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Apple TV: Logged out after each use - must reboot or uninstall to log in

Raif
Underground

Apple TV 4th Gen: It happens that the Pandora App launches with no way for me to log in. If I delete and reinstall, I can then successfully log in, see all my songs and lists, but then after a couple of days, Pandora goes back to the basic app with no way to log in. Reinstall fixes the problem for another day or two and then bam, it's gone again.  Has done this three times so far. 

Moderator Edit: Changing title for clarity

Labels (1)
102 Replies

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

Hope you are actually involved in this, your user ID labels you a "casual fan". 

If you're real, and something changes, be sure to post here, as I and likely lots of others have given up on the ever-more-temporary hoop dance to reset and listen. I'll see an email - and will LEAP to try out a fix. Gruff and surly til then. Thanks.

Note: "Moderater Edit: Changing title for clarity"... "must reboot or uninstall to log in". 

But the clarification is wrong. A reboot does NOT correct the problem. This has been repeated often. At one time, it may have worked with a reboot. Until this year, when it happened an UNLOAD instead of UNINSTALL brought it back. No longer. You must uninstall, reinstall, log in again, move the icon back to the front, and launch again. No reboot required.

These details are explicit in the messages that were conveniently archived away from simple view when the "solution" (NOT) was posted earlier this month.

mod edit: merged comments

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

I certainly appreciate the information and understand release issues. But remind those folks who want to be sure everything is right before release that the current code CAN'T REALLY BE USED NOW. As a former software product manager, I understand the process. I also understand that in cases of major failure, the risks of a temporary release with less than full testing are less than the risk of effectively turning off the app for more months. Turn enough people off for long enough, and they hold it against you. Shocking, eh?

Seriously, how much worse could a faulty patch version be than what we have now? Odds are it would be better, and stop the bleeding. Of course, I don't know the cost and logistics of an extra update within the Apple domain...

While I have your ear (eye?), I'll push my luck: there is another bug and a request item I'd appreciate you considering looking at or talking around...

Bug: After playing a while in screensaver, especially but not necessarily after using up your skips, the PAUSE no longer works. It causes a very tiny momentary gap in the play, so we know it heard our command... but continues playing. Only if I terminate Pandora by running some other app, and then return, Pause will work again. I believe this is regardless of using IR or the RF remote.

Request: As I mentioned in past posts, the left/right IR commands have switched functions across some OS revisions. Presently and most often, while a song is playing and the Apple Screen Saver is on, RIGHT IR command does a song skip. LEFT does nothing (there's no rewind or last song of course). At times, the left and right arrows IR commands will increment the current playing screensaver clip forward and back. That's cool but then there's no way then to skip a song without menuing out of screensaver and into Pandora live. This condition has never lasted long...

I know that the skidplate gesture left and right on the Apple RF remote manage the screensaver selection. But there's no IR command available to emulate that gesture. Many of us are using IR for integration reasons. Clearly it's more important to be able to skip a song than manipulate the screensaver. But... the LEFT arrow IR has no function when properly in the screensaver. Wouldn't it be nice to use that to skip to the next saver clip? Or, the DOWN arrow... again no function for IR DOWN in screensave... UP displays the details of what the current clip is, so DOWN to go to the next clip would be intuitive too.

(Adding IR commands for gestures would be marvelous but is certainly out of scope for apps... and Apple's not interested in such radical ideas!)

But seriously and back to the real point here, not being able to use Pandora for the next several months is just forcing your users to find and get comfortable with some other music service. Nobody wants that.

By the way, I'm amused at the official name of what I've called the "trap page". FTUX ("first time user experience") screen. Seems we'll all be FTUXed for a while more.

mod edit: merged comments

mgworek
Underground

Can anyone even download the app now? I gave up and deleted it today and tried to download it again so I could log in and now it just spins. I rebooted the appletv and tried again. Same thing. I don't even know why I continue with them. At least last Christmas the White Christmas station played mostly Christmas music for the first time in years.

jer2
Local Performer

Just to say I have this exact experience, except uninstalling and reinstalling no longer works for me. There's nothing I can do to log in on Apple TV. Looking forward to a fix. This is super frustrating.

Agree that the trap/FTUX screen should just have a way to log in. That would fix it.

Elliot
Underground

Hello- I've been experiencing these logouts for about three weeks now on most, but not all, days.  My Apple TV OS is 16.5 (20L563). 

Tcmartin
Local Performer

15 years of paying for Pandora and I’ve never been so frustrated. I just want to put on some music, it requires rebooting, uninstalling, reinstalling, still can’t log in, uninstall and reinstall again, still no luck, search google for any solutions, finding this thread and spending 20 minutes reading, hoping there’s at least a way to force a log in - no chance. Now it’s “a few weeks out” that this issue will be resolved, the app and service is nothing but a source of frustration at this point! 
Do better Pandora! 

DavePandora
Pandora
Pandora

Update: The goal is to get this to our QA team by mid-week, then release the following week. This is significantly expedited vs. our initial timeline, though I know it still isn't what folks are hoping to hear. I can't provide exact timing as there are multiple teams involved. As mentioned previously, the issue in this thread has been addressed for the new build; we also put up a code review last night to fix one of the remaining issues (which comes from compiling against the latest OS, so not something seen in production yet). Initial usage queries that we ran indicated that this issue may not be affecting the majority of our users; that said, the experience is so bad that we're still expediting.

