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+--- Thread: [PROBLEM] UI hangs on phone while browsing library (/showthread.php?tid=7411)
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UI hangs on phone while browsing library - mario74m - 02-10-2025
I have a problem which manifests itself only on my two iphones while trying to browse my NAS mounted library. Browsing is quick and snappy from a laptop or from a PC, but the phone hangs in a peculiar manner.
My library is organized as follows:
NAS
|-----<SERVER_NAME>
|
|---classical
| |-------------<each composer in their own folder>
| |-------<various composer albums, each in own folder>
|
|---popular
|--------------<each artist in their own folder>
|-------<various artist's albums, each in own folder>
There are some 2000 folders altogether. The library is mounted via NFS from Linux server which serves as a NAS. The setup has been stable for years, and problems began to occur after the addition of several albums and library refresh on my previous moode installation (8.4.something). Yesterday I made a new, fresh install of 9.2.4. on a new SD card and cleared the browser cache on both phones, but the problem persists in exactly the same manner.
The problem: after I access moode from the phone, I can browse the menus, everything fine and snappy. When I access the Library in Folder mode, I can also access the first top level folder ("classical", which contains some 50 subfolders), everything fast again. But when I try to access the second top level folder ("popular", which contains some 200 subfolders), the browser UI first becomes unresponsive for a half of minute, and then loads the page with only first 20 subfolders listed. After that unresponsiveness persists, a click on any link causes very delayed reaction, if any. The only remedy is closing the browser and trying again. It doesn't matter if I use Chrome or Safari, on iphone 13 or 16. Again, from a Windows PC or laptop everything works without any problem.
What could I try to further diagnose the problem? The RPi is 3B 1GB, with Audiophonics Digi+ SPDIF interface board.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - Tim Curtis - 02-10-2025
Very odd.
My test collection has 600 or so folders and no problem with Folder view on iPhone 14 / IOS 18.
Maybe a network issue or possibly super large cover art files?
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - mario74m - 02-10-2025
Almost every folder contains a cover.jpg image, sized a few hundred kilobytes, 1 Meg max. On the other hand, many of them have the "artwork" folder with large DPI scans and/or booklet PDFs, but I believe they're not imported by MPD while building the DB. And the network is stable, the RPi is connected via Ethernet, on the same subnet as the NAS and PC, while the laptop and phones access the same subnet through WiFi.
Nevertheless, it seems that I've managed to solve the problem by pure chance, at least for now (I'll see if it holds after I refresh a folder with new albums). So, I opened the "Tag" library view and noticed that all the albums are listed there (for instance, the Folder view had a break after letter B, while the artists with initials W, Z and X are present in "Tag" view). After browsing through some of those "high letter" artists' albums and returning to Folder view, everything was there, everything snappy again. And it works on Chrome and Safari on both phones, but only after the same procedure was repeated on each phone and each browser. It maybe had something to do with ingesting the large number of thumbnails into browsers' cache, or something in that line. The curious fact was that on all the phone/browser combinations the page loading hung "on the same artist" (that is, the same number of objects served by the web server?).
Anyway, I hope it's solved now, and that my experience will help someone with the same problem.
P.S. I must mention that there could be extra long names in paths of certain albums, possibly also containing "funky" characters (not pure ASCII), so that could also be the problem.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - mario74m - 02-10-2025
OK, so the problem is definitely not completely solved. When a new browser is opened on a phone and the moode UI is visited in that fresh window, two scenarios can happen:
1. The library is accessed through the "Folder" view first. The problematic behaviour described in the initial message occurs.
2. The library is accessed through the "Tag" view first, and then through the "Folder" view. Everything works as it should in this case. A single visit to the "Tag" view suffices, there's no need for browsing or selecting any particular artist or album.
So, the problem resolution does not persist after browser restarts. There is a workaround, but there could be an issue with building the browser media cache when the library is initially accessed through the "Folder" view, maybe only after a certain number of media files.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - Nutul - 02-10-2025
The fact that it happens on the phone suggests a memory issue (to me) or some sort of bug in the browser (I still believe that any browser in iOS is just Safary with a different pair of shoes on...)
Simply browsing views in different order seems to fix the issue (although temporarily), and this looks like a confirmation to the above.
I do agree with you that having this, somehow, fixed would be fantastic; but being it too-much-of-a-browser-thing, limits the solutions, IMHO.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - Tim Curtis - 02-10-2025
(02-10-2025, 09:03 PM)mario74m Wrote: OK, so the problem is definitely not completely solved. When a new browser is opened on a phone and the moode UI is visited in that fresh window, two scenarios can happen:
1. The library is accessed through the "Folder" view first. The problematic behaviour described in the initial message occurs.
2. The library is accessed through the "Tag" view first, and then through the "Folder" view. Everything works as it should in this case. A single visit to the "Tag" view suffices, there's no need for browsing or selecting any particular artist or album.
So, the problem resolution does not persist after browser restarts. There is a workaround, but there could be an issue with building the browser media cache when the library is initially accessed through the "Folder" view, maybe only after a certain number of media files.
Folder view queries the MPD database directly and so there is no "moode cache" for this view. Tag and Album views use a cache file thats generated during Library update or Re-gen.
As I mentioned earlier I'm not able to repro the issue with 3X the number of folders. Maybe try clearing the Browser cache on the phone.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - mario74m - 02-10-2025
I have already completely cleared the browsers’ caches and histories, it did not help.
Just to mention that opening Album before Folder view does not solve the issue, only Tag does.
Nutul is probably right in that this is probably a browser bug which occurs only for certain combination of served file sizes/names or some other properties, so it is not easily reproducable . I don’t believe that it has to do with phone RAM (the iPhone 16 Pro Max should be pretty generous in that regard, and for testing I closed all apps except the browser). If so, maybe one of future browser updates will solve the issue. In the meanwhile, I can try the debugging if given the right instructions.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - Tim Curtis - 02-10-2025
Its been a while since I've done an iPhone Browser debug but IIRC here are the steps:
- Plug iPhone into USB port on Mac
- Open moOde using Safari on iPhone
- On Mac do Develop > iPhone and then maybe one more menu level
This should open a Browser console window that will let you see console errors, page elements etc as you navigate moOde on the iPhone.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - mario74m - 02-10-2025
Thanks, I'll try to get hold on a Mac and follow the steps, and report back if I come to some conclusion.
Meanwhile I've been able to put some system into all this mess. I remembered that my phones both had a software update to IOS v. 18.3 last week, which coincides with the onset of problems. Then I looked at my wife's and daughter's phones, and luckily they have IOS 16.1 and 17.3, respectively.
The problem does not occur with them, everything works flawlessly as ever before on both Chrome and Safari browsers!!
So on one hand, it's almost sure to be an IOS related problem, maybe some tightened network security policy code option, or simply a bug in the updated browser engine. On the other hand, I'm not sure that you, as the Moode developer could (or should) devote any time to that, when it could very well be resolved already in the next IOS update.
RE: UI hangs on phone while browsing library - Nutul - 02-10-2025
(02-10-2025, 10:26 PM)mario74m Wrote: On the other hand, I'm not sure that you, as the Moode developer could (or should) devote any time to that, when it could very well be resolved already in the next IOS update.You absolutely nailed it.