Android app not playing Vimeo embeds within the app, but takes you to Vimeo!

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#1

A quick question for anyone using a mobile phone version of Patreon.

When you click on one of our videos, does it play within the android Patreon app on your phone, or does it take you to Vimeo to play the video?

I have a member who is getting quite disgruntled with the Patreon app continually taking her to Vimeo to watch a video. My member doesn’t wish to join Vimeo in order to watch them using her phone or tablet.
Most of my members are of the silver surfer age group and many (not all) do find using a computer or phone tricky. So when another hurdle is placed there, it does tend to upset some of my members.
I obviously have a member which is experiencing this issue.

I know that Patreon embeds Vimeo and YouTube videos within the web site, why isn’t the embedding code working within the app, so it simply plays within the Patreon app?

BTW, my Vimeo videos are set up correctly within Vimeo for allowing specific websites to embed them, including Patreon.com.

Thanks in advance,
Paul :slight_smile:

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#2

Hey @TheDevonArtist, thanks for making this post and welcome back to the forum :slight_smile:

I checked with our Android team and yes, this is the behavior right not for the app. When you press play, it will open the Vimeo app if you have that installed or a browser to play it. We used to embed videos but we found out that it didn’t work with certain privacy restrictions on some videos so the app is currently built this way. I’ve raised this to the team for them to consider as they continue to work on the apps.

#3

Thank you Mindy, at least I know that something will hopefully be sorted out one day for my patrons. As mentioned asking them to install further software and possibly join Vimeo to view my painting wildlife video tutorials may be a step too far for some of them.

Paul :slight_smile:

1 Like
#4

Hi Mindy,

Any update on this? Just wanted to flag that this issue also impacts our users. Android users who do not have the Vimeo app installed and are not logged in to Vimeo get a “sorry this video can’t be found” message with no explanation that they need an account. This is obviously problematic because they think that the link is broken. Most of our users are on mobile due to the nature of our content and many of them are not tech savvy so this is a big issue for our Patreon.

Please let me know if you have an ETA on a fix for this. Our Vimeo account is up for renewal and we need to decide if we should keep it or research another option.