Android Auto resume play

Feature requests
1

I have noticed that Symfonium doesn’t automatically start replay when reconnected to Android Auto, and it doesn’t offer any “quick” option to resume playback from last position.

Most players will simply start playback again automatically as soon as Android Auto is launched, but Symfonium doesn’t seem to do this; it would be nice to have this feature.

If playback cannot be auto-started on launch, or it is disabled, it would be nice to have some option on the primary screen to quickly restart manually from where it left off.

I suspect this might be a side-effect of the fact that even restart from the pull-down menu was not available until recently; can we enable it for Android Auto?

Currently, if I’m playing a playlist, the only way to do this is to navigate to library, choose playlists, scroll down to the correct playlist (maybe several screens if there are a number of playlists), then choose the playlist, then pick “Resume” to resume playing where it left off. This sequence of commands can be very distracting when driving.

2

There’s many forum posts about why the global state is not currently saved.

With that said it will be present in next release.

3

OK, thanks. Looking forward to it :slight_smile:

4

marked as implemented, but I don’t see much of a change in 2.0.0. Symfonium still doesn’t auto-play when Android Auto is started (even though I tell AA to auto-play music on startup), and I don’t see any option to continue playback of existing play queue.

Looks like the playlists option was added to the home screen, which cuts out a few steps, there is also a “Recently Played” section (not sure if that was there before), but it contains single tracks only, not any option to continue playing anything other than a recently played track.

Is Symfonium actually saving the existing play queue between restarts in 2.0.0.0?

Is this coming up in a future build, or did I miss something?

5

Yes it does unless you uncheck the option in the settings. Please open an issue with logs if it’s not.

Please note that some cars sends a stop on stop that clear the queue, there’s an option to change that to be a pause.

6

OK, thanks. I’ll double check to be sure and I’ll collect logs if it’s still doing it. I have 2 cars that both support Android Auto natively (Audi Q7 and Range Rover), so I’ll try in both.

How do I collect logs?

7
8

OK, looks easy enough; let me check first, then collect logs if it doesn’t auto-play or provide some way to restart play queue

9

First test is to start the app after leaving the car, if the queue is empty then your car sends a stop.

Enable the option ignore remote stop in the settings to workaround it.

10

I think the issue may be related to my phone (Galaxy s21 Ultra), or some other setting. So…

I’m playing and have a whole bunch of things in the play queue (usually just a playlist of some sort), I pause the playback and I get the play controls at the bottom of the screen, then I hit the home button; the current song still shows in the “pull down” . I swipe away the notification in the pull-down, then I go back in to Symfonium and the playback bar is completely gone, nothing in my play queue and I have to start all over again.

I suspect that swiping away the pull-down, or starting Android Auto is somehow sending a remote stop signal on this model of phone, which clears the play queue (not directly related to AA itself) . Let me try again after ignoring remote stop

11

Yup, that fixed it, I just tested it on my Range Rover Android Auto.

So, for the Galaxy S21 (and probably any other Samsung phone), hooking in to Android Auto or swiping away from the pull-down, or probably many other external options such as setting Media Output directly from the Samsung pull-down (which allows quick-switch to/from Bluetooth or Miracast on a Samsung) will send a remote stop signal, which needs to be ignored on these phones using Settings->Advanced->ignore remote stop command.

12

BTW: I noticed this issue also happens if I have not played for a long time. e.g. I pause playback and go to some other app, the playing song still shows in the pull-down several hours later, but the app probably got paged out a long time ago (probably the wrong terminology for Android, but my background is Linux kernel). Now several hours later, I start Symfonium again, and the playback bar is missing and my play queue has been lost. I suspect Samsung has issued a remote stop when paging out the app.

Basically, if we want this new feature to work properly on Samsung phones we have to ignore remote stop.

13

No that last one was is what was changed in 2.0 with the state saving previously an app kill would trigger that.

The workaround for the stop command was present since a few releases already.

14

OK, thanks, makes sense, I haven’t experienced that last one since before upgrading to 2.0, but for sure there seem to be a number of things on the Galaxy that end up sending a remote stop, so I think the ignore needs to be enabled on this model so that it always retains the play queue.

BTW: I saw the odd glitch on Android Auto; once or twice it has started playing a track and then gone to the next track before the end (usually within a few seconds), when I hit the back button to get back, second time round it will play the whole track. I also noticed the play queue on the top right disappears on some occasions, and then comes back again after the next track is started. If I see it again or nail down any details I’ll start a new thread and try to capture logs.