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.
Hey @TheDevonArtist, thanks for making this post and welcome back to the forum
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.
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.
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.
Hey there - before I check in with the team, I just want to make sure I know what kind of update you’re looking for and what trouble you’re experiencing. Mind providing some more context? Thanks!
When a video from Vimeo is embedded in Patreon and you view it in the app it won’t play within the Patron app. You will have to have the Vimeo app on your phone installed, and have an account to watch the video. This is a problem when it comes to VR videos.
Hiya @bombelkie - Evan here from the Patreon team and I was also able to run into what you are experiencing. I wasn’t required to create a Vimeo account, though - could this be because your videos are made private?
Regardless, I’ve just gone ahead and filed a feedback request for this. I also know that we are doing some work on our Vimeo integration at the moment so hope that most quirks will be ironed out.
This will also be the reason my Patrons are not able to view my videos via the app. All my Vimeo watercolour wildlife painting video tutorials (that’s a mouthful) are listed as ‘Private’. This is because I don’t wish people to be able to copy the URL’s and store them after joining for just one month.
They can then view the tutorials after leaving Patreon. With over 90+ video lessons where each one can take a week and more to produce, I have to make them private for that reason and only allow them to be embedded on Patron and my personal website where I also teach using my videos i.e. www.devonartist.co.uk and nowhere else.
I have experienced people joining for just one month and helping themselves to all the video URL’s then leaving, YouTube was a pain for this which is why I switched (and paid) for Vimeo.
These are my reasons for Vimeo videos being marked as private, and I’m sure many creators have the same reasons.
Paul
This is great feedback! I wonder if you have set the privacy settings on the video to play on Patreon.com? I know that it is possible to make it so that videos can only be played on Patreon which will stop people from being able to view them elsewhere.
I only ask to gather a better understanding and to pass this along to our product team.
The point is that I didn’t want them to be visible on Vimeo just on Patreon that’s the whole point. I have tried both setting it to private and hide from Vimeo but it’s still the same issue.
Hi, are there any updates on this issue? I’ve experienced everything that the other users already mentioned above, and got a lot of negative feedback from my patrons who cannot access my content from vimeo.
At the moment my biggest question is: is it possible to let Android users to watch vimeo videos on Patreon app? I have set up the right privacy settings on vimeo, yet Android users still see ‘the video cannot be played’. Just FYI, iOS users can see everything perfectly on the app.
Any solutions to be found in the nearest future?
Hi Elina, sadly not with myself or my members, they are still having difficulty with the android app on their phone. I’ve had to advise them to not use the app and use the interest app they already have installed and then the Vimeo videos seem to work fine for them.
Some of my members are not tech-savvy, so the need to install another app to play videos for the Patreon app can get a little confusing for them, and like you, in turn get numerous complaints.
I have all of my Vimeo videos set for just Patreon and my personal https://devonartist.co.uk/ watercolour website, where I’ve also installed a teaching platform that’s a bit more user-friendly for not just playing the videos, but also for finding them much easier, especially tutorials in certainly orders.
So the reason they don’t work is still for me unknown, Mind you, I haven’t asked all these members how new their phones are, and I doubt with the nature of my some of my patrons, they won’t always be looking for the latest Samsung!
Paul
