Server Version: 1.28.0.5999-97678ded3 on Windows Server 2019 with latest Windows updates
Player Version: 9.6.1.34279 (8db76ea8) on Pixel 6 Pro with Android 12 and latest (5 july) updates
Playing a certain media in the Plex app reboots the phone (startup logo shows and SIM unlock and user logon has to be done to return phone to operational status). It happens a few seconds after trying to start playback, while poster is displayed and buffering circle animation is showing.
The playback quality is set to direct play, no transcoding.
This only happens if using internal player, the media plays fine with external player (MX Player Pro with “custom codec” installed). It also plays fine in Windows and WebOS apps on those platforms.
Some other media I have tested plays fine in internal player. All testing has been done over LAN.
I just discovered this and I normally never use the internal player, so I can’t say if it’s a problem with recent versions of the Plex app and I can’t say much about what properties of the media might trigger the behavior. See mediainfo report for details. This is a standard MKV file that has in no way been specially crafted or modified to be problematic in any way.
I am very surprised that Android can let the Plex app do this, it seems like an Android security/stability issue besides the Plex problem itself.
I’ll look into creating and providing relevant logs to help troubleshoot. Thanks for the how-to link! Nighttime here now, so it will have to wait a while though.
I also want to add that the issue was reproducible every time and I tried it three more times.
I am (partly) happy to say that today I am not able to reproduce the problem. (I have even tried with “Night Light” enabled in Android because that is the only environment difference between yesterday’s and today’s situation that I can imagine.)
I have been looking at the logs, and the issue seems difficult to catch there because of the sudden crash at OS level. See the included log section, where it seems to go from a normal HTTP fetch at 04:06:37.866 but then on the next row the app is just being started at 04:06:58.468, probably after a reboot. The PMS logs give no further hints.
There are some occasional errors logged otherwise, but nothing out of the ordinary that I can see.
There is a timestamp inconsistency later in the included log section where it goes from 04:06:58.502 on one row to 04:06:55.756 on the next, but I guess this is an effect of the reboot and post boot resync of the phone’s clock rather than a cause of the issue.
If I am able to trigger this problem again I will make sure to do some more testing and see if I can provide more informative logs. I guess this could just as well be an underlying Android bug I was able to trigger and not really a problem of Plex.
