I ran into this issue today. Wasn’t sure if you wanted me to create a new thread, or stick with this one since it appears to be the same or similar issue.
I use Plex as my source and all of my music is downloaded to my phone. Been using the app for a few weeks when mobile, with no issues (plays offline files only). Today I drove about 25 mins to work and got a notification that I’d used about 600 MB of data via this app. I see that I’m on version 3.0.0a now and I’m not sure if/when it updated from a prior version, as I had no reason to note that before – I’m guessing that this may be related to the issue.
I have “wifi only downloads” toggled on, and under the Plex media provider I’ve toggled “wifi only” under “advanced” to on. I can see that all 2399 of my songs are cached on the phone under “manage offline files.”
I was able to reproduce the issue with wifi off; I can see that my data usage by this app is increasing as I play through a couple songs. I’ve attached logs. Thanks!
You should always start a new thread as each issue is different.
From the logs I can see that the local cached filed are played so no reason it use so many data.
But I can’t see the switch to cellular so the app sends status update to the server and it should not, I hope Samsung did not break something new in their Android 13 release
To be sure can you export your settings and upload them here (there’s no private info in them for now) with the password and a screenshot of the Plex provider configuration.
And if possible a more detailed repro did you toggle the wifi off when the app was on or killed or in background or something else?
Thanks, I’ll do that from now on. I saw the similar issue that came up when I had started typing my new thread.
In this case (the logs in my last post) I closed the app (swiped it away, did not force/hard kill it), toggled wifi off, and opened the app again.
I’m about to drive again so I’ll turn on logs this time for the drive. I just force stopped the app, turned off wifi, and will let the app start again when I connect it to my car (Android Auto) and we’ll see how it goes.
Here are the settings, with password “pass”. Zipped as the forum doesn’t allow me to attach it natively with the default extension.
Well, it only used a MB or two on the way home, according to my data usage tracking app, which is good, but doesn’t explain the issue this morning. Also wondering why it used any, not that I care much about that small of an amount, since it’s not supposed to sync with Plex unless it’s on wifi. I listened to maybe 5 songs in their entirety and skipped through several others in between.
I had the same listening pattern this morning, except I started on wifi in my garage before reverting to 5G away from my house, instead of on 5G as in the parking lot I was departing from this afternoon. I’m wondering if it had started a download on wifi at home this morning and then continued it after it auto-switched to 5G. I’m not sure why it would have, though, as my entire library is already downloaded and I haven’t added anything new lately. Additionally, if it was streaming the songs on my drive this morning, again for let’s say 6 songs at 10 MB a piece (being generous, they’re not that big), that would have been a max of about 60 MB, not 600. Even with cache’ing and skipping a few songs between each one, I don’t think that should have resulted in the ~600 MB it used just on the 25 min morning drive, but I could be wrong.
Will look into it, the few MB are expected as Symfonium misses the non wifi state so send the now playing status to the server.
I just need to find why it does not get the event.
Will look tomorrow.
If you can get logs for the large data usage it would be nice.
Ok, thanks for the help. I’ll try to remember to enable/disable logs for each car trip in case I can catch it happening again. Would rather not just leave them enabled so as to prevent generating one huge file.
Well, it happened again yesterday, for the first time since the last time I replied in the thread. I don’t think anything changed – same car, still Android Auto, I hadn’t changed any settings or been in the app on my phone at all (except regularly via AA with no issues), so I’m not sure what happened. I’ve added probably 2 or 3 songs to my library via Plex in the last month, and yesterday in the car it appeared to be playing the same old downloaded MP3s as usual.
I didn’t notice it yesterday, but this morning I noticed in my data usage app that it used over 400 MB during a ~25-30 min total drive while out running errands at 3 local places. Wireguard VPN has been on continually, and I had left the app in debug mode since last month as well, so I’m not sure if the logs captured it but here they are.
Ok thanks so I would assume you have enabled the option Automatic image cache on your host?
And the issue probably occurred yesterday, looks like they were multiple hundreds of updated images, so either Plex rescanned your library and updated the images or something deleted the image cache on your phone like one smart “optimizer apps” that are pure evil.
The image cache did not stop, because the image request already have the connected status even if it changed during the sync. Will fix that special case. (But it’s already too late for 3.2.0 so will be after).
You should still try to understand why there where so many new images if it was not a rescan on Plex side.
Yes, I have automatic image cache enabled for that Plex host.
Well, the issue makes sense now, as far as what happened – but I’m not sure why it did. Plex does rescan all of my libraries regularly (whenever a change is detected, and also daily I believe, but that’s at 2 AM local or some time like that) but maybe something triggered a rescan and that also caused it to push new images. Not sure why it would push new images if nothing really changed, but that could be more of a Plex issue.
I totally avoid and don’t use any sort of optimizer-type apps, but it could be something that the Samsung OneUI and/or Android 13 is doing on its own.
So a fix for it in a later version will definitely be helpful; in the meantime, why the images were updated is a bit of a mystery, unless it just normally happens on every Plex scan when I’m on wifi and I haven’t noticed it (not sure if you can see that in the logs; i.e. were the images only updated yesterday, or does it happen most/every day, just usually on wifi)?
Looks like it happened again on 1/24, I was just reviewing my data usage. Grabbed the logs just now which should include that period, but don’t think you need them – can upload somewhere if you do.
Not sure why Plex updated the images again, that part is a mystery to me… have added a few tracks this month, but that should be it. Either a Plex setting or something going on with Android/Samsung cleaning a folder on its own and forcing a redownload (I haven’t seen evidence of that, but who knows).
Thanks so yes it’s the same, and judging by the amount of images downloaded (nearly all of them) it’s most probably something that clear the app cache.
Have you found anything about that ?
In January I had a similar issue, Symfonium used more than 40Gb of data in ~15 days, which is my limit actually. So I ended up with no data available for the rest of the month.
Just before that happened, I also switched to a new Samsung phone with Android 13 / One UI 5.
The only difference with you is that I don’t cache media (only images), but I’ve never had this much data consumption in a month before, not even the half of it
