I have the Roon Remote installed on my IPad 6 Mini and am using the lock screen controls (which seem to be in beta since the dawn of time, but nothing has improved therefore I am raising this issue now). I have nothing else running on the IPad except Roon Remote.
The lock screen controls sometimes are available for an hour, sometimes only for 5 minutes, before they disappear, but they ALWAYS disappear for no apparent reason. When I then unlock the tablet, I have a rough 50/50 chance that Roon Remote is still open or closed (I guess it crashed, but no idea if there are any logs to verify that). Admittedly it’s fast to restart Roon Remote, but this is annoying af and the lock screen controls seem to be only ever an issue with Roon, every other app (Chrome, Qobuz, …) works like a charm.
Hi @fuerstrainier.
Your frustration is completely understandable, especially when other iOS media apps don’t exhibit this behavior. While we don’t have a definitive workaround at this time, we will absolutely share this feedback with the relevant teams.
What you’re encountering is a consequence of how iOS handles background execution. From the operating system’s perspective, Roon Remote functions primarily as a network controller rather than a local media playback app. Because audio isn’t necessarily being played on the iPad itself, iOS doesn’t always grant Roon a sustained playback session in the way it does apps like Qobuz, Tidal, or Spotify. As a result, iOS may suspend the app when it’s backgrounded, which causes the lock screen controls to disappear.
In short, Roon has limited ability to force iOS to keep a remote-control app alive indefinitely in the background. The duration of the lock screen controls is therefore unpredictable and depends on the overall system state and iOS heuristics. This behavior typically isn’t a crash, but an expected action by the operating system.
Keeping the screen awake (for example by disabling auto-lock), disabling Low Power Mode, and closing other memory-intensive apps can sometimes make the behavior more consistent, though these are circumventions rather than true fixes.
The team continues to investigate improvements in this area, and to make the broadest impact, I’d recommend sharing this feedback in Roon Software Discussion or the feature suggestions subcategory:
Thanks connor for the really fast answer.
All that makes a lot of sense and I hope the devs find a workaround/solution to that ios behavior.
Cheers
Hello @fuerstrainier ,
Thanks for your understanding here. Since there is an action item in regarding this behavior, I’ll go ahead and close this thread. Feel free to open a thread in Feature Suggestions!