Hi,
i have a new problem introduced with the last plexamp update. I am running plexamp via the appimage AUR (en) - plexamp-appimage on endeavouros. When I start plexamp it cant play music. The playbar will jump one second forward and back. I can solve this by going into the settings and switching the output device from default to something else and back to default.
Afterwards everything is fine.
You haven’t included Plexamp logs, but this sounds like an issue with the audio subsystem on that Linux distro. The default audio output device should generally work.
I am seeing the same thing recently on nixos with the pipwire audio subsystem, this wasn’t an issue until a couple months ago but now on multiple devices I have to swap from the currently selected audio device (usually default) to a different one (either ‘pipewire sound server’ or an actual output) to get music to actually start playing. This happens every time I reopen plexamp, open first time, music doesnt play, swap to a different device, it plays. Open again, audio doesn’t play, swap back to default, it plays.
Heres my logs, though after a quick scan I didn’t see anything myself that looked relevant
Plexamp2.log (163.4 KB)
I am seeing exact same thing as OP, I’m running Ubuntu
This is still an issue, 3 months after it was first reported. I agree that “the default audio output device should generally work,” but, obviously, as reported by multiple users across different distros (I use Debian), it does not. It worked before, but not since the most recent update. Ergo, the update is at fault.
Bump. This is really frustrating and seems to be getting worse, today I can’t get plexamp to actually play at all and have been forced to listen to music in the plex webapp instead which is a much worse experience. What is going on here? Does plex just not care about plexamp anymore?
Dupes of this thread also with no attention:
With the 4.12.4 AppImage via AUR I seem to have the same problem in Omarchy. I usually restart Plexamp and then it just works
We care about this, just haven’t had the time to look into it.
hi all, I am having similar issues with plexamp on my linux desktops as well. I’ve encountered this on both Linux Mint & CachyOS with flatpak plexamp, as well as on Garuda linux with the appimage (either sourced from the plex website or the AUR). I’ve attached today’s plexamp.log.
I’ll try to describe some of the situation as well:
If I open plexamp and press play, it’s about a 50/50 chance that I will be able to hear music or else I will get the playback bar jumping from 0:00 to 0:01 back to 0:00 on a loop until it gives up and pauses.
If I then swap the audio device between “Default,” “Default Audio Device,” and “Eversolo DAC-Z8: USB Audio,” playback will usually start working on one of these, but it is not consistent which one it actually seems to always work with. If that fails, closing plexamp and reopening and trying the above again, or just waiting a minute or two will usually resolve the issue.
If plexamp music starts working, then when I go to a web browser and youtube and try to play a video with sound unmuted, the video will not start, but if I select the youtube playback mute option and then try to play a video, it will start. Also, if I go to KDE System Settings, Sound Settings and do a test of left/right channels in my output device, if plexamp is playing music, the test will fail until I first close plexamp entirely and then wait a while and then try to test the left/right channels again. It is as if plexamp has a “audio device monopolization” feature that is grabbing and holding a device more than I want it to. Honestly that is pretty cool when I want it, I have used some music players before where I wanted the music player to take exclusive control of my audio device, but I do not always want that.
Anyway, my uneducated guess is that somehow plexamp is seizing exclusive control of an audio device and whatever issue or misbehavior is occuring is somehow related to this.
A pretty reliable issue that comes up is this:
1 - play something in plexamp, playback works
2 - pause playback in plexamp, pausing works
3 - play something else with audio on my computer like a youtube video
4 - try to start plexamp playback again – broken wont work anymore
my system’s journalctl shows errors that look like this when plexamp is playing audio and i try (and fail) to use KDE System Settings - Sound “test” front left, front right to hear the voice that says “right” or “left’
Feb 09 17:18:04 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:04 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:04 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:04 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: pw.node: (alsa_output.usb-MQA_Eversolo_DAC-Z8_0-00.analog-stereo-60) suspended → error (Start error: Device or resource busy)
Feb 09 17:18:09 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:09 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:09 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: spa.alsa: ‘front:0’: playback open failed: Device or resource busy
Feb 09 17:18:09 veltas-prime pipewire[4028]: pw.node: (alsa_output.usb-MQA_Eversolo_DAC-Z8_0-00.analog-stereo-60) suspended → error (Start error: Device or resource busy)
Then, once I stop playback in plexamp and close plexamp and try to do the channel test again, it works fine and i hear the voice telling me front left, front right.
All that said – while I absolutely love plexamp and prefer to use it, i do have the web browser app available as a fallback or workaround which works fine.
Plexamp.log (58.1 KB)
Plexamp.1.log (190.1 KB)
Plexamp.2.log (144.7 KB)
Plexamp.3.log (144.9 KB)
Unfortunately probably not going to get fixed, been so long now 
I have exactly the same problem on NixOS.
This is really frustrating and did not find any fixes. It seems to be related to their BASS driver (or whatever that is):
Feb 12, 2026 11:17:12.241 [0xefbf16c0] ERROR - BASS: Error [BASS_ChannelSetPosition(m_mixer, 0, BASS_POS_BYTE)] - 5
Feb 12, 2026 11:17:12.241 [0xefbf16c0] ERROR - BASS: Error [BASS_ChannelPause(m_mixer)] - 5
Feb 12, 2026 11:17:12.241 [0xefbf16c0] INFO - BASS: Pausing audio output (after delay: 1)
Feb 12, 2026 11:17:12.241 [0xefbf16c0] INFO - BASS: Suspending player.
For me, the only fix, is to restart pipewire service, and even that do not work all the time.
The problem is easy to replicate:
Between this issue, and the global media key issue that forces lots of users to stay on 4.2.4, this is really unacceptable to me since there is no real alternative when using Plex as a source. Playing with the plex web interface is really bad compare to Plexamp.
I don’t have much hope in the team to try to fix all those issues and make Plexamp work correctly on Linux. Please prove me wrong @elan .
Until them I’m exploring alternative like Navidrome where at least the protocol is open and so it is possible to build your own app.
I would love to continue using Plexamp because the experience is great, but only great when it works (like on iOS).
UPDATE:
I set up Navidrome and the AudioMuseAI plug and it works great. And I’m ready to ditch Plexamp.
I now have the equivalent of the sonic analysis from Plexamp to generate radios or the DJ Guest feature. It even works on ARM64 for the sonic analysis (compared to Plex).
For the linux client I’m using Feishin, it’s pretty good, not as nice looking as Plexamp, but it outputs sounds consistently, which I guess (at least to me) it ‘s a nice feature to have for a music player.
In the meantime, I’m building my own player that communicate with Navidrome, it’s quite easy to do as all the APIs are well documented.
For iOS, I use Arpeggi, which is ok to me.
Apologize for how long this has taken, we’re actively looking into it now.
I am sincerely relieved to see your reply.
Thank you for all the work in Plexamp - even with this sort of issue it is still by far my favorite & most used player app.
Definitely seeing this myself as well on linux.
It works fine but if I say pause music, go open something on firefox/chrome and come back PlexAmp gets stuck going from say 0:13 to 0:14. If I switch devices in PlexAmp’s settings it’s normally enough for it to start playing or sometimes I’ll have to switch to the next device.
Plexamp Flatpak/AppImage - Does not start playback until audio device switched woohoo it’s fixed! Got the latest appimage 4.13.1 today. Thank you Elan
