Gospel Library Exruciatingly Slow Install on Amazon Fire

I just installed the new 5.0 update this weekend and the new "improvements" on how the download and install works has made the app nigh on useless. The content downloads just fine, but it can take upwards of a minute for a single item to install (like an October 2018 Ensign). I'm the kind of person that likes to download the entire library in both English and Portuguese (I served my mission in Brazil) and I do a lot of studying where I don't have internet access. I really would love to roll back my version of the app to the previous version until this problem gets taken care of as I rely on the Gospel Library app a lot. I'm running Fire OS 5.6.2.0. I've tried installing it to SD card, and to the Internal memory. I usually move the app from the SD card to internal memory before firing the app up just because everything gets stored in internal memory anyway, and I've got a lot of other stuff that runs just fine off of my card (Sandisk High Speed card) that I can afford to leave plenty of room for the app to download stuff (5.8 GBs of free space). Is anyone else having this problem? Can anyone explain why it takes so long for a single magazine or article to install now where it took maybe a second before? Is there a fix for it?

The same thing (slow download for books) has been happening on iOS – it's not specific to the Gospel Library 5.0 update. The content servers were overwhelmed over the weekend. That said, things seem to be going quicker today. Is it working better for you now?

The Downloading phase seems to be fairly quick, but the Installing phase takes forever (i.e., often more than 5 minutes) and usually quits before it is completed. I am trying to download older general conferences and have had to select most of them three times before I am successful.

I know I have succeeded once I get the screen that says there are no downloads in progress and the download has failed. That is a pretty interesting success prompt.

lajackson wrote:The Downloading phase seems to be fairly quick, but the Installing phase takes forever (i.e., often more than 5 minutes) and usually quits before it is completed. I am trying to download older general conferences and have had to select most of them three times before I am successful.

Wow, I've never seen that before – 5 minutes is a long time. Are you also on a Kindle Fire? How are you differentiating between the time to download vs. install?

Galaxy Samsung S4 phone running Android 5.0.1

If I long press on a downloading item, I am taken to the download page, where several items are in the Installing phase. Suddenly one of them will flash between Downloading, Installing, Finalizing, and possibly one other step (I'm not sure) in what appears to be some kind of a loop. When that happens, one of the other items gives me the failure message and has been successfully downloaded.

It is fascinatingly frustrating to watch.

lajackson wrote:If I long press on a downloading item, I am taken to the download page, where several items are in the Installing phase. Suddenly one of them will flash between Downloading, Installing, Finalizing, and possibly one other step (I'm not sure) in what appears to be some kind of a loop. When that happens, one of the other items gives me the failure message and has been successfully downloaded.

Same thing here. Moto G4 Play with Android 7.1.1.

I'm seeing pretty much the same thing although right now it's taking about a minute to install a general conference for me. I tried to download just one item. It flashed the download notification in the notification bar real quick and then showed the 'working' bar beneath the item. I long pressed and it showed the download page and showed the item as installing.
After few seconds it flashed and disappeared and the screen then said that there were no downloads. But when I went back to the item, it was still working. And when I long pressed again it said again that it was installing. Eventually it installed. And then when I tried another item it went through the same process but like lajackson it would report that the first item had failed to download (even though it was downloaded).

sbradshaw wrote:How are you differentiating between the time to download vs. install?

I missed this part of your question the first time around. The long press to the installation screen shows Downloading takes about two seconds, then Installing many minutes, then the loop through everything phase (which also lasts several minutes and I have never seen end). If I leave the Current Downloads screen, the loopy phase has usually gone away before I return to that screen again.

I'm glad it's not just me and not just the Fire that's seeing these issues.. It almost seems like the new method they'rr using to compress the files takes a long time to unpack, and I've tried dozens of times to get the October 2018 Ensign to install and it still won't do it. It downloads fine, takes around a minute to "install" and then fails, over and over again. I've only been able to get the Ensigns from 1995-2013 to install since the 5.0 update. And the app frequently crashes when I try to install those magazines.

I am seeing the same thing still today in a BLU XL Vivo running Android 8

I finished installing the General Conferences. Now I am working on my Ensign collection.

Yesterday it took from 9-11 minutes per issue to load an Ensign. Finally, last evening I selected download all. In the morning, five issues had downloaded and the process had stopped.

This morning, it is taking usually 4-5 minutes per issue. I am not aware that anything has changed on my end.

When I select an item to download, the line starts moving under the faded icon. About 10-12 seconds later I see the Downloading indication for about one second. The item moves to the Installing phase. Sometimes after about a minute, another Downloading indication transpires. Sometimes it occurs again about the 2-minute mark. Then I wait.

At about 4 minutes, the line under the icon starts chaotically dancing. If I am looking at the Current downloads screen, it is cycling between Downloading, Installing, and Finalizing as I mentioned in an earlier post. This lasts up to a minute and, if it works, the issue in installed and accessible.

If the Installing phase only takes 4-5 minutes, I do not get any error messages. When it takes 9-11 minutes, I know the process is complete when I get the Download Failed message. At that point I have access. I did not note this in my previous post, but when I do receive the Download Failed message, I receive it two more times, at about one-minute intervals, even it I have moved on to other GL activities.

If I start to download an issue, then double click to go the the Current downloads screen (long press does not seem to work any longer), the No Downloads in Progress screen appears, usually within a minute. If I press the back arrow, the faded icon still shows that the issue is Installing, and more often than not it eventually installs.

I have 378 issues to go. What is supposed to be happening during the Installing operation? Should it be taking this long? It never has before, but I wonder if something about the new "updating in the background" process is interfering with the initial download process.

Things used to install in under a minute. The November 2018 Ensign actually installed in about 10 seconds flat. But not the older issues. (I am working on the 2002 issues.)

I am becoming more intimately acquainted with a Galaxy Samsung S4 phone running Android 5.0.1 and GL 5.0.1 (50197.8). I would rather just be friends than lovers.

Gospel Library 5.0.2 for Android is in beta and fixes a bug with search re-indexing that happens each time a book is installed. The fix speeds up install time for books. Are any of you on the beta? I'm curious if it solves the problem, especially for those of you who are taking several minutes to install a single book.

sbradshaw wrote:Gospel Library 5.0.2 for Android is in beta and fixes a bug with search re-indexing that happens each time a book is installed. The fix speeds up install time for books.

I downloaded the beta and installed 378 Ensigns at a rate of one per second. That's right. Six minutes.

It would appear that some behind-the-scenes indexing probably was the culprit.

Thanks.

Same with me, although I haven't yet been able to get the November 2018 Ensign installed. They really messed up. And I submitted a complaint through the app and have yet to hear back from them and it's been almost a week. I wish there was a way we could roll back to the previous version, at least until this mess gets cleaned up. I thought maybe they compress it into a different format that's smaller and tighter and then have to unpack it, but it takes way too long for the size of file, even on a portable device.