The new Emby app: remove the animations

[nurrburt 2]

Hello, I would also like to chime in on this topic as someone who loves Emby and recently purchased a license as a result.

I have to agree with the criticism of slow startup times of both the Windows app and the Xbox app - closing the Windows app is also annoyingly slow. When I launch the Emby app on Xbox, it takes nearly 2-3x as long as launching any other app, even my wife comments on how slow it is.

If my understanding is correct, the fast-start option will only work on the premise that you're pre-launching and constantly running processes in the background so you don't have to wait for those processes when the GUI is launched. If that is the case, I don't personally see that as a satisfactory long-term solution, respectfully.

Without knowing the technical details, would it not be possible to cache required resources so the GUI can be launched "instantly" and be responsive like any other program? Then use clever progress visuals (bars, spinning circles, gradient rolls across asset placeholders) to indicate that assets/resources are loading while maintaining at least the illusion that the start process was snappy. As an example, expected behavior for me would be:

- Launch app > see white/grey background where GUI will be drawn instantly > see emby sidebar on the left and the four settings options at the top right.
- At this point, all the media tiles could have rolling gradients to signal that they are loading and I would understand that most functions would be unresponsive or locked, or perhaps it is simply a progress bar, spinning circle, or a combination of them depending on how much time is required to load. Perhaps the settings button would be functional during this time.
- Media tiles (ideally cached after connecting to a server) could be populated progressively or all at once, hovering over them ideally produce the normal result even if there is still loading to be done
- At this point, if more loading is still necessary, clicking on a media tile should produce a spinning circle until assets are fully ready to go.

I hate to feel so nitpicky about the whole thing, but for many people it's jarring to experience so much front-loading when the expectation is a snappy response. If it's technically possible without too much work, I really do think a little bit of manipulating us would go a long way to our satisfaction in this case. I do think the background process option would work for some, but for others like me, process bloat isn't a good option.

Finally, I would appreciate something similar for the Xbox to help shave down the launch time. I realize that Xbox hardware is on the way out so even a quick and dirty hack would be fantastic.

Thanks for making such great software!

[softworkz 5066]

On 1/11/2026 at 9:22 PM, nurrburt said:

Without knowing the technical details

...which are  explained in the posts that have been referenced several times above.

So, thanks for your ideas, but they are pointless, because the startup delay is not happening in our code, 

[nurrburt 2]

8 hours ago, softworkz said:

...which are  explained in the posts that have been referenced several times above.

So, thanks for your ideas, but they are pointless, because the startup delay is not happening in our code, 

Thanks, that really makes me feel like a valued customer.

Let me ask you a hypothetical. 

Let's say you go to a restaurant and order a hamburger. You bite into the burger and crunch into something hard. You taste a little blood - it's a shard of glass. You bring this up to a manager because it's not usual to have shards of glass in a hamburger. The manager explains that there's nothing he can do about it because they order pre-made patties from a food distributor, so thanks for bringing it up but it's pointless because we don't make the patties here.

Is that an acceptable response to you? You even said yourself that even you were annoyed by the startup time in the "posts that have been referenced several times above", speaking about why your choice to use webview2 leads to slow startup times.

"I can say that there were days when I did get somewhat annoyed by it" - and it is indeed annoying for others, as evidenced by the thread.

Acting irritated and shifting blame when customers are offering polite feedback is not a good look.

[softworkz 5066]

@nurrburt

Please take my apologies, I didn't mean to upset or offend you in any way.

When you look through the forums, you can see that I often give detailed explanations on technical matters, always truthful and direct. Emby is one of the very few companies where you have a chance to talk to developers directly and - personally - I like that, because as a customer I always prefer to be accurately informed as well.

But please understand that I'm not support personnel. My time for this is limited and it's not my job to explain the same things over and over again from zero, especially not when that information is just one or two links away.

 

1 hour ago, nurrburt said:

Let me ask you a hypothetical. 

Likewise: Would you have preferred when a support professional - who doesn't know  much about the subject - would have very kindly and patiently lied to you (not necessarily by intention) by responding something like: "Oh, these are all great ideas, thanks a lot for your input, I will share them with the team and we will discuss this internally!" ?

 

1 hour ago, nurrburt said:

"I can say that there were days when I did get somewhat annoyed by it" - and it is indeed annoying for others, as evidenced by the thread.

The citation is taken out of context and doesn't reflect what has actually been expressed. 
(Original post: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/131876-windows-xbox-app-beta/page/6/#findComment-1398478)

 

 

[nurrburt 2]

11 minutes ago, softworkz said:

@nurrburt

Please take my apologies, I didn't mean to upset or offend you in any way.

When you look through the forums, you can see that I often give detailed explanations on technical matters, always truthful and direct. Emby is one of the very few companies where you have a chance to talk to developers directly and - personally - I like that, because as a customer I always prefer to be accurately informed as well.

