Spotify loses registration as media player in quick settings (losing control over playback)

[Zocker1999NET]

EDIT 2024-01-27: microG does track this issue in https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2118

Plan

Premium

Country

Germany

Device

Fairphone 4

Operating System

Lineage OS 20 with microG (Build Android 13)

My Issue

When restarting Spotify & playing back music, the app correctly registers itself as media playback with controls in the quick settings / notification area as other players do, enabling controls via media keys (e.g. from Bluetooth headsets). However, after Spotify played Music for sometime (without stopping it), the media control notification is suddenly away. This means, I cannot control anymore the playback using my headset or without unlocking my phone. I need to manually go into the Spotify app to stop music which is unfeasible in some contexts like driving.

This issue can only be solved temporarily by force stopping the app from Android settings, pausing & restarting playback or just swiping the app up from the task manager does not help.

Spotify is allowed to make all notifications categories. It’s app battery usage can be set to either “optimized” or “unrestricted” (EDIT unrestricted does not help). This does not happen to other apps registering as media players (AntennaPod, KDE Connect), which are set to “optimized” on battery usage.

EDIT: I just saw that the last update of Spotify was uploaded on 2023-10-17. This coincides to when this issue started to appear.

I can append logcat logs if requested.

[dav23r]

I have the same issue with LOS 13 + microg on Oneplus 5T.

[Zocker1999NET]

@IdmFoundInHim: Thanks for pointing out that removing the app from the task manager / recent apps does trigger this issue immediately, haven’t noticed this mayself

@OscarDC: "Spotify Connect in the background" was disabled; enabling it did not fix my issue.

@sparklymachine: toggling the notification setting in the system settings does solve the issue temporarily for me, but Spotify stops playing music (it might crash it), and the issue comes up afterwards. so sadly, that’s just as helpful as clicking "force stop"

@Novy: thanks for investigating this issue. I find it realistic that this issue might be related to microG. Please mind at least the reports from @sAVioUr_ and @poltoracki

@sAVioUr_: do you have stock Android 13/14 with Google Play Services installed (as of the shelve)?

for reference: microG tracks this issue in https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/issues/2118

[Zocker1999NET]

@Jdkwbcl: big thanks for the hint that the Spotify Lite app does not have this issue (with battery optimization enabled). For me, this app is good enough as it lacks no important features (offline music, max quality, crossfade)

This suggests more that this issue is at least partial due to something the (classic) Spotify app does different. Maybe this helps the devs to find the reason for this issue …

[NorTicUs]

I don't know if it's linked but since I had this issue, I got a persistent notification on startup, before Spotify is launched. It disappears after songs starts playing. 

Maybe there's a problem with registering in the first place?

[Max_S]

Seems like mar-v-in fixed the issue with this commit. 🙌 Sounds like it is related to wearables.

Hopefully they will release an updated version soon.

[Max_S]

New version 0.3.1 of microg is meanwhile available on github and the fdroid repo. For me it fixes the issue.

[NorTicUs]

Fixed it for me too!

[Thimis]

For anyone using CalyxOS, the newest version of the OS (5.6.3) contains microG 0.3.1. Can confirm this fixed the issue for me too.