I’m currently downloading everything that was previously synced with my mobile devices. (IPhone and iPad, both on the latest versions of both iOS and the Plex app)
I’m currently stumbling on a few issues or feature suggestions:
The transfer from synced to download could have been a lot smoother.
After enabling the ‘Enable new Downloads’ option in the settings I had to manually pick all the TV shows and Movies that were at that time synced, chose the correct settings and keep the apps open on all my devices to re-download everything that was already on my devices. It’s really time consuming and to me it seems like something that could have happened under the hood.
Plex Media Server intermittently stops during download, I noticed when I changed my transcoding settings the issue occurs less frequently.
With “Sync” there was only one concurrent conversion.
(Note: I’m running PMS on a Synology DS218+)
With sync we were able to “prioritise” downloads on web and pausing certain shows/movies in the sync tab of the app itself. Now everything seems to download at random.
I’d like to have an overview on which media is synced on with device (of my own account of course), like sync had on the web-application.
I’m missing a few posters for downloaded media. The poster-window just remains gray or shows the plex logo.
I’d love to have the option back to decide how many episodes to sync. Some tv shows (for example silent witness) always release two parted episodes. So 1-3-5 episodes are no use here. Also sometimes when bingewatching I’d like to sync 10 episodes at a time.
Background downloads is not (yet?) possible.
This is actually one of the most vital features for me, and the reason why i purchased a plex pass.
Since I watch my tv shows on multiple devices (Mac, Apple TV, iPad and iPhone) I’d like them to update my media on those other devices when a new episode is available (and they’re connected to the internet), without having to manually intervene.
It takes a lot of time to download my media (probably also caused by the limited hardware of my PMS server, my internet connection…), and having to keep the Plex at open on my devices means I (currently, during the first download) can’t use them for anything else.
I agree with most of these, and would add - can we have the ability to throttle or limit the number of simultaneous downloads. My family are currently all trying to download media ready for a holiday, and it’s killing the server.
Additionally, it took my devices almost 16hours to download media (40GB give or take) but I already had to remove half of it because of the unplayable media-bug.
When I removed and redownloaded a media file that was corrupted the issue persisted. (tumbling circle for 30 sec - 1 minute, notification popup “Something went wrong playing your media. Please try again.”
I’m not sure if it’s the correct way, but I think I was able to throttle or limit the simultaneous downloads by changing the “Maximum simultaneous video transcode” in the transcoder settings.
Is there a reason why the downloads are so extremely slow? Reminds me of what used to happen with Plexamp.
Using latest PMS on synology NAS and plex app on ios15 beta.
It was not possible to transfer from Sync. It’s a totally different system.
Plex Media Server intermittently stops during download
Need more details.
Now everything seems to download at random.
They should go in the order you chose them.
I’d like to have an overview on which media is synced on with device
Not possible. Downloads is controlled by the client so the server will not know what a device has. We are working to add history info on your server so you can see what was downloaded, but it won’t know if the content still exists on the device.
I’m missing a few posters for downloaded media
Need details. I have not seen this myself.
I’d love to have the option back to decide how many episodes to sync
I have been playing around with the downloads and overall it has been working well and I am already preferring it over sync.
I used to get all sorts of orphaned entries in the sync list on the server which were not on the devices and errors on the devices stating that I couldn’t sync because another user already synced content (when they did not have any content synced any more).
A couple of questions on downloads…
As there was with sync, are there going to be plans to allow for clearing/deleting all items in one action/button (i.e. in sync it is “delete all content”)? If not then cleaning out a device could be very tedious doing it item by item.
Are there plans to be able to multiselect and instead of just adding to playlists (the only option when multiselecting) be able to just download in bulk?
The reason I ask is that even though playlists do allow for organization, it does not allow for individual deletion on the downloads section within the playlist…the complete playlist would need to be removed. I believe this behavior was the same with sync but it would be nice to do a bulk download without a playlist.
@MovieFan.Plex thanks for the reply, I was able to track down my issue, at some point I had turned on “Automatically Adjust Quality”, that was impacting the player in use.
When I turned this off (automatically adjust quality), my new Downloads are playing back perfectly, both 264 and 265.
So no issues to report with iOS 15 Dev Beta 4, and as always beta beware & no expectations of support.
Noted that casting content is currently not supported, previously i was at least able to share the synced content with other Plex players on the same network. Is this still possible?
It’s good for more than one download; it’s a whole background session thing with task management and async messaging. It’s not trivial to implement, but it’s not complicated either.
If it fits for Plex, I agree that this would be really valuable. When I first download something, it’s easy enough to remember to keep Plex open.
But if I watch a few episodes offline (on an airplane), I probably won’t remember to open Plex (on the ground) and let it grab new unwatched episodes.
Thanks for the rework here. I was getting frustrated because the App seemed to transcode everything. Now after switching to the new Download Feature it only transcodes half of my media I understand that this is an known issue though I wait till it gets fixed. Already was looking at old threads where people started working on fixing the profile xml files.
Adding background downloads would be much appreciated. This would mean my library could be updated while my phone would be charged during the night.
For the most part, if you can filter or sort on something in a Plex Library then you can create a sync job from that.
You can choose one of the multiple views available for a library:
On Deck*
Is it possible to get this feature back with the new downloads feature on CW for TV Shows, that view is still clickable from the relevant library and was removed with the advent of CW.
Why are we missing the “All Unplayed Episodes” portion in Downloads? I travel a bit, so “Next 5 unplayed episodes” doesn’t really do it for me, and “All episodes” is eating up unnecessary space on my iPad. I’d really like to see the option from Sync make it’s way over here, otherwise it’s not very useful for TV.
As we’ve mentioned previously when people have asked, we will be adding more options for the number of items to download. Mind you, I don’t think you want to be going to Sydney right now anyway