Why is cache not used?

[monotok 7]

Hello,

This might have been mentioned before but why is a cache not utilised within the android app? It always seems to try and fetch from the web.

Emby has all my media including music and I would like to use it for playing music on my phone. I was using DSub which utilises subsonic but this means recently played will be in a different system etc.

Anyway I did a quick test: I turned off data on my phone (Xperia 5 II) and then opened emby (not for the first time, been using it for a while).

I have had a spinning wheel for 5 mins while trying to browse the home screen or any other screen. Obviously there is no connectivity to the server and I can click on the downloads to browse anything I have explicitly downloaded. However I don't think this is a great user experience.

• Surely all the thumbnails, artists, albums should be cached on the phone so I can carry on browsing what I have. Even if this is not very useful it would speed up the interface considerably as it feels a little like the app is a wrapper for the web page.
• Instead of a downloads page, would it not be better to mark those that have been downloaded with a symbol to indicate it is available offline (this would need the above change).
• Then you can have a explicit "Offline Mode" where the interface is exactly the same but it only shows you what has been downloaded.
• When playing music I would have thought those things that have played are automatically added to the downloaded media.
• The next 3 songs or so would be downloaded in advance to minimise network problems.

Just want to say emby is a great media solution and has been working pretty well for many years! So thanks!

[Luke 42077]

Hi, thumbnails are cached, but most data is not. There are pros and cons to the approach that you're suggesting, and that's just not the way the apps are currently built.

[monotok 7]

Thanks for clarifying!

[Luke 42077]

Just to comment further, I personally think mixing downloads with server content would make it harder to locate downloads for playback. Yes I'm sure we could have filters to only show downloaded content, but I think it's just easier to have a dedicated downloads library. If you take a look at apps like Spotify, apple music, netflix, etc, that's the most common pattern that you'll see.

[binerf 2]

Hi all,

Thanks @Lukefor your clarification.

I was also looking for a cache system especially for music (for movie or TV, download is perfect).

Like others, I'm migrating from Subsonic/Dsub to full Emby eco-system. cache is important for me as I do some trips (car, train, plane) and sometime, there is no network at all for some time.

I'd like to listen next songs in my playlist (or current queue) even if there is no network.

Hope my comment will add some weight into scale to prioritize or to consider this request ;-)

Thanks.

[monotok 7]

Thanks @Luke for your input but I don't think it would make it harder. You could always hide stuff automatically when no network is detected so it is seamless. The current situation makes it unclear which file its going to play.

If I download an album and then play that album from the main library, its going to stream it even though it is downloaded? Wasting data and getting possible connectivity issues. So I have to go to the dedicated download area separately where only a subset of my library is if I want to make use of the downloaded content. This effectively makes it a "this or that" and doesn't work together. 

If it automatically downloaded everything you play then you would slowly build up your offline library for when you need it. Things you play often wouldn't have to stream which would save data & probably reduce battery too. If you are offline and your playing the cached music, when you come online it would sync play count etc (not sure if it does this with current system).

This probably only makes sense for music.

On another note, I increased the RAM for my emby windows server VM to 8GB from 4GB and it dramatically improved the webpage & mobile app performance. The limited RAM I assigned highlighted the need for caching I think.

Emby is definitely getting better :)