Downloading Tracks for Offline Use
Tracks imported from a Plex server don’t live on your device — they stream from the server over your network every time you play them. Downloading copies a track into the app’s own storage so it plays with no server and no network involved.
This only applies to Plex tracks. Anything you imported from files is already local. See Importing via Plex and Importing Music.
Streaming vs. Downloaded
When you import from Plex, each track is stored with its source marked as plex and its path set to a streaming URL pointing at your server, complete with your access token. Album art is stored the same way — as a URL on your server.
That means a freshly imported Plex track:
- Needs the server reachable to play
- Needs the network for its artwork to appear
- Uses bandwidth every time you play it
A downloaded track is written into the app’s Documents storage and re-tagged as a local track. From then on Homecrate treats it exactly like a file you imported yourself.
Downloading a Track
- Go to the All tab in the Library filter row
- Find the track — Plex tracks show a Download button on the right of the row
- Tap Download
[SCREENSHOT: All Tracks row for a Plex track, showing the Download button]
While the download runs, the button changes to Getting, turns green and stops responding to taps. When it finishes, the button disappears entirely — that’s your confirmation the track is now local.
[SCREENSHOT: Track row mid-download showing the green "Getting" state]
You don’t have to wait for one download before starting another; several can run at once.
The Download button lives on the All Tracks rows. It isn’t offered on album cards, artist cards, or inside playlists.
What Actually Gets Downloaded
Each download does three things:
| Step | Result |
|---|---|
| Audio | The track is fetched from your Plex server and written to the app’s audio folder under a unique filename |
| Album art | If the album’s artwork is a server URL, it’s fetched too and saved alongside, and the album switches to the local copy |
| Library entry | The track switches from a Plex stream to a local file, now pointing at the downloaded copy, and its link to the server is cleared |
Downloads are tracked by where they sit inside Homecrate’s own storage rather than by a fixed system path, and the real location is worked out fresh each time the file is played. This is what keeps downloads playable after app updates, when iOS moves the app’s storage.
Album art is best-effort: if the artwork fetch fails, the audio download still succeeds and the album keeps pointing at the remote image.
After Downloading
Downloaded tracks behave like any other local track:
- They play with your Plex server switched off, and with no network at all
- Their Download button is gone, because they’re no longer remote
- Their artwork loads from local storage
- They keep their place in any playlist they were already in
The connection back to Plex is not retained — the Plex ID is cleared once a track is local. Re-importing the same track from Plex later won’t create a duplicate, because imports skip tracks that already match on title, artist and album.
Downloading Whole Albums
There’s no album-level or artist-level download. Downloading is per-track from the All Tracks list.
To take an album offline, switch to the All tab and download its tracks one at a time. The All Tracks list is sorted by title and loads 100 rows at a time, so use Load more · N remaining at the bottom if the tracks you want haven’t loaded yet. See Library Views.
Removing a Downloaded Track
Downloaded tracks take up storage on your device — a downloaded library is as large as the files themselves.
To take one out of your library, long-press its row in the All Tracks view and tap Delete. That removes the library entry, and the album entry too if it was the last track in that album. If you want it back afterwards, import it again from Plex.
Be aware that this is a library operation: it removes the entry you browse and play, but the downloaded audio file itself stays in the app’s storage. Deleting rows won’t reclaim disk space on its own.
Before You Can Download Anything
Downloads need working Plex credentials, because the download fetches from the same URL the track would have streamed from.
- Plex support is a Pro feature. Specifically, Sign in with Plex — the browser sign-in that discovers your server address and token for you — requires Pro.
- Address and token can also be entered by hand under Settings → Plex Streaming Settings. Credentials are stored in the device Keychain.
- Disconnect from Plex in the same section clears the stored address and token from this device. Your plex.tv account is unaffected.
See Settings Overview for where these live.
Troubleshooting
Download Failed alert. Homecrate shows “Failed to download track. Please try again.” when it can’t complete a download. Usual causes:
- The Plex server isn’t reachable — check it’s running and on the same network
- The stored token has expired — sign in again, or update the token in Settings
- The track has no stream URL saved, which happens when the server was briefly unreachable during the original import. Re-import the track from Plex to give it a fresh URL.
Button says “Getting” for a long time. Large lossless files over a slow network genuinely take a while, and there’s no percentage readout — the button only has two states. The row returns to normal either way when the download settles, and a failure raises the Download Failed alert.
No Download button on a track you know came from Plex. Either it’s already been downloaded, or it was imported as a local file. Only tracks still marked as Plex tracks get the button.
Artwork still missing after downloading. The album art was only available as a server URL that couldn’t be fetched. Audio is unaffected; the album keeps the remote image reference.