Keep playing regardless of audio focus

Feature requests
1

Feature description:

Requesting feature to continue playback if another app requests audio focus. (Allow two media apps to output at the same time).

For example, play music on Symphonium, whilst listening to a podcast on Antennapod.

Presently, Symphonium provides “audio focus” settings to customise behaviour for short/notification interruptions (e.g. duck) but these do not apply in case of another media app.

If possible, please add an option to “disobey audio focus” and keep playing.

Problem solved:

Prevents playback interruption when other media playback occurs on the system.

Brought benefits:

Provides more granular control of audio focus changes.

Other application solutions:

 

 

Additional description and context:

 

 

Screenshots / Mockup:

    

3 Likes
No playback during calls
Being able to play in background from different audio source with a separate audio volume
2

Maybe it’s relevant to say… Musicolet has this feature.

3

I can give a partial workaround for advanced users (requires ADB commands).

“Partial” workaround because it does not work on Symfonium itself! The app will refuse to play media at all if you try this trick on it.

But you possibly can apply the workaround to your secondary audio source. For example, YouTube app and YouTube Music continue to work normally. Firefox will refuse to play anything with audio. Just have to check each app yourself to see if they still play audio.

Workaround via ADB

Use the following command:

adb shell appops set packageName TAKE_AUDIO_FOCUS mode

  1. Replace “packageName” with the app’s package name
  2. Replace “mode” with either allow or ignore

“ignore” is the option you want here. This prevents the specified app from taking audio focus at all. Meaning it will continue playing audio uninterrupted when starting another audio stream. This sticks overs app updates as well, so you only have to send the command one time.

If the trick doesn’t work with an app, it will simply fail to play any media with audio!

To restore the original behavior:

Just send the command again using the “allow” mode. If you don’t have a way of sending the command, you can also uninstall the affected app and re-install it.

Be warned, I’ve not tested this with phone calls

The media seems to mute on my end during the call. I assume it doesn’t magically output to the mic for the other person to hear but who knows :laughing:

Even if this feature is added to Symfonium, the above is a useful trick to have up your sleeve for other apps.

Hope it helps someone!