There is a setting in Advanced called “prefer downloaded content”. The description sounds like if you enable it, it will play movies from the file locally downloaded, instead of trying to stream it. I’m not sure if this feature is broken, or just never implemented correctly, but I would like you to implement it properly.
For example, if I have a poor connection (hotel WiFi, cell signal) and I start a movie from within the downloads, it will attempt to buffer for minutes, before I finally give up. As soon as I disable WiFi and cell, the downloaded item starts immediately.
I don’t recall it ever working correctly since the new download system was implemented a few years ago, but it certainly has not worked for the past 2 years. I’ve just been too lazy to complain until now.
You have the right idea, it just seems to not be working
With which version of the Plex app on what version of iOS are you experiencing this?
I’m regularly watching downloads while traveling. While there’ll be some traffic as the app reports the watch progress… that’s usually just a few kilobytes. I haven’t seen it getting stuck like you’re describing it.
iOS 17.5.1. Latest Plex release. But it has been like this for years.
Pretty clear that despite prefer downloaded content being checked, Plex does not actually prioritize the downloaded file. One would think this is an easy fix?
When on a slow wifi connection, when I attempt to play a downloaded file it will give all appearances of buffering (screen goes black, swirling “loading” icon in the middle of the screen. Sits like this for quite some time. When it does begin to play, it will often go for a few seconds, then stop, appear to rebuffer, play for a few seconds, stop, buffer, repeat.
If I go into airplane mode, and select the same file, it plays flawlessly, immediately.
This behavior happens the same way, even if I go to the downloads section and select the movie from there.
So I do not know for certain it is actually trying to stream the file (maybe it is trying to communicate about playback position, or something else and is prioritizing that information over smooth playback) but all appearances are consistent with trying to stream instead of playing the locally downloaded version
