Plex needs to improve the downloads feature

Plex Players Mobile Devices
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42

It was a decision made by the company. There is a feature request to increase/remove that limit. Go vote for it. Download entire library or playlist in Plexamp

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43

That can be the case, yes. But ive tried using wifi and 5G abroad, and since plex does not have a continue download function (which you also need when switching fron5G to wifi and back) you end up in endless loops.

Im more than happy to have you test my local setup, using my ios client by the way. Just contact me.

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44

Actually, it should resume. There are some situations where it cannot resume, or there may be a bug somewhere in this logic, which is why we need logs to diagnose.

Im more than happy to have you test my local setup

No need. Just reproduce the issue then get me logs.

45

@anon18523487 i appreciate you looking into this, but if thereā€™s not already a slew of technical people doing a deep dive into this issue, itā€™s more of the same that weā€™ve gotten from Plex support. By this point you should have scores of logs from clients and servers that show the extent of this problem. We need an announcement from management that this is a major priority for your engineering team, or people will dismiss your efforts as futile.

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46

Yeah, or just like me start trying Emby or Jellyfin als an alternative.

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47

If I may just add also. With the old Download function, you could control what was to be synchronised to mobile devices via the server (PMS). This made things far easier when dealing with multiple devices and even remote devices (remote family members).

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48

Nope. We have lots of reports but only a few have provided logs. To be clear, this is not 1 specific problem. There are many factors that can prevent Downloads from working properly. Weā€™re trying to fix what we find, but if we canā€™t find the issue, we need more logs to help narrow it down.

49

Feel free to connect to me to obtain logs. I feel however that the biggest issues are:

  • no background downloading in ios
  • no resume after interruption
  • there seem to be speed issues on 3G/4G/5G
2 Likes
50

Plenty of logs has been provided over the years, yet this issue remains at scale. Just take a look at this thread how long downloads has been a major issue: Plex iOS Download feature is unusable as it does not ever complete a download - #217 by MovieFan.Plex

I can totally relate to the sentiment of pointlessness given the lack of improvement on the issue, despite all the logs provided. I know some of the posters in the thread i linked has done just that. Given up all hope that plex will ever manage to fix this issue, it just doesnā€™t seem to get the propper resource allocation to be able to resolve it.

I do hope itā€™s not the case, and you do fix it. But itā€™s not from lack of logs. There are multiple threads over the years on this excaxt issue, whatever multiple causes there may be, there is an abundance of logs. And like many say, itā€™s easy to reproduce over cellular/slow network and ios devices.

My 2 cent.

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51

Then maybe change the crash report feature to include the information you need? Iā€™m sure at times I submit 10+ crash reports daily until giving up all together. I did initially submit logs, situation has only deteriorated and at present even if a download succeeds client just hangs on playback so yeah, if I didnt have a lifetime pass Iā€™d cancel the service a long time ago.

(Oh, forgot to add - maybe you shouldnā€™t make it sound like its the users fault problems donā€™t get fixed - i doubt it will motivate users to help you. Just sayin)

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52

Iā€™m aware of that thread, I was quite involved in there. Most of the issues found at that time were due to DNS rebinding, which has since been fixed. Weā€™ve also made quite a number of other fixes over the years too. So yes, overall there have been bugs with Downloads for quite some time, but we are actively fixing them.

I definitely wasnā€™t trying to say itā€™s a userā€™s fault, but we do ask that you hep us help you by providing logs. With so many different combinations of devices, servers, and network setups, a bug can be hard to identify. We do test for this stuff ourselves. I use Downloads myself quite often and any bug I can reproduce, I file with the team to get looked at. So itā€™s not all on users to report bugs.

53

lol, was that the part you felt needed a response the most?

fix the process instead of defending status quo. client canā€™t even download the logfiles - had to come to the forum and be told to use the ā€œshareā€ feature to get the logs.

why canā€™t the crash report supply you with the needed information?

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54

Crash reports go to our devs directly. They use those reports to look at the crash not for bug reports. Support staff like myself donā€™t see these reports so we need users to provide them here.

55

This is again defending status quo - not fixing the process; about as helpful as submitting the crash reports.

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56

Stop sending crash reports and send me your client logs when Downloads doesnā€™t work. Crashes are a different animal and are looked at by different people.

57

Tell me how and where I can upload and Ill help rightaway.

58

Download 1 item, grab server logs (<- click for instructions) and iOS logs (<- click for instructions) and attach them to your next comment. Let me know what you tried to Download and the result. Donā€™t say it failed, thatā€™s a given :smile:. Provide some details.

59

@anon18523487 Watch linus tech tips latest videoā€¦

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60

LOL - yeah, I get that things wont change. Good luck.

(and I guess the crashes are by design if they are not bug?)

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61

hehe way to tell him.