Music playback pausing when screen turns off (Ubuntu)

[EricBuist]

Plan

Premium

Country

 Canada

Device

Computer

Operating System

Ubuntu 18.04

My Question or Issue

  I recently discovered that a Spotify client is available for Linux and I tried it. It works great, very nice for my Linux-based HTPC, but after approximately half an hour, if I don't press a key or move the mouse, the screen goes off and the music pauses. This is not convenient at all because I'm often doing something else while listening to music and now need to regularly come back and move the mouse or press a key.

Is there a setting I could use to stop Spotify pausing the music when the screen turns off. Even if I disable Ubuntu Mate's screen saver, there is no effect. Seems I have to completely disable DPMS, which I want to keep on to have the screen turned off when my HTPC is completely idle.


I searched several times on Google and can only find threads for other devices, mainly phones. Seems most people are using Spotify on their phone and not on the desktop computers. I have an AV receiver with Spotify Connect, but a few weeks ago, my phone could not detect the AV receiver anymore; seems I need to replace it with yet another set top box or use Bluetooth instead and drain my phone's battery.

[djwolf300]

I'm currently using Fedora and I know we are not on the same OS, but assuming you're using Gnome Display Manager, which is the default for Ubuntu, there are 2 different options within the settings for power saving. One of them is a blank screen option and the other one completely suspends the system. When the system completely suspends, Spotify does shut off, but for the blank screen option, it does not, at least for me.

My question is, does your system suspend or does the screen just turn off? You can check this in settings. I've attached an example of my settings.

[EricBuist]

Thanks. I'll check these settings, but as far as I can see, only the screen becomes blank. The screen quickly turns back on when I move the mouse, while resuming from suspension takes a second or two, and fails often on Linux in my past experiences.

[dd__dd__]

It could be your inetrnet