But please understand that I'm not support personnel. My time for this is limited and it's not my job to explain the same things over and over again from zero, especially not when that information is just one or two links away.

 

Likewise: Would you have preferred when a support professional - who doesn't know  much about the subject - would have very kindly and patiently lied to you (not necessarily by intention) by responding something like: "Oh, these are all great ideas, thanks a lot for your input, I will share them with the team and we will discuss this internally!" ?

 

The citation is taken out of context and doesn't reflect what has actually been expressed. 
(Original post: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/131876-windows-xbox-app-beta/page/6/#findComment-1398478)

 

 

I appreciate the kind response, thank you.

I can completely understand where you are coming from and I do appreciate the direct line to talking with you guys, as well as getting all the details.

To clear up any confusion, I did read all of the responses and links in this thread, but perhaps I wasn't clear on what I meant by not understanding the technical aspects. What I meant to convey is that I am not a programmer, so while I understand that the delays stem from using webview2 for example, I don't know how much control you have over the process or how your code interacts with their code, for example. I also do not know how much work it would take to move to a different system, if that would be the only way to remedy the problem.

Quote

Likewise: Would you have preferred when a support professional - who doesn't know  much about the subject - would have very kindly and patiently lied to you (not necessarily by intention) by responding something like: "Oh, these are all great ideas, thanks a lot for your input, I will share them with the team and we will discuss this internally!" ?

That's a fair question and something I think about often - pure honesty vs. white lies. While I think I'm probably like you where I prefer blunt honesty, sometimes I think peppering bluntness with a bit of nicety is a good way to establish trust, even if it seems paradoxical (maybe it's been bastardized by the corporate landscape?). In this context, I was hopeful that by voicing my opinion with the others would give more prominence to the issue, so I wasn't really expecting much considering it is a relatively minor issue with a large amount of work to fix it. Since the response was coming from you, I think a simple "I hear you, we'll consider it" would be leaps and bounds more meaningful than a support bot feeding me the corpospeak.

Quote

The citation is taken out of context and doesn't reflect what has actually been expressed. 
(Original post: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/131876-windows-xbox-app-beta/page/6/#findComment-1398478)

Yes it was. However, I feel that even with context, the fact that you felt it yourself is validation of the issue. Yes, you launched the software a million times and yes, it wasn't a big issue to you in the grand scheme of things - same with all of us who are complaining about it, I think. If anything, I think it's a good sign that 1. This is the worst thing we're spending time writing to complain about and 2. We like your software enough to write about fixing it in the first place, and that's something to take pride in.

Anyways, I never intended to get into an argument with you and waste your time. I just wanted you to hear me out. Thanks for doing that and keep up the good work, sir.

[softworkz 5066]

1 hour ago, nurrburt said:

To clear up any confusion, I did read all of the responses and links in this thread, but perhaps I wasn't clear on what I meant by not understanding the technical aspects. What I meant to convey is that I am not a programmer, so while I understand that the delays stem from using webview2 for example, I don't know how much control you have over the process

As it is simply about WebView2 taking time to start up, I assumed that even a non-programmer would figure that a component that isn't ready yet, would neither allow to display any ghosted/pseudo content, so I concluded you haven't read the explanations, while - apparently that was a developer's conclusion only.

I really don't know why it takes those seconds to start up, even though Electron apps - which are also driven by a Chromium-based HTML engine can start much faster.
MS provides two ways for using WebView2: Shared system runtime or shipping one's own runtime. We do the latter (reasons also explained somewhere), but MS' preferred way is for everybody to use the shared runtime -

=> because: this allows faster app startup

=> but: How they are doing this?

The answer is: they are just leaving the browser processes running when the app is closed and they keep them running  forever, even when unused. And the app has no control about this.

When you see the task manager screenshot below, you can see the shared runtime processes (white bg) plus our runtime that we include with the app. When you close the Emby app, all the yellow ones are exiting and nothing remains running.

 

Considering what MS are doing here - they have no better solution for their own software than keeping the WebView running - is what's makes me estimate the chances that there would exist any good solution for this as rather low.

 

1 hour ago, nurrburt said:

Quote

would have very kindly and patiently lied to you (not necessarily by intention) by responding something like: "Oh, these are all great ideas, thanks a lot for your input, I will share them with the team and we will discuss this internally!" ?

That's a fair question and something I think about often - pure honesty vs. white lies.

Last year, I had a support case with MS. It was fulfilled by a company in India. Skipping all the sick details that happened, I was arguing with a clueless supporter and been pretty dissatisfied. At the end she said she would promise to forward my complaint to the right department and finally she said: "Yes I'll go upstairs to the developers right now and talk to them".

I found out that  MS doesn't don't do ANY kind of Azure development in India, and the building of the support firm is all basement, and doesn't even have a 1st floor.-..