Not super helpful to you immediately, and I may get roasted for this, but... One of the other updates in this release is to enable better monitoring of the Apple TV app. If it starts to look like getting that in is going to delay the release in a non-trivial way, I'll push to have that be a separate release such that we can keep to the timeline.

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

Thanks for the hopeful update. It has moved me from Surly and Grumpy to just grumpy.

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

Hmmm. Is there a change already? Yesterday I reloaded and it was still working today. Showing version 1911.1 on the settings page. (I didn't notice a version number before or I'd have reported it...) I even tried loading other apps and later coming back to Pandora and at least today, it's normal. Well, not quite normal: The music was still playing more than 35 hours later. Typically when I leave Pandora playing and shut down my system and come back the next day, I get silence on the screensaver when I select the APPLETV, and when selecting Pandora, there's a "Are you still listening?" card with a resume button. Not today... music still playing (but pause fails to work as it always has after an hour or so).

0 Kudos

GawdyTucan
Underground

I’ve been having the exact same issue as the others for about 3 weeks now. About 75% of the time I’m unable to log in or access my stations and have to delete/reinstall. I haven’t seen a noticeable improvement at any point. 

Thank you and I’m looking forward to a fix! 

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

Days Later: Still working properly for me, no logout, no problems (well, none about the logouts) now for about a week. I see that just about when things got working again, there was an AppleTV tvOS update to 16.5 (20L563) from the tvOS 16.4.1 (20L498).  It may be that this change cleared up the cache issue... at least for now... The only other changes I note in Pandora behavior this week are that it takes much longer to "time out" and stop playing music (at least a full day), and when it does, it does not display the "Are you still listening?" screen... it just stops. And will not restart without selecting a different "station". Navigation is normal in Pandora after the music stops, but you can't just resume the station you had been on. Dave, looks like you have a moving target. But that's always the case, eh?

Tucan, have a look in SETTINGS>System for your tvOS version... if not at 16.5 yet, update and report your findings.

DavePandora
Pandora
Pandora

So glad to hear this! Even if the moving target can be a bit frustrating, it's also nothing new, as you say. The hand that giveth can taketh away...and then giveth again. They must have tweaked something in the black box algorithm for how proactive the OS is about clearing out applications' file folders.

The fix we'll release soon (QE has a build as of late last week) will keep the app usable, and keep listeners from being FTUX'ed, regardless of any further progress or regression within that black box. So I'm glad this came to my attention before the OS seems to have made it less of a burning issue (assuming others have the same positive experience with the new OS).

Thank you for reporting back and helping other users out! And, more generally, thanks for both your patience and candor. (Shoot, I'm slipping out of the mechanic mold again.)

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

You are welcome and you have my sympathies. After 30 years in software product management and support, I know the pain. And I know how to report with the detail and precision required. Let me know if you want a tester.

Elliot
Underground

I would like to add my thanks. We are long-time subscribers and will remain so. 🙏🏻

johnmnagy
Diamond in the Rough

Dave, re-reading prior messages - my thought that the 16.5 OS might have corrected my system behavior is in serious question. Note that the "working for me" OS was reported over 2 weeks ago as NOT working. But the same user replied today thanking you... implying it's working now for him. Something else may be afoot:

Elliot - Local Performer
‎05-26-2023 10:51 AM

Hello- I've been experiencing these logouts for about three weeks now on most, but not all, days.  My Apple TV OS is 16.5 (20L563). 

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GawdyTucan
Underground

Hello, 

Good news. I haven’t had problems in a couple of days. I’m hopeful that it’s resolved and am very appreciative. 

My iOS is 16.5 so I’m up to date. 

Thank you!

 

 

Elliot
Underground

After two days of normal functioning, the logout problem is back. So frustrating!

0 Kudos

bhhales
Underground

I have this issue also, almost daily, but I DO NOT HAVE TO DELETE AND REINSTALL.  If I simply double-press the Home key on my Apple TV remote, navigate over to Pandora, then swipe up to hard terminate the app, then restart Pandora, I am back where I expect to be, logged in.

As a retired iOS developer, I suspect that something is timing out while the app is in background and not being reset properly when the app resumes.  Most likely something session related.  My suggestion to Pandora is to modify your app to time to, if not playing music, completely restore all credentials and establish a new session whenever the app is brought back to the foreground.

So, while this is a pain to deal with, deleting and reinstalling the app is not necessary each time.

DavePandora
Pandora
Pandora

Great point here. Yes, that should work. We have a fix for this issue, currently in QA. The issue is actually tvOS's file system deletion policy, where the app's files can be deleted proactively by the OS. We were re-creating the file, but (pre-fix) we weren't then updating the app's UI once the file was re-created. So by force-quitting the app, you've allowed the app to recreate the file, and the OS isn't evicting the file before you re-launch, which addresses the issue.

We're planning to submit the new version to Apple next week. Apologies for the delay on this. Please use @bhhales's suggestion of force-quitting the app in the meantime.  @AlyssaPandora can we please mark that post as the "solution" -- UNTIL the hotfix release is out?

TannerPandora
Moderator
Moderator

Thanks for the update, @DavePandora. I've marked the above as a solution for now. Thanks again!


Tanner | Community Moderator

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