Server Version#: 1.41.2.9200
Player Version#: 4.11.2 (Plexamp for iOS)
Hello everyone!
A few weeks ago, I started using Plexamp as my primary music source. Most of the time, I stream music on my iPhone 15 running iOS 18.1.1 with the latest version of Plexamp installed.
I purchased the Lifetime Pass during Black Friday and would love to use the app regularly. Unfortunately, this major issue keeps occurring, which is really spoiling my experience with Plex.
I store only FLAC 44/16 music files on my NAS, and playback is set to occur directly from the local server. However, I’ve encountered a recurring issue: from time to time (without any clear pattern), my iPhone gets very hot, and the battery drains dramatically—sometimes as much as 10% every 5 minutes. In some cases, the music playback stops, and Plexamp shuts down unexpectedly.
I’ve already checked whether the issue might be related to caching settings, which I reset to the default, or to the FLAC files on the server. However, neither seems to be the cause.
EDIT: I’ve conducted several tests using my iPad Mini (7th generation), with the Plexamp settings identical to those on my iPhone. In this case, playing the same two albums for nearly two hours only resulted in about 4% battery usage.
Clearly, you have an issue with iOS on your phone.
You may have some malware on the phone so maybe, doing a factory reset on the phone is needed?
Or, it may be that Plexamp did not install 100% correctly on the phone. Try uninstalling Plexamp, power off the phone and then power it on again, then reinstall Plexamp.
Your Plexamp logs do not show anything alarming at all. Plexamp seems to be functioning properly from what I see in the logs. There are some warnings and the odd error, but nothing that screams serious issue!
The logs show a weird issue where Plexamp is requesting data over and over again. Unfortunately the logs are filled with the issue and I can’t see the source of it.
All I can tell is that it appears to be when you browsed into a playlist, organized by album. We’ll try to reproduce over here and fix.
I had read somewhere that malware can infect iOS and cause symptoms similar to what was described (high power usage etc.), it may have been an old article though.
If there were an anomaly during installation, that could lead to something not being set quite right, could it not?
Yeah I missed the loading thing completely, but I was looking for things that stood out, my bad
First, I want to sincerely thank you and trumpy81 for your effort and attention to my issue. I really appreciate that you’re taking the time to look into it. I would be very grateful if you could find a solution, as Plexamp isn’t reliably usable on my iPhone—my primary device for music playback—without the constant fear of rapid battery drain.
I’ve already tried reinstalling the app, but unfortunately, that didn’t solve the issue either.
I’ll try avoiding the use of playlists for now.
I hope you’ll have good news for me soon, so I can fully move away from streaming services and make the most of my new Plex Pass.
Here is a recent article regarding malware and high battery usage, published a month ago, it is not the article that I was thinking of, but it’s close enough:
I don’t think the issue that elan found, would be sufficient to cause the high battery drain you reported, so do check into the possibility of malware on your phone, just in case.
Of course, I could be barking up the wrong tree here, but it does not hurt to look into it at least.
Since elan is on the job, tracking down that bug he found, I am confident he will have a fix, soonish, fingers crossed, but I don’t think that explains the high battery usage, again, I may be wrong though.
In iOS somewhere, I believe you can check to see which apps are using the most battery, so keep an eye on that when the phone gets warm or you otherwise notice high battery usage.
I’ve spent the last 8 hours listening to music via Plexamp on the affected iPhone. Elan’s suggestion holds true: when I only play albums directly from the library view without using playlists, battery consumption drops significantly. With this approach, my iPhone 15 uses around 2-4% of battery per hour, whereas previously it was about 10% every 5 minutes.
I believe this clearly identifies the problem. I look forward to a future fix.
