The iOS app appears to be a bit of a hot mess at the moment. I’m running into a few pain points that are really testing my patience, and I’m bordelrine about to give up on Plex altogether. Here are a few of the issues I’m frequently encountering (by frequently, I mean pretty much every single time I use the app):
Songs overlapping and playing on top of each other
Songs randomly stop playing halfway through
Song loads, but it will not play (ie pressing the play button does nothing)
I’d say on a good day I get to enjoy 2-3 songs before running into one of the issues above. Needless to say that makes the Plex app all but unusable at the current state.
There is also the issue with ever-changing and inconsistent features, that makes using Plex a frustrating experience:
Shuffle: Sometimes I can shuffle my downloaded music, sometimes I can’t. The feature is removed and re-added for no apparent reason. Shuffling songs by a single artist is not possible as far as I can tell
Assigning star ratings to songs has been inexplicably buried deep into the app on a recent app update, requiring multiple clicks to achieve what was once very straightforward. Ideally it should be possible to do it on the playback screen (there’s plenty of unused real estate), or restored back to the hamburger menu as it was before the update. Even more ideally we should be able to rate songs on the lock screen widget. I use a smart playlist to download any song I rate 4 or 5 stars and this recent update makes it really inconvenient to use it.
I feel as if Plex is trying to be too many things at once at the expense of its core functionality. A media player that is lacking at the most basic level (ie, media playing).
For reference, I’m running Plex server on a Synology DS920+ (I’m using the DSM7 package available on the Plex website). I’m using the latest Plex ios app on an iPhone 13.
On what version of iOS and the Plex client are you experiencing this? I know you wrote it’s the latest version… I just want to be clear which version that is for you
While I’m using Plexamp most of the time to play my music, I cannot seem to reproduce any of this when playing through the main Plex client app too.
I’m also experiencing “Songs overlapping and playing on top of each other” - it’s intermittent though. “Store Track Progress” & “Sweet Fades” are both disabled.
Store track progress, and sweet fades are disabled.
After some testing, it appears that you can shuffle songs from an artist by clicking on the orange “Play” button below the artist picture on the artist page. I’m happy to see that the feature is available, but perhaps the purpose of the button should be more explicit?
The issue with overlapping songs happens after a song (or songs) is skipped. I believe it affects downloaded music as well as streaming.
Dropping into AOL mode for a moment: “Me too!”.
I’ve experienced the overlapping-songs issue for the last few versions (currently using Plex 8.7.3 on an iPhone 12 running iOS 15.6.1).
It’s simple to replicate in my case - I start playing a song from my library, then after a few seconds, skip to another song. The original song will continue to play underneath the new one, at a very low volume. So low that it’s only consciously noticeable during quiet sections of the new track; the rest of the time it’s only subconsciously noticeable as a vague feeling of “this song doesn’t sound right”.
I first experienced this behavior when using Plex to stream music to my car audio over Bluetooth, and using the steering-wheel’s controls to skip to the next track. As such I wondered if it might be a car problem and not a Plex problem. However
older versions of Plex never had the problem
other audio sources on my phone (e.g. VLC) don’t have the problem,
I emphasize that have seen the issue when just listening directly to my phone and using the onscreen controls (i.e., no car connection at all).
I’m happy to provide further details if it’ll help fix this annoying issue.
Edit: For what it’s worth I’m using Plex Media Server v 1.20.4.3517. I know this is not the latest version; however, it works for me perfectly, and after my experiences with the iOS app, I’m definitely sticking to the principle of “if it ain’t broke…”.
If anyone has cast-iron evidence that updating my PMS will fix the overlapping audio issue, I’ll be happy to update.
I’m on the latest version and it’s still doing it. Like you said, it’s pretty low, I noticed it when I skipped tracks and the next track had silence and then some low speaking at the beginning. For me it accumulates, the quiet track was like 4 or 5 and when it started I was hearing the first 3 or 4 songs all playing together along with the current track. I usually use PlexAmp anyway, but I still like to use Plex sometimes.
