I disabled PiP for EVERY app. Restarted my S21+ and it worked for a good day, then problem came back. I’m back to restarting my phone every time I want to watch Plex!..
yep, stopped working for last night. PiP was still disabled. Restart of phone and its working again, so my theory is, there’s some service that is crashing that Plex is relying on for playback… just need to figure out what it is…
S21 on Android 12 here. Disabling PiP for Plex doesn’t fix it. Hopefully either the Samsung or Plex devs can work out a fix ASAP!
Sorry for the delays, been trying to get in touch with someone at Samsung to see if they are aware of any issues like this. We have been unsuccessful with that unfortunately, there is reports of this issue happening on the Samsung forums with other applications that playback video, Facebook, Snapchat etc…
The only suggestions I can see is wiping the cache partition of the device might solve the issue, if you can still replicate the issue might be worth a try;
• Ensure the device is powered off. If the device is unresponsive/frozen, press and hold the Power button for approximately 10 seconds or until the device power cycles.
• Press and hold the Volume Up button and the Home button.
• While continuing to hold the Home and Volume Up buttons, press and hold the Power button until 'RECOVERY BOOTING' appears in the upper left then release all buttons.
• Select wipe cache partition. Utilize the Volume Up/Down buttons to highlight and the Power button to select.
• Select reboot system now. Option is highlighted, utilize the Power button to select.
On the 2 x S21 devices we have we still cannot reproduce the problem which is making it difficult to figure out what is going wrong. Both of us with these devices use them as our daily devices now so we have other applications installed.
Another point of interest, would be good to know if this happens with MPEG2 video (there’s no MPEG2 decoder on Samsung devices so this would use the Plex decoder). Here’s a sample video to try; https://filesamples.com/samples/video/mpeg/sample_640x360.mpeg (the video won’t have any audio).
And finally, another thing to try would be to lower the quality resolution via the settings (app level) to the lowest possible and see if that makes any difference.
Could the Samsung Galaxy Store updates be important?
Are folks with the issue signed into Samsung and completed any updates for the internal Samsung apps via their store?
@sixones Out of all the things listed on this thread (screen resize, PiP, phone reset, etc), none of them worked. I even wiped the storage and cache of the plex app to no luck. However, wiping the cache partition allowed me to be able to play videos again. I will keep this thread updated as to if this status changes or not over the next few days. I don’t heavily use plex on my phone right now though, so if anyone else can test this, that would obviously be helpful as well!
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Hopefully that solves the issue permanently, maybe something was left over from the previous OS firmware that was impacting the systems video decoders.
It’s unlikely, from the looks of things something is going wrong with the system hardware decoders, these are updated as part of an OS firmware update (usually). However, can’t hurt to keep up to date with the internal apps, behind the scenes Samsung could be doing anything.
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Wiping the Cache seems to have done the trick on my S21. Lets see how it plays out for the next few day, but thanks.
More info on how to wipe cache on S21
https://youtu.be/EYVknlK8Pwc
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Just a suggestion for Plex employees with S21’s. Maybe you could manually downgrade the phones to an older Android version. Install Plex, sign in, play movies, install some other apps, etc. Maybe even start with an older version of Plex that was out around the same time. Give a day or two of actual use. Then let it catch up with OTAs and app updates. This might allow you to capture some real world logs since it sounds like a fresh off the shelf S21 doesn’t have the issues due to newer software (maybe?). Seems worth the time and effort considering that many of the S21 user base is affected and wiping cache might be beyond the normal user skill set and not a good recommendation as a fix.
Again, just a thought.
Another Galaxy S21 user checking in.
This has appeared to work for me.
I had one symptom that was not mentioned by anyone else.
I could fairly reliably get it to start playing (Usually do a power cycle). But if I skipped ahead, or rewound, it would trigger the spinning circle, and I would not be able to get it to play again.
Plex showed black screen, Samsung video app couldn’t play, vlc played it fine. After first round I tried it again and Plex would get stuck doing nothing, no progress/playing but no error pop up. Samsung video player same error, vlc was fine.
For the third round I wiped the cache partition using the recovery menu and Plex could play the video consistently but with a black screen. Samsung video player had same issue. vlc played fine, I could see the beach and lady.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to downgrade Samsung devices due to the security updates that impact the Knox hardware.
The new device was delivered with Android 11, used for a day and then updated to Android 12, but was unable to replicate.
If a cache partition clear fixes it fully, then it would be out of our control as this particular cache is maintained and managed by the OS and apps don’t write or read from it (it’s not the Plex cache).
The cache partition clear is what has been recommended by Samsung to fix the Samsung video player, so I would think they are aware of the issue and will be attempting to fix it. From all the logs it looks like we feed the system video / audio decoders but don’t get any frames back. VLC will be working as its avoiding the system decoders and using its own decoders (as its open source they can use the H264 and HEVC software decoders).
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me too actually, wiping cache in recovery menu might’ve fixed it for me. I think it used to fail outright after trying to resume a video but it looks fine now. have to see if it lasts but I actually prefer vlc now.
wiping my cache did nothing for me
This was the solution for me. Thanks a lot.
Unfortunately, after clearing the cache partition from the recovery menu, my plex app is once again not playing videos and just sitting in the spinning wheel. So it seems this isn’t a permanent solution.
I’m so glad it’s not just me. Android 12 has totally borked Plex Playback for me. I even factory reset my phone in the vain hope that would fix it. 
You legend! Turning off PiP fixed it. Thank you!!!
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I disabled PiP as someone else has suggested above and that fixed it. Hope this helps.
Thank you so much. I can’t believe that worked.
