Plex iOS Download feature is unusable as it does not ever complete a download

[anon18523487]

PM the logs to me. I hate scrubbed logs.

[hawkinsb]

@MovieFan.Plex

I see where it is re-downloading that episode. Very odd. I have 1 potential theory on why this is happening. When you downloaded the episode originally, is it possible that it was not matched. Now, the episode is matched, so Downloads thinks it’s a new file so it’s grabbing the new version.

Could you let it finish, then downloading something else and see if that episode of 60 minutes downloads again? If it only re-downloads once, my theory could be possible. If it re-downloads multiple times, I have no idea what’s going on.

@MovieFan.Plex Your theory doesn’t seem to hold up after testing. I see the same shows redownload multiple times. Here’s another clean set of logs. In this case, I had an existing, successful download of an episode of “60 Minutes” and an episode of “20/20.” I then tried to add a download of “About A Boy” (a movie I had stored, encoded by Handbrake). This triggered the existing “60 Minutes” episode to start over (for about the 5th time today). This time around, “60 Minutes” showed “Error downloading this item” at the end, which also seems to randomly happen.

Interestingly, the “20/20” episode does not seem to ever redownload – just “60 Minutes.”

Clean logs attached from both server and iOS…
PlexDebugInfo-hawkinsb-7.29-2010 (2022-02-23 15.42.05 -0500).zip (3.4 MB)
Plex Media Server Logs_2022-02-23_15-41-22.zip (3.0 MB)

[anon18523487]

Can you get me the xml info for that episode?

[hawkinsb]

@anon18523487 See attached!
143127.zip (1.8 KB)

[anon18523487]

You have the setting enabled to hide season folders. Can you turn that back on and see if that fixes the issue.

This was a known bug but should have been fixed. Let me know if turning seasons back on fixes this and I’ll have to see why this is still a bug. You might have found another edge case.

[hawkinsb]

@anon18523487 So I turned season folders back on at both the library level AND for each individual show in the library. I then removed all downloads from my device and started over.

At this point, I’m not seeing the downloads restart, so you may be onto something. I’ll keep you posted if I see the problem reoccur, but otherwise, I think you may have at least found the source of the problem.

Thanks!!

[bwermes]

@anon18523487 I seem to be having persistent download issues as well. Currently, I am remotely connected to my PMS, so I don’t think it is a DNS Rebinding issue.
I had selected one season of a TV Show and set it to download 5 Unwatched episodes. I left Plex open on my iPad for over a day and the content did not download.
Here are client & server logs. I did just update the server to 1.25.6.5577 this morning.

plex logs client & server.zip (6.2 MB)

[hawkinsb]

@hawkinsb

So I turned season folders back on at both the library level AND for each individual show in the library. I then removed all downloads from my device and started over.

At this point, I’m not seeing the downloads restart, so you may be onto something. I’ll keep you posted if I see the problem reoccur, but otherwise, I think you may have at least found the source of the problem.

Thanks!!

After 12 hours of playing on and off, I am no longer seeing my downloads cycle over and over. So something about turning back on the Season folders (and on each individual show) in my TV libraries definitely made the difference.

[anon18523487]

@bwermes Your logs show you started downloading The Expanse last night. Looks like the device went to sleep about an hour later while downloading so everything paused. The app woke back up around 6:30 but couldn’t find your server so it cancelled the downloads. The app became active again about an hour later at 7:20 am and restarted the downloads again. This is when you grabbed the logs. So I don’t technically see any errors. It looks like iOS closed Plex so nothing was happening during all that time you were waiting.

@hawkinsb Thanks for the confirmation. This issue with the hidden seasons should have been fixed so I’ll investigate why it’s still broken for you.

[bearer]

I just tried a windows client that have been out of use for a few months, it immediately started downloading three episodes of a show that hadnt been downloaded to my Macbook. Noticing it took a lot longer than it should have I looked at the data transfer stats, and three episodes of 8.36gb total have used 12.4gb of bandwith and Plex show finished 1 of 3 episodes. (Before that I was told the server was updated and the season folders were explicitly enabled on the server with no change in behaviour)

It’d be nice to avoid more months like February; deleting Plex app needs to clean up all download queues and temporary files - or you need to publish a how-to on how to clean up the residual stuff. When not even deleting the app solves the issue, its not great.

