Plex Mobile App - Casting bugs

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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I have been using the Plex server and Plex Mobile app for 3+ years. Over the past 2-3 years the casting feature has been plagued with bugs.
I’m currently using a Google Pixel 6a, I used to have a Pixel 3a and had the same issues. My wife has an identical phone to me and has the same issues I do.
Of course, since this has been occurring for 2-3 years, updating the app version isn’t the fix. The app is fully up to date (10.5.0.4996). I get all the updates as soon as possible in hopes that they finally resolved these basic issues. I do the same thing for the Plex Server, I update it as soon as the update is available in hopes that they fixed these things.

Problems:

  1. Casting issues I’ve observed over the years (these occur at least every few days):
    • List of casting devices is empty
    • When casting to a device it won’t connect.
    • When casting to a device it says it connected but Chromecast never shows it connected.
      • When in this state, if I attempt to play something the Plex app says the show is something
        like 14 hours long and the time left is something like -54 hours and 23 min (and counting)
        but, of course, nothing shows on the Chromecast device.
    • It will connect to my casting device but when I press play it simply does nothing.
    • It will connect to my casting device but when I press play it will say something along the lines
      of “Media not present”.

Today I encountered a new bug which gave me a clue that a developer might find useful.

  • After changing my access point and factory resetting Chromecast and setuping as a new device with a different name, I went to cast to it from the Mobile Plex app. In the “cast to” device list it showed my old Chromecast name AND my new Chromecast name but the old one doesn’t actually exist anymore. However I can successfully connect to the ghost Chromecast device (Of course it won’t actually play anything though). The YouTube app does not show both but only the new (correct) name.
    Naturally, I hit the refresh button in the Plex Cast-to device list but that didn’t do a thing. I had to close the app, and go to App Settings in the Android OS then select Plex and clear cache.
    Suddenly Plex works fine again. This is typically the fix for all the other issues as well so clearly Plex’s cache is getting corrupt.

Edit: Changed “Error” to “Bug”

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I was hoping to add to this if I may. I have experienced all these issues as well as my wife. We both have Pixel phones (6 & 7) running Android 14, Plex app is up to date as of today. We are casting from a NAS running a Plex server which I also keep up to date and casting to a Chromecast.

Alongside your issues we are also experiencing another.

  • After casting/watching something and turn the TV off - the Plex app will turn the TV back on randomly sometimes in the middle of the night or 10 minutes after we have turned off the TV. Sometimes it doesn’t do it at all, others it will do it multiple times in a row.

The way that we have found to fix this issue is by:

  1. Ensuring Plex is not casting/connected to the Chromecast anymore.
  2. This one is more important - Viewing the “Active Apps” list or “Background apps” list and forcing Plex to stop if it is still running. Plex sometimes continues running in the background even when it’s closed via the apps list and Casting has ended.

I hope this can help resolve some bugs. I seriously considered buying a lifetime subscription this Black Friday as it was a great deal but I have only been using Plex for a year now and there’s some hindrances holding me back.

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Having the same issue here, where Plex is randomly turning the TV on sometime after casting is complete and stopped. It’s freaking my wife out haha.

More than happy to provide more information to help isolate what’s happening.

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