TortugaPower
Last Played Books widgets don’t show artwork or text
Environment
- OS Version: [e.g. 13.5.1]
- App Version: [e.g. 3.9.0-1]
Description
A clear and concise description of what the bug is. Last Played Books widgets, both sizes, initially stopped updating widget information, continued to show the previous book shown even though no longer being listened to, when a new book was being played. After removing and re-adding the widget(s) they now contains no artwork or text at all.
This bug does not appear to affect the Time Listened widgets.
This bug was previously seen in Last Played Books widgets and also did not affect Time Listened widgets and was fixed.
Steps to reproduce the behavior
- Adding either or both Last Played Book widgets.
- Removed and re-added widgets resulted in no information shown instead of it being stuck on a previously listened book.
- Only affects Last Book Played widgets
I too am experiencing this issue. App version 5.5.1-91. iOS 18.2.
Not sure when it started. I finally completed the book I had been listening to these past few weeks and noticed that the (last played) widget didn't update to the new book I was listening to. So I removed and re-added and since then it's showing nothing.
Update: Saw a new version of the app (5.5.2-93) and updated to that. Same issue. Removed and re-added the widget just in case.
I will add this as a new comment rather than edit the previous one so it doesn't get missed.
Today the widgets are working. It even updates when I listen to a different audiobook. I am on the same version as my last comment yesterday. No changes to the iOS version nor did I reboot the phone.
+1, same issue
iOS: 18.2
app version: 5.5.2
let me know if you need anymore details
I'll post here a link when the next open beta is available, I tried to debug this with someone over a support ticket, but once they installed the beta build, it started working. For context, we changed how widgets load the data (back in v5.4.0) so it's done via the shared UserDefaults, instead of loading the entire CoreData stack which was crashing for some users (not sure if that's just memory constraints on the widget app extension), and what I've found is that the extension sometimes caches things, and I think it's messing up things when going from the old way to the new way of loading the data
If anyone is experiencing this and the first version they installed is v5.5.0+ please let me know
I'll post here a link when the next open beta is available, I tried to debug this with someone over a support ticket, but once they installed the beta build, it started working. For context, we changed how widgets load the data (back in v5.4.0) so it's done via the shared UserDefaults, instead of loading the entire CoreData stack which was crashing for some users (not sure if that's just memory constraints on the widget app extension), and what I've found is that the extension sometimes caches things, and I think it's messing up things when going from the old way to the new way of loading the data
If anyone is experiencing this and the first version they installed is v5.5.0+ please let me know
Hi! I keep having this issue. I have version 5.5.4 and iOS 18.3.1
Hi @jesse2367 @szymon-romanko @city3oy this is the link to join the beta (link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/tUPqnaRS ), there's still one more update I want to do to that version, so probably it's not completely fixed (my only clue right now, is that CoreData continues causing crashes on the widget extension due to a lock on the database file that iOS does not allow for app extensions)
Hi @GianniCarlo , unfortunately, this doesn't fix the issue :( BookPlayer version: 5.5.5 (99) iOS version: 18.3.1
@szymon-romanko I updated the beta, can you try again? (also, an additional note, can you test switching from one book and back to the one you were listening?)
It started working randomly and hasn’t glitched since then. I switched between different books and it’s working like it should!
On Sunday, March 2, 2025, 11:13 AM, Gianni Carlo @.***> wrote:
@szymon-romanko I updated the beta, can you try again? (also, an additional note, can you test switching from one book and back to the one you were listening?)
— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***> GianniCarlo left a comment (TortugaPower/BookPlayer#1230) @szymon-romanko I updated the beta, can you try again? (also, an additional note, can you test switching from one book and back to the one you were listening?)
— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: @.***>
Hi @GianniCarlo , I've tested out your new beta and widget seems to work as expected. Thanks for your help
is anyone still having this issue after updating to v5.5.5? I'm inclined to close the ticket as it looks like the fix worked
I'm on Beta track and this has been on my screen for several weeks including across iOS updates (also Beta)
@bensaufley I've updated that beta group so you should be able to install v5.6.0, let me know if after updating and playing between at least two files, if it still shows up like that. I'll be expiring the build v5.5.4 on TestFlight possibly tomorrow
OK updated to 5.6.0-112 and then restarted my phone. Have switched between three different books a few times over, force-quit (app-switcher swipe-up), reopened, switched some more. Still seeing the same as above. I can remove and re-add the widget? Not going to do that unless you say so in case this is helpful to diagnose; I expect removing and re-adding will fix it at least for some period of time.
@bensaufley hmmmm I have to think of a way to properly debug this, though the good news is that there are no more crash reports for the widget extension on the latest versions from Apple or Sentry, so that's one avenue closed.
Regarding re-adding the widget, I think you can verify if it would work without actually removing the broken widget, if you go to the add widget menu → BookPlayer, from the preview of the Last Played Books widget, it should show your last book if it's working.
I think the other line of thinking I could go into, is if I'm refreshing the widgets too often, and possibly exhausting an internal limit of how many times it can be refreshed? In any case, I'll see how I can gather logs from the widget extension and see where it hangs
@GianniCarlo Oh wow, I'm surprised, but yeah, adding a new widget does not work: it also shows the gray block. I had always assumed that somehow state got malformed over time, because it did work and then one day – I think after I finished a book and deleted it? – it didn't anymore. But a fresh widget does not fix it.
I was able to reproduce this finally, the issue was with the size of the artwork to be displayed, even if we limit the frame to 90x90, the widget extension still takes the entire backing image size, and it was throwing the following error: Widget archival failed due to image being too large [11] - (1536, 2039), totalArea: 3131904 > max[2121055.200000].. This would affect not only the last played widget but the recent books widget too
I'm submitting a new version later today with a fix, that has some limitations, as iOS can kill the widget extension if it's using too many resources. For the last played widget we can transform the image on the fly to be of a valid size if necessary, but on the recent books widget that can display 4, to avoid the CPU spike, we will show a placeholder for the artwork if it's not inside the valid size
@bensaufley the fix is now live on v5.7.1 in the AppStore, please let me know if that fixes the issue
Hi, I've did some more tests with multiple artworks of different dimensions and found that: 200x200px works correctly 700x900px and 900x900px doesn't show up at all I've also noticed (probably after last update), that now when there is an issue with artwork, the widget just falls back to last played media with working image or no image at all. Let me know if you need any more info to reproduce.
Hi @szymon-romanko ! thanks for testing, when you say that the widget falls back to last played media with working image or no image at all, could you share a screenshot? is it showing the title too? or is it just the grey square when there's no image?
If you can share one of the images that produce this result, I can do some tests on my end too. I plan on storing a duplicate and downscaled version of the artwork when it's set on the item details screen, so we avoid any CPU-intensive related task on the extension
Hi, I like the idea with storing downscaled version. I've added a short video demonstrating how track switching works for me. I'm also posting the sample artwork i've used.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c004142e-9b37-4017-a99d-71acd36241ae
Hi, same problem here with the artwork not displaying in the widget (I'musing 5.7.2-119). Any way to circumvent this? Someone mentioned smaller artwork? How could I implement this? Thanks! Love your app otherwise
As a workaround, you could downscale your artwork and then upload it to bookplayer this way: