Android app restarts audio from beginning instead of pausing, when I press headset play/pause button
Daniel Holbert
Tyro
(This is under "Product Questions" but it's actually a bug report. The forum won't let me use the "bug report" category for some reason, perhaps because this is my first post? not sure. Anyway, consider this a bug report - thanks!
Also: I submitted this a few minutes ago to the forum, but I didn't find any record of it after submitting it, so I'm not sure if it's stuck in moderation or if it somehow got deleted? Hence, submitting again while I've got the bug description typed up, to avoid losing it. Apologies if this ends up being a duplicate/double-report.)
Steps to reproduce:
- Open the Panopto app on Android, with some bluetooth headphones paired to your phone that have a play/pause button on them.
- Tap some pre-recorded video in your Panopto library, to open & start playing it.
- After 30 seconds or so, press play/pause on your headphones.
Expected results: The video and audio should pause, as if I pressed pause on my phone screen.
Actual results: The video does usually pause, BUT some audio continues to play, and it in fact it's the wrong audio -- it seems to be a new/independent playback of the audio from the very beginning of the recording.
One additional step for more brokenness:
4. While the aforementioned unwanted & restarted audio is playing: tap your phone screen so that the play/pause button shows up in the middle of the video. Tap that button to unpause the video.
Actual results: The video unpauses and resumes its own correctly-timed audio. Now there are now two audio streams playing, the "correct" one (in sync with the video and the point at which I had paused), and the restarted-from-the-beginning one that I mentioned above.
Additional information:
- I'm using Panopto's instance for Mozilla ("AirMozilla")
- One of my colleagues also filed a support ticket about this issue on my behalf -- that's Panopto Support ticket 00875447.
- My phone model is a Pixel 6a, running Android 13.
- My Panopto app version is 1.3.6
Answers
Also: I'm pretty sure I've been seeing this issue for years, but I've just taken the time to sit down and report it.
I've reproduced this with every headset that I've tried, including:
Also: in my "Additional step for more brokenness", I forgot to mention -- usually when you tap the screen as described there, the "pause" button appears (not "play") -- i.e. it looks like the app thinks that the video is playing and is offering to pause it, even though the video is already paused. The real step to trigger additional brokenness there is to tap that Pause button (so that it changes to play), and then tap the Play button that it turns into.
Hey, thanks for the thorough bug report. You really put a lot of effort into outlining the issue with the Panopto app on Android. The steps to reproduce the problem are well explained, and the expected versus actual results are clearly defined.
It's pretty weird that the audio restarts instead of pausing when you press the play/pause button on your headset. And adding on another audio stream playing simultaneously just makes things more complicated.
It's great that you included details like the Panopto instance, support ticket number, phone model, and app version. This info will really help the developers figure out and fix the problem.
I totally get your frustration! It's so annoying that the audio restarts when using headphones. I have thought about creating a mobile app to report these issues directly. It could be a cool project to take on, and I could use something like React JS to build it. This framework is great for making user interfaces (https://andersenlab.com/find-developers/react-js), and it could really simplify the bug reporting process.