# Plexamp using massive amounts of data on cellular despite settings **URL:** \ **Category:** Plex Labs\ **Tags:** plexamp, android-auto\ **Created:** [November 17, 2024, 3:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749 "2024-11-17T15:44:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![arafel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@arafel2](https://forums.plex.tv/u/arafel2)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2024, 3:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/1 "2024-11-17T15:44:08Z")
Server Version#: 1.41.2.9200 Player Version#: 4.11.2 I have remote wifi and cellular networks set to transcode everything above 192kbps to 128kbps opus, yet plexamp used ~1gb of data yesterday (Nov. 16) in roughly 40 tracks. All playback was through Android Auto. So far for the month I’m north of 5gb, all of it from plexamp. [quality settings screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/FboqPL0) [cache settings screenshot](https://imgur.com/a/mQTY5He) [Share Debug Logs.zip](https://forums.plex.tv/uploads/short-url/pGJKd2moG9obsqiVW6hPZBqo0R.zip) (348.5 KB) ---
**Author:** ![BanzaiInstitute](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/banzaiinstitute/32/293273_2.png) [@BanzaiInstitute](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BanzaiInstitute)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2024, 6:04pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/2 "2024-11-17T18:04:02Z")
Is it possible that Plexamp started on wifi – like, in your garage – and then switched to mobile data as you drove away? I had a big data spike recently that lined up with a network switch. Like you, I was configured so it shouldn’t have happened. Elan even looked at my logs and could not find evidence that Plex mistakenly chose mobile data for the tracks it was downloading. Nonetheless, my phone warned me about unusual data usage from Plexamp a minute after I hit the road, so _something_ went wrong. (My mobile data is extremely, stupidly expensive, I never use it for streaming.) ---
**Author:** ![arafel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@arafel2](https://forums.plex.tv/u/arafel2)\ **Post date:** [November 17, 2024, 9:30pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/3 "2024-11-17T21:30:23Z")
That’s possible, most of the time I use plexamp is in the car and I drive through my wifi coverage when I leave the house. I don’t know if that’s the whole story though, yesterday’s spike happened after I’d been off my LAN for about 20ish minutes. ---
**Author:** ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 6:44pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/4 "2024-11-18T18:44:44Z")
It’s hard to see exactly what happened but e.g. at 2:31 we switched to cellular. At 2:37 the cache decided to do a cleanup and nuked a bunch of files. After that it downloaded some Opus from the server. Note that pre-caching isn’t a guarantee of not using cellular data, it just makes it less likely. In your case you ran into the bad luck of the cache needing to do a cleanup and some of those files you pre-cached were nuked. I’ll have a look and see if we’re properly sorting the cache files, as it _should_ be deleting the ones least recently used. (In this case technically they may not have been used yet.) ---
**Author:** ![BanzaiInstitute](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/banzaiinstitute/32/293273_2.png) [@BanzaiInstitute](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BanzaiInstitute)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 7:11pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/5 "2024-11-18T19:11:27Z")
Thanks for the additional info! Anything you can do to maintain a brick wall between wifi and cellular data would be appreciated. If I have configured Plexamp to limit the use cellular data, and that means I can’t play something, that’s actually _ideal_. Some of us weirdos pay per byte and even if an unexpected download only costs a few dollars, it is one of those things that is aggravating out of proportion to the actual injury, know what I mean? ---
**Author:** ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 7:26pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/6 "2024-11-18T19:26:34Z")
Both Android and iOS allow disabling cellular data on a per-app basis, why not use that? ---
**Author:** ![arafel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@arafel2](https://forums.plex.tv/u/arafel2)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 8:17pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/7 "2024-11-18T20:17:19Z")
My issue isn’t that it’s using cellular, but that for some reason it’s using ~5x the data it should for 128kbps, even if plexamp chached the full 40 tracks on cellular that should be less than 200mb rather than ~1gb. ---
**Author:** ![BanzaiInstitute](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/banzaiinstitute/32/293273_2.png) [@BanzaiInstitute](https://forums.plex.tv/u/BanzaiInstitute)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 8:19pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/8 "2024-11-18T20:19:19Z")
I actually didn’t know that, I will check it out. It may not be in my OS, my phone is old. EDIT: You can only restrict background data use. There is no way in my OS to restrict mobile data per app at all times. ---
**Author:** ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 8:39pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/9 "2024-11-18T20:39:28Z")
> [@arafel2](#): > > for some reason it’s using ~5x the data it should for 128kbps That doesn’t make sense to me, and there’s no evidence of it repeatedly downloading things (beyond the cache clearing episode). ---
**Author:** ![arafel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@arafel2](https://forums.plex.tv/u/arafel2)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 9:32pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/10 "2024-11-18T21:32:09Z")
Me neither, but it’s happened repeatedly in the last couple months - here’s what my Nov usage looks like: [Daily data usage](https://imgur.com/a/5fUGtZw) [Data usage by app](https://imgur.com/a/g7YKZ07) This is all listening through android auto - I promise I don’t drive that much lol. ---
**Author:** ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 10:55pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/11 "2024-11-18T22:55:27Z")
For what it’s worth I just found a bug whereby recently accessed content might be deleted by a cache purge which will be fixed in the next release. However, it wouldn’t typically cover just-cached content as that would show up as new and be left alone. Not that your cache size is pretty small, 512MB, which is only around 9 hours of audio for Opus (and you’d likely have FLAC in the cache from WiFI usage). Make it larger and you’ll have fewer issues like this generally. ---
**Author:** ![arafel2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc79bd/32.png) [@arafel2](https://forums.plex.tv/u/arafel2)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2024, 11:10pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/12 "2024-11-18T23:10:15Z")
I’ll give that a try, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![jimbob100101](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jimbob100101/32/298600_2.png) [@jimbob100101](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jimbob100101)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 7:50am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/13 "2024-11-19T07:50:19Z")
Would it be possible to have a setting to choose to always transcode regardless of network? ---
**Author:** ![elan](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/elan/32/5_2.png) [@elan](https://forums.plex.tv/u/elan)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 10:05am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/14 "2024-11-19T10:05:49Z")
change your quality settings ---
**Author:** ![jimbob100101](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jimbob100101/32/298600_2.png) [@jimbob100101](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jimbob100101)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 10:26am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/15 "2024-11-19T10:26:00Z")
Only works on _remote_ WiFi and mobile, no? I meant simply _always_ transcode ---
**Author:** ![OttoKerner](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/ottokerner/32/10079_2.png) [@OttoKerner](https://forums.plex.tv/u/OttoKerner)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 11:46am UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/16 "2024-11-19T11:46:56Z")
There is a separate quality setting for WiFi. ---
**Author:** ![jimbob100101](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/plex/user_avatar/forums.plex.tv/jimbob100101/32/298600_2.png) [@jimbob100101](https://forums.plex.tv/u/jimbob100101)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2024, 12:34pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/17 "2024-11-19T12:34:09Z")
There is a setting for wifi but it suggests it only affects _remote_ networks “Playback - Quality - Ethernet or Wi-Fi - Music above this bitrate will convert when on _remote_ network” I’m just asking for an option to always transcode whether local, remote, or in space ---
**Author:** ![system](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/plex/original/3X/2/a/2acb9765406f63293d357b4ec509ec39aa28f2ad.png) [@system](https://forums.plex.tv/u/system)\ **Post date:** [February 17, 2025, 12:35pm UTC](https://forums.plex.tv/t/plexamp-using-massive-amounts-of-data-on-cellular-despite-settings/895749/18 "2025-02-17T12:35:04Z")
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