When I try and download an album, it will often get stuck midway through. For example, I recently clicked download for two albums and then locked my phone (not charging). Checking ~1 hour later, the first album is around 1/3 done and the second album is not yet downloading. Checking 30 mins later, the first album has made no progress and the second is still waiting to download.
Roon Core Platform
macOS
Roon Core Specifications
Mac Mini M1, 16GB RAM, 250GB SSD
Connected Audio Devices
Trying to download directly using Roon Arc on a Pixel 6a running Android 14.
Known limitation, might be a general iOS restriction that apps can’t download in the background. You must keep the app in the foreground and the phone unlocked.
Reported in several places, e.g., here in Early Access where it was said it’s a restriction:
Also discussed here (and surely in many other threads)
There is one anomaly in all of this. Using Netflix offline downloads - those still download even when screen is locked. That was the result of my testing anyway. I don’t know why it only works for them.
It is possible in certain situations for it to happen in the background it says so in Apples blurb not sure what the exceptions are though. PlexAmp has same restrictions as Roon but as it’s downloads are significantly quicker you don’t tend to notice it unless you queue up lots and put it in the background. I imagine ARC like all Roon apps takes up too much of the phones meagre resources I know I have had support say my iPhone was seeing memory pressure when I had some issues with the app crashing some time ago. I expect iOS is killing the background processes to reserve resources for other apps.
I don’t think it’s possible to say in certain situations and those situations are always Netflix situations because that’s what you’d have to be saying here. In my testing it was 100% reproducible. If it’s always Netflix, it could also be made to be Roon or Plex. It’s possible Netflix has made a special deal or something with Apple or it’s possible Roon and Plex devs haven’t figured it out yet. Or it’s possible that I’m wrong. But I tested it quite a bit and I don’t think I am. I see no other options.
I didn’t say they were Netflix situations just that it is possible just the known parameters to achieve it seem to be not public knowledge. I’m currently downloading 3 episodes of The Continental from Amazon Prime in the background and it’s working.
As it says in the post, I’m using Android rather than iOS. Android restricts background work in a similar way to iOS, but it does provide specific mechanisms for background download/data sync and it’s likely this is what apps like Netflix, Tidal or Spotify etc use (on Android anyway). For example, you can use a Foreground Service, or Download Manager. My suspicion is that Arc isn’t using either of these (or any other battery friendly background mechanism that Android will allow to run for 10+ minutes), as both would show a notification while work takes place.
If it’s not clear from these comments, I’m a software engineer and regularly work on Android apps . I can’t speak to how plausible long running background work is on iOS as I haven’t had to deal with that in a long time.
Downloads will still be slow but they continue in the background or if the screen is locked. I have this off for ARC all the time and it doesn’t seem to have a negative effect on overall battery usage during normal ARC use
On iOS the problem is that the user doesn’t have this option, so it seems that the developer would have to hand off downloads to the OS as described in the iOS documentation.And then iOS probably still maintains control
Ah great shout! I’d forgotten about that. Will give it go .
I want to be clear that even if this helps, it’s still feels like unacceptable to me that the app requires battery optimisation to be disabled given there are ways to carry out long running work in a battery optimised way. Setting an app to unrestricted means that Android can’t optimise other background work the app might carry out (I imagine there’s background syncing with the Core for example) and is likely going to lead to Arc draining more battery than it needs to (even if it might not be a detectable amount for everyone). I’m also not confident that this unlocks the limits on background execution time in Android or not - what “Unrestricted” allows varies heavily by manufacturer and the docs on all this are fairly opaque in my experience.
I’ll play around with this and hopefully it works better, but it still feels like a really underwhelming experience given the quality of the rest of the Roon product (and given its pricing).
Hi @seadowg,
Thanks for your patience while we worked through the queue. I hope @Suedkiez’s solution worked for you. I also wanted to let you know that we’re aware there is room for improvement on ARC downloads and the team has some positive changes that should be released in the near future.
. I can’t speak to how plausible long running background work is on iOS as I haven’t had to deal with that in a long time.
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