I tested yesterday, hoping something had changed. Still broken. I wonder why Plex devs were replying, and then went dark.
Yeah, this still exists in the latest version. Presumably, this means that the underlying Google libraries they have to compile against are still exhibiting the bug, and I know Google is not super-responsive to externally-reported niche bugs like this unless it ends up being a major security vulnerability.
In the meantime, Iād love to hear that the Plex devs are maybe just looking at a workaround. In my case, for example, I have Smart Playlists that easily exceed the 500 song limit. It would be awesome if I could just ālimitā their size at any single time to 500 songs and know that it would work in the car. That wouldnāt resolve the bug for others, but Iām never in the car long enough that I care to be limited to only 500 songs in a playlist. Maybe they have some other creative ideas about how they can still function mostly as intended despite the bug in the Google library?
As for why the Plex devs stopped responding, they were getting some rather heated attacks in this thread. I canāt blame them for dropping it. Plus, the thread has become an ad for Yatse, which is just sleazy since it really doesnāt compare in functionality to Plex, and doesnāt even help with long playlists at all since it doesnāt even expose your Plex playlists.
In the meantime, I am still forcing my phone to stay back on the old release of Plex: https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/plex-inc/plex/plex-7-10-0-8875-release/
Itās really buggy in a few frustrating ways, but it can at least play my smart playlists.
-N
Re: Yatse. I donāt think itās all āsleazyā for people to share a workaround to access Plex content via Android Auto. You are right it does not show playlists. But at least I can see a list of artists and albums using it. I canāt do that with the latest version of Plex.
Iām just appreciative someone shared that workaround, and I hope one day I wonāt need it because Plex has fixed its integration with Android Auto.
Perhaps a poor choice of words on my part. Since I had to pay for Yatse just to try it and find out it didnāt do playlists, I was bothered by it.
Iām always wary of people shilling for other paid products in a competitorās forum. In the context of why Plex stopped posting in this thread, itās understandable.
-N
Well, people are not happy (heated) because a feature that we paid money to use, and altered our cars to be able to use, stopped working. Then a non-convincing answer was given, blaming google, for something that worked and still does in an old version of the app? Itās tough when every other app works properly displaying playlists, and long lists, and Plex does not.
Then going dark and ignoring users for months on end. I get it, we could not possible understand how complicated it isā¦ SOā¦of course people are going to try and find a work around. We want to use this in our cars. We build everything around Plex music, and it does not work as intended. Itās not too much to ask to drop in here and give an explanation. Do we need to abandon this? Is there a fix coming?
Edit: I donāt think itās āUnderstandableā They have a job, we paid them.
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This is really fun ā¦
I appointed Yatse only to show that the case of long lists
it is a false problem because the albums (which are shown on Yatse) go well beyond the limit of 500 items. Never talked about playlists (which I have never used) and as for advertising, if you look on the forum, the developer himself does it.
If you didnāt want to spend the 4 coffees just go to the appās website or forum and find all the details.
Amazing that the developers of Plex get irritated if we propose alternative solutions ā¦ as I said before I suspect that in their cars they use Carplay and Prism ā¦ it is from December 2018 that I have reported issues that have not been resolved or have got worse should I also defend them?
Iāll have to try on my system today. I gave up on Plex for AA as well.
I could reliably boot my phone, use Plex exactly 1 time and then it would go into this stalled mode trying to load a playlist.
Large Libraries are a No-Go for sure.
I also went back to just playing music via bluetooth since thatās been rock solid. Go figure.
And ā I also had another thread where a dev replied and asked me to get logs - which I did. When I asked where I should make them available, the dev never replied. (went MIA)
Anyway - Iāll try this today now that Iāve see updates to this thread and report back.
UPDATE: Nope. Still breaks the same way. One use after a phone reboot ā and then after a connection cycle (car off/on or unplug/plug-in) the unit just stalls trying to fetch data.
Those who appreciate the work of developers recommend staying at a nine-month old version 
Got a version number and APK location to side-load this old version?
That would be interesting to install and see if the current problem disappears.
https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/plex-inc/plex/plex-7-10-0-8875-release/
back to the future
Is there an offical annoncement from Plex from what they have abandon Plex Music for Android Auto? After 9 month without doing anything or at least try if they did, i think we can say that this is long gone?
I didnāt find any documenation on what Plex have try to fix the issue or try anything tu resolve the issue except at the begenning of that threath a guy named jesusmc who went silence very quick after many complain about the current issue.
Yep, and this is the important answer that we never got.
Itās totally believable to me that this is a bug introduced by the newer Google API library, but either the library was adjusted to prefer another mechanism for longer lists, or the library has a bug. If itās got a bug, was it reported so that maybe we can push on Google for an update?
-N
For the spinning circle issue, it seems a regression introduced a couple of days ago.
I raised this issue as a new thread in the beta forums and there was some brief discussion around it. What I was told by jesusmc is that there is no way to display more than 500 items in a list, and there also isnāt any way to make multiple calls or multiple pages in the new Android Auto, so the devs arenāt quite sure how to deal with lists longer than 500 items and were discussing internally.
After that things went completely silent again though, and itās been more than a month. I think itās pretty embarrassing that a major bug like this has been left in a production product so long, especially when an easy workaround (revert to the 7.10.8875 method until a longer-term solution is found) exists.
To be fair though, I think the āspinning circleā issue in the post you quoted actually is a different issue and a regression. In the latest beta, I cannot load any Plex content in AA at all. Immediately upon loading I get an infinite spinning circle and canāt even get to the main menu items. This is a separate issue than the 500+ list item spinning circle, and is and issue that was in earlier betas that got fixed.
If this is true, how do other app makers handle it?
No clue, but there are clearly ways to make it work.
Aside from reverting to the old functionality, one other suggestion from the beta thread was to allow at least Playlists to be played or shuffled from the playlist item rather than making people have to navigate inside the playlist and pick a track. This would at least get long playlists functional.
If you read the whole thread I was referring to something else ā¦ and he either doesnāt read what has in front of his nose or like I said he uses us as a tree to piss the dog.
I listed all the issues that have been tormenting us for almost 1 year and he brings out what happens with the latest beta ā¦ oh pleaseā¦
It certainly it ridiculous that this has gone on this long, and frankly even more ridiculous that programmers donāt know what to do about it. Itās simple. Either catch the exception or test for the limit before trying to lose a too large list. Additionally, start out with āPlay Allā and āSearchā options at the top. Done.
Other apps have worked around the AA limitations. Yatse, mentioned earlier in this thread, certainly has. I can see a list of artists, albums, and recently added albums in my Plex library using it via AA.
In fact we should start from this assumption: other apps do NOT have Plex issues (resume playback, folders that do not open ā¦ do you need anything else?) If I were a developer I would ask myself why ā¦
