B103 Downloads don’t download in the background iOS

I don’t know if this is by design or not, but I’m finding that downloads only download when Arc is active with the screen on. If I change apps or turn the screen off it stops indefinitely. Background refresh is on. This makes it quite difficult to download songs as I have to constantly manage the device.

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I think this is a restriction in iOS; it’s the same with the Qobuz app.

True. I’m still downloading 6 selected albums. I’m completely forgot about it :slight_smile:

Interesting, I will do some tests with other apps, I thought tidal and plex did it but could be wrong.

@marshalleq Given this restriction, are you finding that downloads resume and pause when you’d expect? Does the messaging feel clear in the app? Open to feedback on the experience here. The fact that this wasn’t patently clear from the in-app flow means we could probably do better.

Well this is sort of a counter intuitive question, I get what you mean, but what I expected was for them to continue in the background. What I don’t expect is to have to keep the screen on, holding the phone while they’re downloading or potentially adjusting timeout settings until they’re finished. But, I understand above you are confirming this is an IOS limitation - though it’s not explicitly said.

I’ve since tested plexamp, plex and tidal and agree that all of these do not download in the background either. The one outlier seems to be Netflix. I’m quite positive that that downloads in the background because I’ve downloaded dozens of episodes recently for the extensive travelling I’m currently doing and I’ve never had to keep the device screen on. So I don’t know what to make of that. I will have to do some extra testing to make sure I’m right, but from that it would seem that there is a possibility to do background downloads, perhaps someone else with Netflix can chime in here.

But getting to your point, it would probably be useful to display a message somewhere saying that due to IOS limitation, presently it is required to keep the screen on to complete any queued downloads. As you can see from the comment from @Wojtulek there is some lack of understanding among us that this is required.

And finally, thanks for reaching out, it is a credit to your team the way you consistently reach out to customers for improvement, an often overlooked item that makes the difference between a good product and a great product. Talk soon and do reach out if you need any further help.

Thanks,

Marshalleq.

Noting that there is a display option to set to never, I wonder if there is a workaround where this can be scripted while downloading then reset back when finished? At least that would be a workable solution as that is what I have to do anyway.