played fine until the end of “In Bloom”, then stopped.
stopped again after “Come as You Are”. The app was not responsive and I had to force quit it and start it up again.
stopped after “Lithium”
stopped after “Drain You”
All during this time I was working on my laptop, which is connected to the same network. At no point did my VPN connection to work get interrupted, indicating a loss of wireless signal or other network issue.
Last night I also used a wifi scanner (on my phone) downstairs to check the signal there. Signal was in the green the whole time with no indication of any problems.
Regardless of what the logs say is happening, I don’t have any indication that the phone and only the phone is continuously losing the wifi signal. If there are other tests I can perform, let me know.
I haven’t got a wife, just a Samsung Galaxy Note8. When I first downloaded Plex after the demise of GPM, I was thrilled. Music seemed to flow beautifully and I learned how to manipulate and grow my Plex server catalog. In the last 9 months or so, not so much. Same problem as above, random play stops for absolutely no logical reason whatsover. Only a few times does the player not stop after usually about 3-4 minutes. A few after the phone screen goes to sleep. So I set that to 10 minutes. Phone will still sleep after 3. (dammit) It usually snaps back as soon as I wake the phone up…but not always. I thought maybe it was interference from all my other apps that are vying for supremacy on the phone. Sometimes they the music stops, stays off about 5 secs and starts back up on its own. Then it will stop again, might come back, and play another 3 minutes. Then stop again. It comes back on for maybe a song or 2 and die die again. Now, if I’m in the living room either streaming the music through the chromecast, no stoppage. Through the bluetooth receiver, most times no stoppages…but some. But just playing on it’s own…total shutdown at random. My pocket is BURNING to get a plexpass, but if this is going to remain the status quo, I too will be inclined to seek out another platform, despite the hours I’ve spent honing my plex library. Surely the programmers have been able to replicate this problem in the labs with so many of us android users out here…
I am a wife - with a Samsung phone (S10e) and I have the same issue. I have finally got my husband on the digitalization train and we are now in the process of ripping all our CDs to be able to play them through our Synology NAS.
I was also thrilled to find Plex and have already bought Plex Pass. But yesterday I attempted to play a playlist via my phone (connected to a bluetooth speaker) and it just stopped after every 2-3 song, where I had to restart it again and again. Later I also tried to queue songs, and that was even worse, as the queue disappeared each time the music stopped.
And to make it even worse, the app player feels really buggy, often it shows the incorrect song playing when I wake up the phone and some albums are unreachable under the artist, although I can search for the song itself. Plus it is impossible to close the app fully!
I did eventually switch to my laptop instead and had no issues after that.
Right now I am also testing the app without connecting it to the speaker and so far it has not stopped once. So it seems to be an issue with the app streaming the sound via Bluetooth?
I do feel a bit cheated at the moment, as I expected the actual playing of music to work out of the box. We stream music and movies all the time and have never had any similar issues with other apps.
After reading @sateku 's reply, I tested to see if bluetooth was an issue for me, as before I was using bluetooth speakers or headphones when listening on my phone (the Samsung S21 doesn’t have a headphone jack). So I cued up Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection and just played it through the phone.
Unfortunately, this didn’t make a difference. The player stopped after “Lucky Star”. When I pressed play, it started playing “Lucky Star” again, but this time the screen wasn’t updating (the time on the track stayed at 0:00 instead of advancing, play/pause icon remained arrow).
I advanced to next track and pressed the power button to put the phone to sleep. The music kept playing. But then stopped again after “Like a Virgin”.
Logs are attached. Having to re-start the player after almost every other song is just more frustration than it’s worth. I hope a solution can be found for the app, but in the meantime I’m going to start looking for an alternative to Plex.
Well Well Well…
I decided to go for a hail mary and pull out any stop I could. Raided the settings, changed any and all settings I could. Removed battery savers, any unnecessary notification, just explored and reset whatever I could with ANY setting that looked like it could interfere with PLEX play. Then, and I don’t know if it made any difference, I actually put a security code on the phone, which I never do because damn I hate that and 2 tier code remembrance. Just annoying. LO AND BEHOLD i tell you, the times I’ve I played music on my Samsung Note8 since these alterations, THERE HAVEN’T BEEN ANY HARD STOPS, INTERRUPTIONS OR CUT OFFS!!! PRAISE BE TO WHATEVER. I’ll bet some software update is gonna muck it up sometime in the future but for now I’m actually happy. Now dammit, bring back that 30% lifetime PLEXPASS discount! Or I guess I need to wait til Xmas. Does that cover all devices, cos I gotz me an old iPad too. And is there a bit better fidelity on the pass? The ether can be conquered. Don’t ask me which one it was though, cos for sure I can’t tell ya. Just go for broke and turn off EVERYTHING.
So there is a solution! I’ll never know; I’ve given up on Plex. Rather than buy a PlexPass I instead ordered a new NAS which will run music software other than Plex (Emby so far looks like the one to beat.) Plex seems uninterested in fixing a problem with their software that interferes with basic functionality and I’m moving on.
