Newest Plex iOS v8.7 crashes when playing music in the background

Plex Players
1

PMS: 1.28.1.5985 64-bit on Windows 10
Plex app: 8.7
iOS: 16 beta 4

I have recently noticed that when running music in the background (iPhone or iPad) that Plex eventually crashes on the device. The music stops playing and when re-opening Plex it redoes the Plex startup animation.

Steps

  1. open Plex and shuffle the music
  2. close the app (the music continues to play as expected)
  3. lock the device (the music continues to play as expected)
  4. within anywhere from 1-10 minutes the music stops
  5. check Plex and it has crashed (not just stopped playing)

I suspect this is an issue with the newest Plex app version 8.7 which just dropped the other day as prior to that I don’t recall seeing this. Ironically, the previous version used to get odd overlay music (i.e. multiple songs would play over each other) when skipping quickly to the next track(s).

Though I am currently on the preview PMS 64-bit, I did roll back to the 32-bit and had the same issue. I also checked for db corruption but there was none reported.

Note: if a dev wants to take a look I have both the iPad and PMS logs (both non-verbose and gathered immediately after the crash happens) which I can DM to you…it seems to indicate there are some communication issues such as…

Client logs

(2408492) ❌ PMAppDelegate.m:702 | [ITERABLE]: 13:27:03.1160:0x28050f900:RequestCreator:createGetInAppMessagesRequest(_:):228: Both email and userId are nil

(2408513) ❌ PMKConnectionManager.m:996 | Unable to activate a connection for <PMKLocalServer: 0x282155860>

(2408514) ❌ PMKPlexEmbeddedServerConnection.m:53 | Error connecting to embedded server (NanoPMS): Error Domain=com.alamofire.error.serialization.response Code=-1011 "Request failed: gateway timed out (504)" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Request failed: gateway timed out (504)
2

Yeah, I’m experiencing this as well

Server Version 1.28.0.5999 QNAP
Plex iOS 8.7
iOS 15.6

3

I installed v 8.7.1 (which just dropped today) and so far I have not seen the issue.

I will monitor this today/tomorrow and see how it goes and report back on this thread.

4

I was able to listen to over an hour of music in the background without issues.

I stopped playing the music (as I had other things to do) and when I came back to continue where I left off, after about 5 minutes it crashed again.

Therefore, the issue still persists :frowning:

1 Like
5

Yep. Still crashed for me as well.

6

Still crashing with 8.7.2

Easily reproduceable for me:
Play something, pause it for a while (disconnecting wired headphones), resume where you left off, some seconds later > crash

1 Like
7

Could you try and see if there are any crash logs that you could provide together with the iOS Logs zip captured after the failure. iOS Logs can be obtained through the app Settings → Help & Support → Debugging → Share Debugging Data and email the logs to your mailbox - and then attach here

For crash logs generated by iOS - one can get them by syncing the device to a PC through iTunes and then looking for plex related files on the PC

For example when backing up and syncing a device with a Windows PC, then the crash logs would be found here after a completed iTunes Device Sync

Below folder
C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\Logs\CrashReporter\MobileDevice\
there would be a directory structure for each synced device

You can search the directory structure for the device for any file with “plex” in the filename

Copy the files that have timestamps in the filenames close to the time of the failure and zip and attach here with the iOS logs

Thanks

8

An update, the development team have found the issue that gives rise to the app exiting when playing music and they are working on resolving the issue

No need for iOS crash logs

Thanks

1 Like
9

Thanks very much for the update :grinning:

10

Going to report the same problem, rather frequent crashes while playing audio.

11

Me too, i’ve the problem of crash !!!

12

Thanks. To be clear, it’s not only with music - it’s really when the app is in the background or the phone is off. I may be playing a video and just listening to the audio (I’ll do that at times for video podcasts or training recordings), and the behavior is the same.

Glad to hear it’s been detected.

13

The issue with the app being killed when playing music is fixed in release 8.7.3

See release notice

14

I’ve been using the new version for most of the day without issues. I’ll mark the above as the solution.

Thank you Plex for addressing this quickly and keeping us updated as you did.

15

This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.