Player Version#: 8.15.2.24006
Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
A few issues have popped up for me of late, but the most annoying one is that the app will fully close (ie, returning to my Plex home dashboard and occasionally disrupting ongoing audio playback, losing its point in the current track, etc.) whenever I go back to my phone’s homescreen. If I switch apps through the app-scrolling button, Plex usually seems to stay open (at least on limited testing), but if I ever once hit my homescreen button (whether during use of Plex or any other app), down goes the app. For what it’s worth, I have turned off all battery optimization and such for Plex in my device’s application settings, so I don’t think that’s the issue. Is there a way to prevent the app from full-closing every time I go to my phone’s homescreen?
Tangentially, is this potentially connected to the occasional disappearance of shelves from my Plex home dashboard whenever I open the app? A fresh reinstallation seems to have fixed that issue for now, but we’ll see if it stays fixed.
And lastly, while I’m here, any notions as to why I can’t remove “Recently Added” shelves from the home dashboard on the app? Yes, I have the dashboard set to manual customization. There is an option to remove these shelves, but attempting to do so (from both the home dashboard itself and from the libraries themselves) gets no results. I am able to remove all other shelves and add new ones (like “recently played”), but “recently added” just won’t go away. Since I’m not trying to get rid of all of my “Recently Added” shelves, just a couple for libraries I don’t use that often, I’ve even tried un-pinning those libraries from the main side-menu, just to see if that was the source of the problem. But that didn’t solve it either. This issue isn’t as important as the first one I addressed, but it is a bit of a nuisance at least. Any thoughts?
Alright, just thought I’d add one more element to the problem. If my audio switches devices (say, from my car’s bluetooth to my bluetooth headphones), music will also stop. I get the whole “it shows it as playing for the same four seconds of the track on an endless loop without any sound at all” issue that I sometimes get when the app full-closes just by returning to my phone’s homescreen (see above). Then I have to do a rather convoluted dance of closing the “currently playing” notification, stopping the playback (that isn’t actually really playing) in the app, and fully closing the app manually. If I don’t do all of this in the correct order, the app still seems to consider itself as playing the media, meaning that I have to try it all over again. Or, in other words, it’s become an absolute pain in the behind to use this app to listen to anything.
I love Plex. Truly do. But when doing absolutely anything on my phone (going to the homescreen, changing audio output, etc.) makes the app unusable, it becomes faaaaar less useful an application.
Hoping to get a response. The full-close issue has only gotten worse the last two days, as it now constantly stops the app from recognizing track progress in any way as soon as I leave the app. (I’m listening to audiobooks, making this a pretty serious issue.) Thus, if I pause my music or re-open the app and then finish the track I was on–ie, anything disrupting playback in any way or “revealing” to the app the fact that it lost its progress tracking–playback is stopped and cannot be restarted without 1) closing the “currently playing” item in the app, 2) closing the “currently playing” notification on the notification drop-down, 3) restarting the app, and 4) trying to figure out where I was when the disruption occurred. All of this would be completely solved, I think, if the app simply wasn’t full-closing every time I left the app. That’s a lot of pain for what should be a simple fix. Granted, I could be the one being an idiot here, but a bit of customer support would be swell.
(Note: Yes, I made doubly sure battery optimization was turned off. I’ve always had Plex set to not optimize for this very reason.)
Alright, one last note based on my own testing. If I switch to the app from the “recently used apps” scrolling menu thingamabob, the app remains open as if it had not full-closed. It only behaves as if it were full-closed on its own when I access the app from the app symbol on my homescreen or in my app drawer. That said, even after using the “recently used apps” method, playback memory is still disrupted. I tried controlling playback from the notification, and the notification was bugged to inoperability. I thus closed the notification, stopped and restarted playback from within the app, and yet the notification will not reappear. I’m going to have to manually full-close the app to hopefully get it back working as it should.
This is, quite frankly, ridiculous. A reply would be helpful.
So…replying is too much effort? Pathetic. It’s a real pity your service (both the product and the customer support) just gets crappier and crappier. I’ve been around for 7 years and have generally been a major proponent of your service, gaining you several new clients. But I don’t think I can, in good conscience, continue advocating for you. I know that doesn’t really matter to you, I make no pretenses to having any real individual significance, but it’s disappointing all the same.
Also, just tried the new update, just in case. The problem’s worse if anything. Trying to open the app from the notification results in just showing the album art image: no controls, no progress bar, nothing. I’m fed up to the point of quitting Plex. I’ll try downgrading the app first, but if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to find some other option for the simple process of actually doing the one thing your app is supposed to do: playing my own media. You’ve lost sight of that. I’m not the first to say it, and I know you don’t give a crap, but it’s true and you should consider listening (and replying–what a novel concept) to your customer base.
