Okay… I’m definitely somewhere in-between “noob” and “decently savvy user”, but I’m puzzled by this behavior.
I have a QNAP server running PMS, and on the local network it plays like a dream:
• AppleTV streams 4K content with ease / plays back all of my music without issue
• My Macs can access the content via browser without issue / PlexAmp.app for Mac plays great.
• My IOS devices playback content through PlexAMP.app for IOS just fine without issue.
noteworthy: I have a lifetime PlexPass
I recently got the itch to try and enjoy this content from the car without using the “allow access outside my network” — so I’m using Tailscale. I’ve been using Tailscale VPN for months to access a friend’s remote computer and it works great! Love it. No issues with Tailscale.
So, I did the following:
- Added my iPhone to my tails scale tailnet (easy breezy)
- Added the QNAP to the Tailnet as well. Verified that it’s connected securely. (not as easy, but I got it done with a little bit of googling)
- Configured the networking settings of PMS to have ‘custom server access’ pointed to my Tailscale network IP w/ the typical Plex port#
- Tried to playback my music from IOS through cell connection (NO luck)
I kept presuming that it was all a problem with my DNS or my Tailscale or my network settings on the QNAP, but then I (on a lark) tried to playback video on the IOS device — that worked fine!
So… to make sure I’m not mistaking the functionality or misinterpreting the results, I did the following test:
- Connected IOS device to Tailscale VPN and Played back HD video content through Plex IOS app and it transcoded smoothly & played back perfectly.
- Momentarily stopped the Tailscale app on my QNAP
- Tried playback of video content on my Plex IOS app, and it failed to play back.
- Re-started the Tailscale app on my QNAP
- Tried playback of video content again, and it played back beautifully.
On the same Plex app for IOS, in the same Plex library, I can see the music content — and I can select the songs. I can even hit play and it brings up the song playback screen, even shows the song waveform & mm:ss counters. Play icon turns into pause icon, as if it’s playing the song. … but NO playback occurs / no time-code movement on the left hand mm:ss of the player screen. This was spot checked across 20 different songs of different codecs & formats. (Flac. MP3. ALAC. M4A.) — none of the files played back properly.
Reconnected to Wi-fi and disabled Tailscale… songs play back fine (on Plex app for IOS & PlexAMP app for IOS)
Disabled Wi-Fi & went back to Tailscale… no song playback, but video playback continues to be fine.
Oddly enough: When on the Tailscale network, I notice three things that puzzle me:
- Plex app can see the songs, but not play them
- Plex app can download the songs, then the songs listed as “downloaded” CAN be played back, but not streamed
- PlexAmp app CANNOT see the songs at all… it sees absolutely NO library content when connected via Tailscale As a goof… I signed out of Plex account on the PlexAMP app and tried to sign back in & “set up” the app fresh… to see if configuring it while on Tailscale would make any difference. While on the Tailscale Tailnet I couldn’t even “find” the library to add it to the app. So the PlexAMP app seems to have even more trouble than the regular Plex app.
If anyone else has experienced and solved this, I’d love to know what the secret sauce was.
Server Version#: 1.32.8.7639 (QNAP)
PlexAMP Player Version#: 4.9.4
Plex Player Version#: 8.29
IOS Version#: 17.1.2
<If providing server logs please do NOT turn on verbose logging, only debug logging should be enabled>
