The system scales O(N) where N is the number of tracks, as one might expect. If there were no limit on the number of tracks for a single item, someone could create a playlist with their entire library of 50,000 tracks and download it. Limiting the size of each item ensures operations around each item are performant, and makes it more likely the total number of items is lower.
But I would humbly submit you’re focused on the wrong thing. If you want to sync your entire library, you can do so today in the main Plex app. Plex Labs is about thinking differently (like e.g. being able to download artist radios). So you should be asking: how should I accomplish these high-level goals around downloading?
Having fresh music always on hand: You can make a smart playlist of all your tracks and add a “not listened to in 1 month” clause. Download X hours of that, and refreshing downloads will move out stuff you’ve listened to, and move in stuff you haven’t, like a sliding window of content.
Having music I love available: Similar concept, but add another clause for s.
Having my entire library available on a submarine: Not a goal!
Many of us who have been using this app during its lengthly beta period travelled extensively, and at least for our needs, it worked great.
OK this makes sense and I think the smart playlist idea is a viable solution assuming I can tell it not to download new tracks over mobile data.
The real attraction of this app to me is having an attractive and music-focused front end to plex. I actually already have my big playlist downloaded in the main plex app, but it has some rough edges around auto-resuming/auto play so I was hoping plexamp would be the answer.
The download limit is a little unexpected because I’m not aware of this restriction in other apps (not that I can download my entire library but at least I can download the entirety of whatever playlists I have).
Finally, it seems like it would be a workaround to simply split my playlist into several 24h ones and download them all separately, then enqueue them all right? Same effect but with a lot more work on the part of the user
Is there an option or a way to download tracks individually one at a time without creating a playlist first?
Example Scenario: I am sitting in an airport, I am listening to something and I am searching my library for stuff to play next, instead of “Play Next” can I select a song and just download that song to my phone without listening to it or having it play next or adding it to a playlist? Maybe like a “Download Next” or “Download Track” or “Download This” or “Download Rest of Album”. For those times when you are listening to an album and are half way into an album but don’t want to download the full thing or a larger playlist, you just want the rest of the album.
I accomplished this by creating a Download Now playlist.
This is just a suggestion for a quality of life thing. It would be cool to click on the three dots next to a track or album and it just say Download Track Now or Download Rest of Album.
Again, thank you for Plexamp. It is different and it is so much fun. Loving it and falling in love with my music all over again.
I do think it’s ironic that the tool that I invested in to manage my media library is forcing me to make a decision to choose gapless supportormanaging my full music library offline. If the download capability of Plexamp is not to be enhanced to manage a full offline library, then I must ask is the gapless support being considered to be ported back into the existing Plex iOS/Android/Windows/Mac/Roku apps?
I think Plexamp is really amazing and I am learning new things about smart playlists. I can manage my whole library offline with Plex today, (sync works fine). If I can get gapless playback support back in Plex player, then that might be a better option for me, but today I am forced to choose between these two capabilities.
Smart playlists are a wonderful thing once you get used to setting them up. Especially as the ones that update based on a rule.
For example my music workflow if I can call it that with Plex and Plexamp is like this. I find it’s easier to create the smart playlist in Plex web app. Then listen to it through Plexamp. I assign stars that trigger a rule. For example a 1 star, the smart playlist all have a rule that says no 1 star tracks. So I know if something is 1 star, I won’t encounter it in any of my smart playlists.
Not at the moment, but (and you may already know this) but if you do Play Next or add it to your play queue, the play queue cache-ahead code kicks in and downloads it, and it’ll likely play just fine when you’re on the plane with no connection.
The app was built (and I’ve used it like this many times) to essentially provide seamless transition to transient offline scenarios in that it pre-caches music, artwork, loudness profile, etc. So when you get on a plane and if you have the pre-cache settings not turned down all the way, the music will keep playing and you can keep skipping around and everything will work until you get to the last pre-cached track (which might be an hour or more away).
Appreciate you saying that as so much of Plexamp was trying to reimagine things a bit
That is not the case. The player engine is the same as is used in the official iOS and Android apps and gapless should work over there just fine.
Hi Elan. I totally forgot about the caching. Good point. My experience with other apps kind of has me thinking a certain way. With other apps (I won’t name here), you have to interact with the app to make sure your music keeps going. You guys have thought through pretty cleverly using cache.
Example: I was cutting my lawn the other day, started listening to an album in the house, did my yard work all listening through Plexamp. Not once did I notice a drop. And here is the best part. My data was off and my wifi doesn’t reach into my backyard. I didn’t even notice or think about it until right now!
I think I will retract my comment from before when I said in my other post, it would be a nice to have a download this track or download this album option. Cause after your explanation that doesn’t seem it is needed. I have become so badly trained by other apps that I was looking for the same with Plexamp not realizing those things are built in to how the app works.
These unique differences need to be highlighted more!!! The app is doing things that make sense to keep the music going without human involvement. Which is different than the apps that I used to use. Bravo guys! I have been using Plexamp everyday now for hours each day at work and home and I am still discovering new things about how it works. So far any issues I have had were user error or not knowing what something did.
I’ve just created individual playlists for all my artists (thus cutting out songs I don’t want) and downloaded them to my phone. Over three days’ worth of music so I can play by artist only or play all.
Now that’s love and devotion to the playlist gods!! I have never been able to decide whether I want to rip entire Albums into my music library or just the songs I like. I always end up just ripping the whole album and then skipping tracks I don’t like.
I’m loving the Plexamp app on IOS devices. The equalizer is the one feature that I really like. Downloading music is easy and deleting music is also easy. But displaying the albums can be a bit cumbersome. Please put in an option to sort the artist with their albums inside the artist groupings.
What if you leveraged the capability of the existing Plex app instead?
Would it work to expose the library downloaded in the Plex app to Plexamp? That way Plex could still handle the heavy lifting, and Plexamp could access the shared library on the SD Card?
Another work around to the limitations of downloading is to download each album that you want to listen to. There is no apparent time limit on this (I am up to 56 hours of downloaded albums). Once it is downloaded you can either play the album, select a track to play (one at a time) or use the “Play All” option for shuffle play of everything downloaded…
I want to use this app, but I’m in a situation where I need to be able to download my entire library onto my device. I can’t use Cell data at all. So unfortunately, though I want to use Plexamp, I won’t be able to ever because you guys sound like this app has different “design goals”. Too bad, I liked most of the direction this was going.
I’m similar to @mattmeng, I need an option to NEVER play on cellular, only WiFi or downloaded songs. In options I have turned Cell down to the lowest (64k I think?) but I would ask if there could be an option for No Playback while on cell. I don’t have the cell data capabilities where I am to support that, but can sync often on wifi.
I don’t think thats it, unless I’m mistaken that only stops downloading albums and songs to the phone, but you can still stream them. I want to prevent any cell data usage and only show and play songs available locally on the phone. I don’t even want to see media that isn’t available already downloaded. Plex has an option like this to basically take the app into offline mode and only show local previously downloaded media, I don’t think PlexAmp has such a feature yet unless I’ve missed it.
s.
