Improved management of Downloads

[simonselmer 27]

Hi

Me and my family just went on vacation and wanted to download movies and series to our phones for offline usage.

But we experienced that some of the requsted downloads never arrived to the phone.

Hence it would ne a good improvement to have better control and overview of the downloads, like:

 - Where it says "Ready to tranfer", then capability to "force" download, because I experienced several items saying that, and never downloading

 - Improved overview og status. Like if it's saying "Ready to tranfer", then I would like to see why doesn't it download, what is it waiting for.

 - Ability to see in a movie or a series, IF I already requested it to download once. Because I would forget IF I set a specific movie to download or not, and it would great it what was illustrated on the movie.

- And if I already requested a movie to download once, and I do it again, then that Emby pop up and say I already requested that, if I want to cancel the first request.

I for example tried downloading whole season 1 -3 of a show, and then it turned out, it hadn't downloaded ep 1+2 in first season., and where also missing ep 8+9+10 in 2nd season, and I could tell why or force it to download.

I hope it makes sence and hope an improvement for the Downloads

[rechigo 294]

I fully agree with this. Coming back to Emby after abandoning my media server ~2 years ago, the download manager on Android (likely iOS as well) is still extremely hit or miss. Sometimes it downloads fine, but it's still extremely touchy... Sometimes stuff never downloads, sometimes the downloads just freeze (especially during any network changes/hiccups), and IF they resume downloading (that's a hard IF,  frequently I have to intervene myself to delete the download and re-add it), it usually starts the download again from scratch. I can't even count the number of times Emby has screwed me over before a flight/road trip because the download manager just straight-up sucks, to be honest. I get Emby is a small team, they have to support a ton of platforms (in terms of the server itself and clients), but the download manager just needs some love from the devs.

Edited February 23, 2024 by rechigo

[Luke 39352]

HI, yes improvements to this are planned for future updates. Thanks.

[bjerne 7]

@Luke

Any update on when these improvements can be expected?
The whole download to mobile device experience still feels flaky.

[strichmo 16]

This continues to be a very poor experience with bugs and problems on top and would really benefit from improvements ASAP.

* On Android the resume button on the notification never works.

* There have been random cases where something has downloaded according to the UI but it never showed, like it silently cancelled.

* The ux is very poor on the UI around trying to figure out how a download is going. The only way to see is via the Android notifications tray, but it lies or doesn't show the full queue.

[Luke 39352]

Hi, we'll look at improving this. Thanks for the feedback.

[svefro 1]

Just adding a few more things from the other post i made here:

 

Also. it would be great with the option to start or stop downloading. i'm sometimes on a metered wifi connection and i do not want downloading to happen then.
Users should also be able to move items to the top of the queue if there are something we want to download first.

if i'm on a metered connection and want to download 1 item. i should be able to mark it for download, move it to the top if the queue. and then stop downloading after the item that i want is finished.
when i get on a better network i can resume downloading the other items.
this way the server can prep the items for transfer in the meantime. 

[svefro 1]

still have this issue. not resolved.

 

[Luke 39352]

Hi, yes we are working on improving this. Thanks.

[jerfly 0]

Yeah. Same problem. Very frustrating and inconsistent.