Emby crashes out of Roku app constantly

[redkatt 0]

This just started a few days ago, and it's on all three roku devices in my house. I have the most recent emby server and roku app. I'll start playing a video, and emby will completely crash out, dropping me back to the roku home screen. 

[redkatt 0]

Also, I've rebooted the roku, even power cycled them. The emby server has also been rebooted, both the PC it's being hosted on, and the emby server itself. 

 

 

[speechles 2086]

@redkatt Apologies. We would need to see Roku device logs to see why that happened. There should never be crashes in the app. Especially during video playback.

To send us logs you would need to do a few things. First you press the "star" * button on the Roku remote when on the home screen. It will open the settings. Click on settings, then Advanced. You will wind up on the screen above. Make sure the enable debug options says yes. Once it does, just press HOME on the Roku remote. The Emby app needs to restart to have the send log option appear on the home screen.

Afterwards, you will see this option appear when you click on your username at the top of the home screen.

Now you can recreate the crash. Once it crashes, great. The information from the last exit is retained. If this last exit was a crash we can know what happened.  Then open the Emby app and go right to the send logs option. Click it and it should tell you it has sent it to developers.

Once you've done that come back here and give us the time in EST and the username logged in when it was sent. Then we can likely fix this very promptly. Thanks.

 

Edited January 12 by speechles

[redkatt 0]

29 minutes ago, speechles said:

@redkatt Apologies. We would need to see Roku device logs to see why that happened. There should never be crashes in the app. Especially during video playback.

To send us logs you would need to do a few things. First you press the "star" * button on the Roku remote when on the home screen. It will open the settings. Click on settings, then Advanced. You will wind up on the screen above. Make sure the enable debug options says yes. Once it does, just press HOME on the Roku remote. The Emby app needs to restart to have the send log option appear on the home screen.

Afterwards, you will see this option appear when you click on your username at the top of the home screen.

Now you can recreate the crash. Once it crashes, great. The information from the last exit is retained. If this last exit was a crash we can know what happened.  Then open the Emby app and go right to the send logs option. Click it and it should tell you it has sent it to developers.

Once you've done that come back here and give us the time in EST and the username logged in when it was sent. Then we can likely fix this very promptly. Thanks.

 

Done. It even crashed while I was trying to get into the advanced options menu one time, but I finally got in, and managed to start a video, which crashed about 20 seconds in. I sent the dev log at 3:55 PM Eastern US. Username was simply "home". 

Note, just now it crashed sitting at the emby home screen, I don't even have to fire up videos for it to crash out.

[ebr 16432]

Hi.  I can see that the app is shutting down but I cannot see why.  Have you installed anything else new on the device recently?  Any network changes?  Any changes that may coincide with this happening?

[redkatt 0]

4 minutes ago, ebr said:

Hi.  I can see that the app is shutting down but I cannot see why.  Have you installed anything else new on the device recently?  Any network changes?  Any changes that may coincide with this happening?

Nothing new has been added to the Roku device, and our network hasn't changed. The only thing I see is that there recently was an Emby upgrade on Jan 8.

[ebr 16432]

1 minute ago, redkatt said:

an Emby upgrade on Jan 8

You are referring to the server, correct?

Can you provide the server log that coincides with this time:

01-12 20:54:19

Thanks.

[redkatt 0]

2 hours ago, ebr said:

You are referring to the server, correct?

Can you provide the server log that coincides with this time:

01-12 20:54:19

Thanks.

Yes, this is the server upgrade. 

Where can I find the specific logs you need, and what's a safe way to send them over?

[Luke 42533]

1 hour ago, redkatt said:

Yes, this is the server upgrade. 

Where can I find the specific logs you need, and what's a safe way to send them over?

How to Report a Problem

 

[redkatt 0]

4 hours ago, ebr said:

You are referring to the server, correct?

Can you provide the server log that coincides with this time:

01-12 20:54:19

Thanks.

That server log doesn't exist for that time. I check vs East Coast and West Coast time zones, nothing's there for that time. Nothing even close to that time.

[Luke 42533]

Are you able to get it to happen again?

[ebr 16432]

11 hours ago, redkatt said:

That server log doesn't exist for that time. I check vs East Coast and West Coast time zones, nothing's there for that time. Nothing even close to that time.

Unless you had restarted your server, it would have been the top most log in the list named just "embyserver.txt".  Today, it will be the one from yesterday.

[redkatt 0]

So, as a test, I uninstalled Emby, and then grabbed the Portable version and ran that, and it's running perfectly fine.

[Luke 42533]

4 hours ago, redkatt said:

So, as a test, I uninstalled Emby, and then grabbed the Portable version and ran that, and it's running perfectly fine.

