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Why do I have to constantly restart my iPad for it to see audio units?
Why do I have to constantly restart my iPad for it to see audio units?
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Because the OS has a bug and Apple hasn’t been able to squash it for a few years now.
What iPadOS version are you running?
I have a habit of closing all apps before installing any new apps and always launch the stand-alone apps first.
Don't remember that last time I had to do a manual reboot after installing an AUv3 to make it show up.
(iPad Air 2, iPadOS15.4.1).
Cheers!
What IPad and OS are you running? Are you on OS 15?
For context, while some people run into this with some regularity, most people never or only exceedingly rarely experience this. It has happened to me only 1 time. I know iOS musicians who have never had it happen. The lack of reproducibility would make it very difficult to track down.
I’ve not experienced this, but there are certain apps which will quit in the middle of playing a project, and then GarageBand prompts reloading the plugin. For me, this only happens with some of the Four Pockets apps, Embertone’s sax app and another dev’s app, which I cannot remember at the moment.
Those apps may actually be crashing due to an error. When this happens, you should check Analytics for crash logs named for the app. Those logs stay around for about a week.
I’d never checked out those logs before. Interesting tip. Thanks.
It can’t hurt to do a hard reboot, if that’s not what you mean by restarting the iPad. Press volume up, then press volume down, then hold the power button until you see the Apple logo.
Thank you so much. 14.8.
This was a problem with iPadOS 14. It seemed to improve, but never went away. 15 has been out for 6 months now, with no major issues, except the icons are smaller. Maybe it's time to update.
Yeah, right when I’m debating updating my 16” Intel MacBook from Catalina to Big Sur.
I believe that by most accounts, iOS 15 has been more solid than 14.x
That ended for me awhile ago. At least a few updates. I’m on 15.3.1 bout to go to 15.4.1
I have never experienced it on either of my iPads, but I believe there were a few posts here that said that the issue resolved for some people when they upgraded to iOS 15.
Have you had a different experience?
Thankfully, no problem. I do think that would drive one crazy.
So, no problem then. Just restart the iPad regularly. I restart mine twice a week, on schedule, to deal with some apps having memory leaks.
I still get this happening. I'm not on iOS 15 yet, maybe i should upgrade but I'm super short on space. Turning off any kind of auto updating in spp store / test flight seems to help a bit
It didn’t occur to me that it could be test flight apps. I do not auto update. Thanks for this idea.
It sounds dumb, but I hear that Impaktor does not export on iOS 15, and that is what’s holding me back. teeny tiny, I know.
Fwiw, several few people that have reported the issue aren’t using Test Flight at all.
Being sure to close all apps when installing new AUv3 apps, and starting the standalone version first before trying to load as an AUv3 is what I figure is the most likely preventative measure that would works. I've no evidence to support that, but it makes sense to me that the plugin database being open by a host app while it's being updated by an app install could lead to corruption.
I experienced the bug only once prior to iOS 15 and never since updating. I generally keep apps force-closed when not using them, so it would be rare that I was installing any AUv3 apps while any host was running. I also almost always start the standalone app before trying the AUv3 in a host.
Yeah i think i often have apps open or even running while installing new ones so may have to try this 👍 (though i do always open iaa first after downloading at least. That's clearly not enough on its own, so will try the closing apps method
I definitely recommend opening the container app first when you get a new AU. I say this mainly because of what I've observed with installing AUv3's on macOS. Since there are multiple installation paths on macOS, it might be more complicated to get a new AUv3 registered with the system. But, I think the underlying DB of what is installed is going to be the same. (The code to get the list can be the same at least.) It isn't going to hurt to open the container app once anyway (and there might actually be something useful hidden in there. Also, Apple makes me write a stupid freaking container app so you should at least have to open it once!
).
It does seem as if iOS 15 solved this issue.
Yep, the asylum is waiting for me. 😜 🤪
After a couple of years of regularly experiencing this problem, here is my summary:
Based on everything I have read, and some guesses based on my own experience as a developer, my best attempt to explain this is: Some developers who investigated this found a background process that provides access to the plugin database. That process can crash on iOS 14. I believe the system simply kills that process when it needs more memory (which is more or less standard practice). And the reason why this started with iOS 14 is probably that Apple made this background process use more memory itself, and that means it became a big enough target for the system: killing it would free lots of memory. And why would that process use more memory on iOS 14? I suspect that Apple has added in-memory caching of the plugin database to that process. Which is faster, but would also make the process much larger, especially when you have many plugins installed. Like I do.
And why do the plugins come back on iOS 15, after some time? Probably because Apple now restarts the killed process after a while.
So, why don’t they fix it? … Well, how? … They either need to make that process unkillable, which is bad if the iPad runs out of memory. Or they would need to remove the in-memory caching, which makes plugin searching and loading slower. No good options. They probably figure the problem will go away when people get newer iPads with more memory.
In the meantime, it could help to reduce memory usage while making music:
I haven’t tried this. But people who do not have this problem tend to suggest doing things like this.
Yep, not using Test Flight.
Test Flight is another app that could use up memory. So closing or uninstalling it can make it less likely that the system will need to kill some process to free some memory, including the plugin database process. This may be enough for some people to prevent this bug from happening.