Roon ARC has to be on-screen to be able to download music?

Roon Software Discussion
1

Hi,

I am finding that I have to keep Roon ARC open and active so it can download music that I selected for download. Really?

I have background app refesh set to ON for Roon ARC.

What am I missing, can someone explain?

2

Yes, I believe so. My downloads stop when my phone is inactive.

3

On Android you can turn off the battery optimization and then it continues downloading in the background. It doesn’t use inordinate amounts of battery either for me, but might depend on the phone.

Apparently iOS does not allow users to control that

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4

Thanks for confirming! But that is rediculous, needing to keep Roon ARC open so it can download!

5

It’s a limition of iOS apparently they just don’t allow apps to download when not active. It’s the same for PlexAmp albeit it downloads tracks so quickly it’s never really much of an issue. On Android it’s just part of its battery optimisation which you can turn off, just not in Apples walled garden. Given battery life isn’t great on iPhones it’s likely the reason behind it.

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6

Same for Spotify on iOS as well. It will only download with the app open. If I’m downloading a large batch of items, I just switch my screen to always on in settings. (Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto Lock, switch to never). Then when it’s done downloading, I flip it back.

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7

Thanks to all who replied. I came from Apple Music that was downloading in the background. Looks like Apple classic walled garden, other apps are not allowed to do it.

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8

I’m a software engineer and I work on an iOS application for a pretty large tech company. I’ve worked thoroughly on background uploads/downloads and can tell you for certain that this is a limitation of the OS purposely imposed by Apple. They benefit because they sell services (like iCloud, apple music, etc) that can act in the background when their competitors cannot. It is monopolistic behavior, though I admit it definitely protects users’ battery life as well.

I do not see it changing any time soon. Unfortunately, there’s nothing Roon can do here to make this work like you’d want it to. At best, it can get woken up by iOS when iOS decides it’s acceptable to download for a few minutes at a time, usually while you’re charging at night. :cry:

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