Plex Desktop player wants to stream over bad connection instead of using downloaded media

Plex Players Desktop Players
1

Server Version#: 1.40.3.8555
Player Version#: 1.95.3.175-dd94cbd1

I often travel to places with rather terrible internet connections. So I try to download media locally using the Plex player download button and typically it sync’d over night

The media plays without any issues whenever I have no connection (no internet at all) or when the wifi is disabled. However, if there is a connection, it tries to stream off my Plex server which obviously becomes a choppy stutter-fest.

Any idea how I can resolve this without disabling my wifi?

2

I’m in a similar boat. Are you playing the shows from the home/dashboard page? If I’m connected and play a show/film that I have downloaded from anywhere other than the downloads page, it tries to stream it (and that’s a terrible experience). Only if I specifically go into downloads and play from there will it use the local file.

This is unhelpful functionality, but (for now) seems to be how it works.

( https://forums.plex.tv/t/play-downloaded-media-before-streaming/881662 )

Windows Player almost unusable with poor connection to server
3

Are you playing the shows from the home/dashboard page?

This is exactly what I am doing. The work around you mentioned, playing from the Download section, works perfectly.

I guess we both assumed that the Plex client would have been smart enough to detect we have a local copy and use that instead

4

Anyone that has the same issue, please consider voting for the feature request below:
https://forums.plex.tv/t/play-downloaded-media-before-streaming/881662

6

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