Watch Together issues with tvOS

Plex Players
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For the last couple weeks I’ve been having strange issues with Watch Together, and it seems that those issues are primarily related to tvOS.

I have 2 TVs in the house with Apple TV 4K devices attached which my wife and I use to watch shows when we’re in different rooms working on different things, and for the last 15 or so months it’s been great. At the beginning of last week watch together just stopped working as it had in the past, with the failure occurring 100% of the time on the device / account that was invited to the WT session. To clarify, if TV A and my account started the WT session, TV B on my wife’s account would go to a black screen for a second or 2 and then return to the Plex dashboard, where TV A would play the show/movie. If TV B and her account started the WT session, TV A and my account would then “fail” with the black screen and return/dump to the dashboard.

I also did some further testing with an Android TV, iPad and windows desktop client. The tvOS device would fail with the black screen 100% of the time if it was the device joining the WT session. If it was the initiator of the WT session, the other devices were able to join the WT session and the video would play as expected.

I don’t have logs to upload at the moment, as I don’t know where those would be for watch together, or if they even exist for tvOS devices, Would the standard plex server logs have all of that information? If so, I can run some more tests and upload those log files for review to try and solve the issue.

Plex Server Version: 1.30.0.6486 (Updated today to see if it would fix the issue, but it didn’t)
TV A tvOS version: 16.1 (20K71)
TV A Plex version: 8.12.1

TV B tvOS version: 16.1 (20K71)
TV B Plex version: 8.12.1

Thanks!
Chris

1 Like
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I’m having the exact same issue, also with two Apple TVs, but across the internet. Does not matter which one hosts and which one joins, the one joining always instantly dumps back to the Plex home screen. It’s been happening for at least a week now and was working perfectly before that since the feature was introduced however long ago.

Both devices are on tvOS 16.1 (20K71). One is an Apple TV 4K (3rd gen) and the other is Apple TV 4K (1st gen). I haven’t had a chance to try it with other devices yet.

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Hi, thanks for reporting, I’ve passed this on to the engineering team.

2 Likes
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I’m experiencing this exact issue as well, with the same description of events and versions as OP. Seems to have started right around the time 8.12.1 for tvOS was released: Nov 30. iOS, Xbox and browser versions work for joining a session created by tvOS, but tvOS black screen 100% of the time.

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Hi, a fix for this will be in the next release 8.13

3 Likes
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Awesome. Thank you :slight_smile:

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According to Plex devs in the Plex for tvOS update thread, the version with the fix is now available: Plex for Apple TV - #138 by s_ios_dev

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