OK this would suggest some option or state of the server as being responsible.

[Luke 42533]

On 1/14/2026 at 4:42 PM, Luke said:

OK this would suggest some option or state of the server as being responsible.

@redkatt did you find anything?

[UCM_1 10]

Any more info on this?

I have four Roku's working fine with my current server.  But attempts to get it running on two additional Roku's are failing.

The server says they log in correctly, but the Emby Roku app simply crashes/goes back to the Roku home screen 20 seconds after trying to start -- the Emby home screen never even displays.

[UCM_1 10]

The two (now three) Roku's that won't work are all remote, and are attempting to use secure connections.  (The four working Rokus are all local and using an insecure connection)

Using android emby app, or via web, both work remote over the secure connection.  But maybe that's part of the problem?

The emby server does still mention trying to get something from https from emby.tmsimg.com, but then says it receives a http reply.  Could emby server be doing something that the strict roku system doesn't allow in a https connection?

Other then that, the emby server logs sometime talk about some activity that completes after the remote connection is closed.  So it does appear that the Emby Roku app is closing the connection.

 

EDIT: Nevermind on the response from emby.tmsimg.com in the log.  It says http response, but from https://.  However, the question of if emby is possibly trying to do something not allowed in strict https:// that causes the emby Roku app to disconnect still remains. (?)

Edited 16 hours ago by UCM_1

[redkatt 0]

I gave up and switched to the Emby portable install, which is a bit more stable. 

[speechles 2086]

17 hours ago, UCM_1 said:

The two (now three) Roku's that won't work are all remote, and are attempting to use secure connections.  (The four working Rokus are all local and using an insecure connection)

Using android emby app, or via web, both work remote over the secure connection.  But maybe that's part of the problem?

The emby server does still mention trying to get something from https from emby.tmsimg.com, but then says it receives a http reply.  Could emby server be doing something that the strict roku system doesn't allow in a https connection?

Other then that, the emby server logs sometime talk about some activity that completes after the remote connection is closed.  So it does appear that the Emby Roku app is closing the connection.

 

EDIT: Nevermind on the response from emby.tmsimg.com in the log.  It says http response, but from https://.  However, the question of if emby is possibly trying to do something not allowed in strict https:// that causes the emby Roku app to disconnect still remains. (?)

 

Apologies. This should never occur. There should be graceful error messages shown on the screen with dialogs. It should never crash and rudely exit the app.

Usually when you receive an http response to an https request it contains a human readable error message to display to the user either in text, html, etc. If that were to happen and the json response couldn't be read because it was formatted as an html/text document that could very well be why it is crashing. We might be able to do something depending on where it occurs inside our code or inside Roku's object which we can merely observe and cannot modify. If it is something under our control certainly we would try to mitigate this. If you work with us, specifically me, on this I can probably figure out where this happens.

Does this happen with just new users? Or when switch users can you also make it happen? If you sign out of the app then log back in can you make it happen? Does it happen after you log in and during the homescreen construction?

Knowing where will help give us a starting point where to start looking for possible parsing mistakes when malformed json (ie, html/text/etc) is returned instead of json. I think we can read some property of the http session to determine the mimetype or something and pass that to the function. So that when the parsejson is done it actually is done against valid json. I bet that is what this is. If you answer the questions above it will give me somewhere to start. Thanks.

[UCM_1 10]

The remote Roku's only recently had emby installed and had never connected (previously) to the Emby server.

They will log in (verified successful login via the server logs), will display the top header of the emby system (showing home, favorites, username, search icon, and settings icon), but never show anything else and eventually simply crashes/exits directly to the Roku system with no explanation after 20 seconds (estimated -- I haven't timed it specifically).

During the 20, or so, seconds between the successful login and the crash/exit, the settings menu is accessible and settings are changeable.  But ultimately, the main interface never loads and simply exits.

[UCM_1 10]

More info, that may change the thoughts on where the issue may be.

I took one of the local Roku's and switched it from using an insecure connection to using a secure connection -- it still worked.  I then took that local Roku and put it outside my local network (so it became a remote Roku), and it did NOT work.

So, a firewall related issue in some way?

But, the Emby app for Android works remotely, through the same secure connection path.  An ipad, used remotely over the same secure connection path, also works. Using a browser through a secure connection, remotely, also works.

What does the Roku Emby app do differently than the Emby app for Android?  Does the Roku Emby app require more than one port open?

It may also be important to note, as I understand it, port 8920 is the default secure port for Emby.  However, I do NOT use that port.

As mentioned, the Roku Emby app does log in to the server, just doesn't work after that.