PMS is sending metadata to Android (mobile) but there is a problem in the translation

Plex Players Streaming Devices
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Server Version#: latest public
Player Version#: latest public

Hi support,

Myself and my friends have been having a hard time using the android app, I run a PMS on my windows PC, and there are some movie titles which my android app won’t access.

I have rounded the problem down to a metadata specific problem and android parsing the metadata provided by plex’s default agent.

If I change the topmost agent to local asset metadata then add an .nfo within the movie, it loads in android without a problem, but if I revert back to plex’s Plex pass movie scanner agent, the match doesn’t load within the android app.

I have tried fixing the match, I have tried analysing the movie, I have tried cleaning bundles, optimising databases, restarting the server, clearing the android apps cache, and data, and uninstalling the app and reinstalling it, and refreshing the metadata at movie and library levels.
The only fix I have found so far is to add a .nfo to the movie folder and change library agent priorities, which is less than ideal to perform in say a remote access situation for specific titles giving us these problems.

The latest movie title I will refer to at present is The Old Guard 2. (2025), and according to Plex logs the metadata is being fetched within milliseconds, and being sent to the android client successfully, but the android client will hang for around 45 seconds to produce an black oops error screen with options to go back or retry.

Would it be possible to look at this translation of metadata across the platforms, to see if this error can be resolved.

When using a web browser this metadata shows without a problem.

I am willing to further assist with resolving this issue but I only have access to, Plex android mobile, Plex media server windows on todays latest update. Plex frome Samsung TV app store, Plex on Nvidia shield, and Plex htpc from windows app store.

I can also confirm that this movies metadata parses correctly albeit slower on the Samsung Plex app, I must go to sleep for my work commitments but I can help investigate further should my assistance be needed.

Many thanks

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Plex’s default movie agent does not read any .nfo files whatsoever.
Plex’s default movie agent does not have any options which can be re-ordered.

The default agent for movies in Plex is called “Plex Movie”. (without any additions to that name, like “Legacy”).
The things you can reorder and configure under “Settings - [server name] - Agents (Legacy)” do only affect legacy agents. That is: agents which are based on Python and which are NOT the default anymore. These agents will also be gone from Plex in the not-so-distant future.

Don’t expect any large changes in the metadata of any media item to update instantly on all clients – particularly if said client is already displaying the pre-play page of that item.
Your best chance at a quick update is to leave the preplay page, or library view. Then change the metadata on the server, then enter the preplay page again.

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That is the problem, without reverting to a legacy agent the preplay screen doesn’t fully load in. Even though the PMS logs say the metadata was retrieved and sent to the client. The client cannot read the sent metadata, and then hangs before producing an error screen.

Using a legacy agent seems to be the only fix right now for android users but this is undesirable when the metadata is being retrieved properly on other platforms.

If this is a problem with the android metadata retrieval mis-translating, we may as well be advised to move our failing content to a new library which uses a legacy agent exclusive from the main library where the content was better suited and works on other platforms such as Samsung TV’s Plex or Nvidia shield’s Plex.

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Did you create a rather large number of collections on your server?
Do you use external 3rd-party tools for media management?

Have you ever performed a database repair/optimization of your server? DBRepair/Windows at master · ChuckPa/DBRepair · GitHub

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I can perform a database repair, to see if this improves things, I have used radarr* to rename the files, and Plex matches the file to the correct metadata without additional input. I have not created any collections but rather PMS has made its own collections per library.

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What I’ll do tomorrow, I’ll remove the collections option, to rule that out, and perform a dbrepair as per the links provided. Thank you I’ll report back in 24h

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In response to your questions I have takent he following actions:

I went into all my libraries and Disabled the " Minimum automatic collection size "

I also checked the " Hide collections but show their items "

I moved my databases to c:/ and ran repairdb for windows

I moved my databases back to my default d:/ location and started PMS

I ran an optimize database task, and a further clean bundles task.

This did not solve the issue however

I did notice that I still had collections within libraries, and I manually selected them and deleted them

Immediate result on Android,… The PrePlay screen is functioning properly. Thank you for your help.

Do you know whether collections support will be extended to streaming devices in the future?
&
What is the cause this such problem on android?

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We have now established with high certainty, that the issue has probably nothing to do with the server, but is a bug in the new Android Plex client.

This client (version numbers “2025.x.x”) is a complete rewrite, compared to the old with version numbers “10.x.x”. As such it can can still be missing features and/or contain bugs that the old one didn’t have.
I will report this bug to the developers.

1 Like
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Thank you for your time, and for elevating this matter wise one!

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