Blank screens in Roon on Android: Frequently (about half of the time) when I open Roon on my Google pixel 7 (Android 15), the Now Playing, Artists, and Albums screens are blank. This has been happening for over a year, but I don't remember when it started. The solution is to close the app and reopen it. I also use a Google Pixel 5 (Android 14), that is always connected to power, as another Roon remote. When the Pixel 5 is connected to power, it never shows this blank screen issue, but disconnected from power it does. I have an iphone that I use less frequently. I have never seen the blank screen issue on the iphone. My Roon core is a Roon Server running on Ubuntu.
I believe that this is a long standing issue associated with letting the Roon client ‘sleep’ on Android phones - my Pixel 6 does it. My daughters Samsung does it.
The solution is simply to shut down the Roon client completely and restart it (the Roon client - not the phone). Not ideal, but not the worst thing that can happen.
Hi @adam_tuxbury,
Thanks for reaching out to ask us about this issue. I agree with @Wade_Oram’s response. As an additional possibility do you have any power saving options enabled on your phone. The fact that the app behaves normally when charging indicates that might be the issue.
Yesterday I disabled Android’s “Allow background usage” option for the Roon app, which seems to have helped. The issue has occurred only once since I made that change.
Also, I’ve just disabled something called “Adaptive battery”. I’ll report back. Thanks for the feedback.
Disabling “Allow background usage” on the Roon app and disabling “Adaptive battery” in the battery settings did not resolve the issue. It seems like disabling “Allow background usage” reduces the frequency of the problem, so I’ll stick with that configuration.
If you do experience the issue again, could you snap a screenshot, and then also send over a set of Roon logs from the Android device? Steps to follow below:
Connect your PC to Android phone and install ADB (instructions are here (all platforms)). Then:
Thank you! I don’t know if this is relevant, but CPU and Memory usage seem weird on the Roon core system (Ubuntu on mac mini hardware). On Dec 21st, after about 36 days of uptime, CPU shot up to around 100% or higher and stayed there until I rebooted today. Memory usage had been creeping up steadily over time to about 5GB used out of 8GB total today. I just rebooted the machine and CPU and memory are both lower. Are there issues with memory leakage?
These are screenshots from cockpit, showing the moment when CPU jumped to above 100% on 12/21 and a screenshot corresponding to when I rebooted and CPU went back down to normal values (today).
Hi @adam_tuxbury,
Thanks for the additional data point. We got the logs for the timestamp you shared with us and added to the ticket we have with the Development team. They are currently looking into this. While I cannot give you a specific timeline I want to assure that this case has not been forgotten. We greatly appreciate the patience you’ve shown while we work through this issue!
Thanks for your patience while our team investigates this issue further! We have a few follow-up questions to ask you:
If you move to a different Roon Server machine temporarily, do you still see this issue?
Development is requesting a set of Roon logs from the Andoird device as well, if you could use the directions found here and send over a set of logs to our File Uploader?
Do you have any additional power saving-based settings active on the device?
I moved the core to a windows machine last night So far, the performance from the android remote has been good.
Do you mean logs from the ubuntu 22 core? i had sent the android logs earlier.
The correlation i noticed between android power and roon remote performance may not be causal. I have noticed issues under various battery settings and with androids connected to power. It seems now that the poor remote performance is more strongly correlated with high CPU usage on the core.
The trouble also occurs with the Roon Core on Windows. I restored a backup from the mac mini Ubuntu Roon core when I built the Windows core. A new twist to the trouble is that the “My Albums” screen sometimes is also frozen in addition to the usual trouble of showing zero albums. There is a powerline ethernet converter between my Android remote and the Windows core, so I’m suspicious of that. But there was no such device between the mac mini core and the Android remotes. I may try rebuilding the mac mini core with a different OS, like Archlinux.
Moved my core from Windows to DietPi running on the mac mini hardware. The issue where zero albums appear on the My Albums screen appeared again a few times. One time the screen was frozen and I needed to force close the Android app. Another time, I was able to delete a genre Focus (I usually have Classical genre focus inverted to hide Classical albums) and the My Albums screen came back to life. The DietPi mac mini system is using about 3GB RAM and CPU is around 5% with a few spikes to 20%.
The issue described in this link looks almost identical to what I’m experiencing: Pixel 7 Android Freeze Roon Remote
The user marked it as fixed in Build 1413. I’m running 1490.
If you search on ‘Freezing’ you will find quite a few new freeze events in the Roon app. After a long period of relative smooth operation it seems there are some problems again.
Hi @adam_tuxbury,
Thanks for the additional data. Our developers have taken a look at your case and believe a deeper investigation will be needed before releasing a potential fix. I cannot give you an exact timeline but we will let you know when we know more.
Thanks. I notice the app performs much better with “Allow background usage” enabled, but it occasionally freezes still. Maybe there are multiple issues.
