iPad Pro restarts with kernel panic when playing 4K video in Emby (iPadOS 26.0 Beta)

[201840115 0]

I am trying to use Emby on my iPad Pro 2021 (M1) to play 4K videos directly. After updating my iPad to iPadOS 26.0 Beta (build 23A5330a), the device will randomly crash and reboot during playback. The reboot happens without any visible warning or error message inside Emby — the screen just suddenly freezes and the iPad restarts.

This issue never happened on earlier iPadOS versions (stable versions like 18.x, not beta ones) with the same device and the same video files. I tested the exact same files in Infuse on the same iPad, and they play normally without any crash. That makes me think this problem is specific to how Emby interacts with the new iPadOS media framework.

Steps to reproduce (very specific):

• Open the Emby app on iPad Pro 2021.

• Play a 4K movie file from the server library. The server is running on a MacBook Pro on local net.

• The playback begins normally.

• After a few minutes, the iPad suddenly freezes, and after about 0.1s of purple screen, it restarts by itself.

• There is no error popup from Emby when this happens.

• I tested files with different codecs: H.264, HEVC HDR10, VP9; with bitrates vary from 20–40 Mbps. Always reappears.

What I expected:
Video should play smoothly until the end, without any restart or system crash.

What actually happened:
The iPad restarts unexpectedly in the middle of playback. After reboot, I can see a new “panic-full-xxx.ips” file in the iOS Analytics logs (Apple kernel panic report). The panicString in that file says “Kernel data abort … FAR=0x0”.

Other notes:

• The issue occurs whether or not subtitles are enabled.

• The iPad does not feel hot during playback (so it’s not a thermal shutdown).

• Same media files play fine with Infuse when played directly on the same device.

• The problem only started after updating to iPadOS 26.0 Beta. On iPadOS 18.x, everything was stable.

Environment:

• Device: iPad Pro 11-inch (3th gen, M1 SoC)

• OS: iPadOS 26.0 Beta (23A5330a)

• Emby app: 2.2.41 (latest App Store version)

• Server: macOS Arm64, 4.9.1.22

• Playback mode: Direct Play (no transcode)

Logs:
I will attach:

• Full Emby Server log covering the playback session.

• The iPad’s panic log (panic-full-xxxx.ips) from iOS Analytics.

embyserver.txt hardware_detection-63891811459.txt panic-full-2025-08-26-194007.0002.ips

[Luke 42077]

Hi, we'll take a look at it. Thanks for reporting.

[201840115 0]

Update: 

I tried with iPhone 15 Pro (OS Version: iOS 26 Beta), the same crash & restart.

So, we can rule out hardware problem. It is a software problem. 

Chances are that Apple changes the APIs of GPU in its new OS.

I humbly suggest that you wait until the formal version of iOS/iPadOS 26 come out and see if this problem remains, and if so, Emby app for iOS needs an update.

[Chewbacca89 0]

Same thing for me on an m2 ipad pro. I think emby needs an update to fix this.

[Luke 42077]

Hi, we are working on this. Thanks.

[201840115 0]

Solved.

I tried with iPadOS  & iOS 26.0 RC and the problem no more exists.

turns out it’s Apple who’s to blame.

[Luke 42077]

Interesting. @Chewbacca89 can you corroborate ?

[Luke 42077]

@201840115is this with playing the exact same content?