[Scott2211]

Oh man, thanks for this. I have this exact setup, pihole with unbound. Came across a reddit thread linking to this post trying to figure out why downloads worked remote but not locally and this worked immediately.

[Fullmakt]

About half way through the video is a good example of what’s going on. The download completes of an episode, and immediately restarts downloading the same episode. This normally happens FIVE times for EACH episode, causing bandwidth usage to be 5x of what is should be, and making downloads of multiple episodes take 5x longer time.

You can watch the episode already after the first download “pass”, so why does it continue to download it 4 times needlessly?

This is obviously a huge issue when you are on a payed data plan with limited bandwidth and quota! Not everyone is on a 1Gbit fiber link.
Bandwidth usage matters!

Enjoy the video!

New video by Påske Egget

[hawkinsb]

@Fullmakt

About half way through the video is a good example of what’s going on. The download completes of an episode, and immediately restarts downloading the same episode. This normally happens FIVE times for EACH episode, causing bandwidth usage to be 5x of what is should be, and making downloads of multiple episodes take 5x longer time.

You can watch the episode already after the first download “pass”, so why does it continue to download it 4 times needlessly?

Had this same issue in another thread and found a cause.

Plex for IOS infinite loop download problem (Feb 27 feedback problem, many users have confirmed the same problem, we paid for it, but it can't be used normally for a few months, please PLEX respond to this problem.)

I was having this issue in another thread, and we figured out that it was because I have the Seasons option set to “hide” for my TV library. [image] If you change this to “Show,” you have to do the following: Make sure the library is set to “Show” Make sure the individual shows within the library are set to “Show” (changing the library does NOT change all the shows – You have to edit the show and the option is under “Advanced”) [image] Delete all your downloads and start clean Whe…

[Fullmakt]

I have always had show seasons on for the library, and each and every show is grouped in seasons visually I did even try changing individual shows from library default to show. It made no difference.

[bearer]

The wasted time and bandwidth is annoying, but the inability to prevent Plex keeping downloading useless files is beyond annoying.

Not even deleting the Plex app and following the docs on deleting left overs affect the download queue that has been offloaded to the OS.

Uninstalling Plex Media Player | Plex Support seems to be out of date as the folder it refers to doesnt exist even when Plex is installed.

➜  ~ rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Player/
rm -r ~/Library/Caches/Plex\ Media\ Player/
rm -r ~/Library/Logs/Plex\ Media\ Player/
rm -r ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/tv.plex.Plex\ Media\ Player.savedState

rm: /Users/user/Library/Application Support/Plex Media Player/: No such file or directory
rm: /Users/user/Library/Caches/Plex Media Player/: No such file or directory
rm: /Users/user/Library/Logs/Plex Media Player/: No such file or directory
rm: /Users/user/Library/Saved Application State/tv.plex.Plex Media Player.savedState: No such file or directory
➜  ~

Please update the docs on uninstalling Plex to include cleaning up any lingering downloads asap.

Blocking the Plex server in my firewall just leads to the queue growing to infinity, some 500 extra temporary files pending download a day. I basically have to only use my MacBook when using Plex and keeping it shut down otherwise or it hogs the bandwidth for all other devices wanting to access the internet.

Plex is effectively holding my device (and home network) hostage! Not cool!

[bearer]

TestFlight announced new version of Plex media player; while it still has an endless backlog of phantom downloads to process it may seem like the new version just downloads two copies right off the bat, in parallel, instead of 5+ one after the other.

Close but no cigar.

[ApexAftermath]

Pretty sure this issue is what was causing my dad to get “max streams in use” for the last week despite him not showing any active streams or downloads.

Original post here Plex for IOS infinite loop download problem - #30 by ApexAftermath

[freakthemighty]

for me the brand new app store version did the job!
now i can download movies to my ios device.
and it just downloads it once.

thanks plex workers!!!

[freakthemighty]

just one download worked.
the next one stopped snd put out an error.

[Fullmakt]

It is still just as broke as before as far as I can see…