I use(d) ARC solely to download music to my device so I can play it while I am offline. I would never expose a Roon endpoint from my local network to the internet, therefore I relied on ARC’s offline mode. That mode always used to be quite fragile, since it always complained about the missing connection to my server, but that could be circumvented by restarting the app. Now that workaround no longer works and I am always prompted with an option to disconnect from the server. When I do that however, all my downloaded music is deleted and only then it prompts me that the offline mode is enabled. Great, now I can look at an empty ARC library while traveling.
What’s the purpose of an offline mode, when you still need a connection? Why do I have to authenticate at all? And why against my own server? As much as I like Roon at home, the ARC offline experience is useless at best, but mostly really frustrating.
Thanks for the other thread though. With that in place ARC is useless to me unfortunately.
Guess I am back at copying files and playing with any random player.
Try PLEX. I’ve never used it, but I hear good things.
As for your concern about the internet and what talks to who… Why don’t you try Tailscale and have a secure VPN connect to your home network. Unless, you’re an IT expert that worries about anything even remotely calling home and disables/denies connections, it may be a good alternative to look at?