Antennapod: Issues Since Upgrade to Oreo

Created on 24 Aug 2017 · 59Comments · Source: AntennaPod/AntennaPod

App version: 1.6.2.3
Android version: 8.0
Device model: Nexus 5X
Current behavior: Ever since the update to Oreo, I've had two weird issues. First, my resume point is often lost. Not always, but often it will revert to a previous resume point. Second, for no reason at all, a podcast will start playing by itself. I can verify after last night that it's not accidentally activating in my pocket because at some point during the night it rewound a podcast to the beginning and started playing. Ironically, that episode began with dialog from the horror film "The Descent" and that's how my wife and I woke up :)

Source

mattwiggins

👍18

Most helpful comment

I just pushed 1.6.4.3 to the beta channel. This seems to fix the random playback restarts for me.

mfietz on 3 Jan 2018

👍2

All 59 comments

Your first issue sounds like #2382
the second one sounds like #2356

mfietz on 24 Aug 2017

I've also been experiencing these two issues since upgrading to Oreo.

mindless2112 on 25 Aug 2017

This was working fine for several Android releases, so I dare to say that Google f-d something up or at least violates a "contract".
As I neither have a device nor emulator with Oreo, you are practically on your own. Curse of the early adopter.

mfietz on 25 Aug 2017

you say early adopter, but most people don't have the luxury of choosing which version of android they run. the nexus 5x is not a "new" phone. that's like saying to people who keep their windows box up to date, that when they download a service pack, it's a curse of the early adopter. you don't have a choice and it would be a liability to not upgrade.

we aren't entitled to have you fix the issues for us obviously, but you really shouldn't be blaming users for the fact that their device has updated to the newest version of the os.

xrishox on 30 Aug 2017

❤1

I switched to Player FM, which I don't like nearly as much as AntennaPod, but it doesn't start playing randomly while I'm trying to sleep. :(

My hunch is that this has to do with Oreo being more aggressive about killing things off.

mindless2112 on 30 Aug 2017

@xrishox: In fairness to mfietz, I think he was making a generalisation, I'm sure he's fully aware that not only is there very little choice in the matter but that also anyone who has been pushed with the Oreo update is extremely fortunate due to the fact that the update situation on android is in such a poor state. Obviously I'm assuming certain knowledge on his behalf, but they're only small assumptions so I'd say I'm safe enough.

barrykeegan on 30 Aug 2017

Just as an update on the issue, I tried turning off the persistent
notification but that had no effect. I did switch to the Beta for Android
Auto compatibility and have actually noticed that the auto-playing has
ceased. It is still occasionally reverting my place to a previous position
though. And the notification will show the podcast as playing when it's
actually not.

On Wed, Aug 30, 2017 at 3:16 AM barrykeegan notifications@github.com
wrote:

@xrishox https://github.com/xrishox: In fairness to mfietz, I think he
was making a generalisation, I'm sure he's fully aware that not only is
there very little choice in the matter but that also anyone who has been
pushed with the Oreo update is extremely fortunate due to the fact that the
update situation on android is in such a poor state. Obviously I'm assuming
certain knowledge on his behalf, but they're only small assumptions so I'd
say I'm safe enough.

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mattwiggins on 30 Aug 2017

I have also experienced both issues (progress lost and spontaneous background playback) since upgrading to Android 8.0.0.

App version: 1.6.2.3
Device model: Pixel

josephrkramer on 5 Sep 2017

I've been running into this regularly. It seems to happen when I pause a podcast and leave it in the background for awhile. Right after I turn on the screen again (could be minutes or hours that have passed) the notification will flash as if it's being restarted and start playing from the beginning of the podcast again on it's own. I've haven't had it start playing while the screen is off.

Not ideal, but one workaround I found is to force kill the app whenever I'm done using it. In Oreo you can get to this setting faster by long-pressing the icon in the home screen.

kevin-brotcke on 5 Sep 2017

Kevin, that's good to know, I will try that. Unfortunately, with the app now reverting to a previous time in the podcast though, the app is pretty much unusable for me for podcasts longer than 20 minutes because I spend so much time trying to relocate where I actually stopped listening. I completely understand this is an open-source and no revenue project, so I'm not _expecting_ anyone to be rushing to fix this for Oreo users, but if it's going to be a while until this is resolved I'm going to have to make the switch to another app for my own sanity.

mattwiggins on 7 Sep 2017

So I'm on a pixel and it's telling me to update. I dunno what to do. I'm very dependent on this app. If I don't update it will continue to function but Im running a vulnerable os. If I do update it may stop working correctly

xrishox on 8 Sep 2017

I wouldn't worry to much about vulnerabilities.
Probably less than 1% of users are able to update to orea right now. Do you see anyone panicking?
Just don't install stuff from unknown sources or any apps that look shady...

mfietz on 8 Sep 2017

I can confirm this problem is happening to me since updating to Oreo. At the moment I cannot see a pattern to this. Seems to always be playing randomly.

Phreekazoids on 15 Sep 2017

I, too, have experienced these issues since updating to Android 8. I've switched to the beta in the hopes that it exhibits slightly better behavior under the latest stable release of Android.

collinjc on 20 Sep 2017

I also have these two problems since an OTA update to Oreo on my Nexus 6P

JWSingleton on 21 Sep 2017

Yeah, same problem. Loud music with no warning. Sometimes soon after I turn on the device (typically in Kindle app, if that makes any difference). Sometimes just randomly when I hadn't touched it for a while.

a-m-s on 21 Sep 2017

I probably shouldn't have been doing this, but I was trying to make a phone call in an area of bad reception while driving. I was glancing down at my phone waiting to see my signal improve from being completely dead and, the moment that my phone registered a signal, a podcast restarted to a previous start point and began playing by itself. I've been keeping an eye on that and seen that particular action (going from no service to service) trigger the auto play.

mattwiggins on 21 Sep 2017

Does this issue also occur when "Headphones Reconnect" or "Bluetooth Reconnect" are disabled?
(Current hypothesis: There are USB headphones now. When the phone is charging, AntennaPod receives a delayed "headphones reconnect" for whatever reason and then resumes playback)

mfietz on 23 Sep 2017

My phone has woken up playing AntennaPod when there was no headphones or USB change (neither were plugged in at any time), and Bluetooth was turned off in android settings.

In the AntennaPod settings, Bluetooth reconnect is disabled but headphone reconnect is enabled.

blokeley on 23 Sep 2017

As I said, there are now usb headphones. That means that connecting a charger via usb could trigger a "someone just connected her headphones" event even though a charger is a pretty shitty headphone.
Maybe this is a bug, maybe android gives us additional information we should check ("the user connected something to the usb port which could be headphones, this is what the device can do...").

[Unfortunately, I do not run Oreo yet. The emulator doesn't seem to trigger any of these events]

mfietz on 23 Sep 2017

I disabled the reconnect features and it hasn't happened since, but it's only been a day or so. To early to say.

Interestingly, I did get a random burst of loud audio last night when I turned my screen on, but that was the YouTube app at fault. Seems like that might have a similar bug!

a-m-s on 23 Sep 2017

I usually have headphone and Bluetooth reconnect enabled but disabled them for a day or two to see what would happen and I still had auto start issues.

mattwiggins on 23 Sep 2017

I also have these two problems since an OTA update to Oreo on my Nexus 5X.

mrkmrk on 30 Sep 2017

I have these issues too - do you want me to run a dev build and log more info?

kevinmarks on 1 Oct 2017

I installed an experimental Lineage orea build on my N4 and have not seen a single issue so far.
Besides the obvious difference between experimental build and vanilla android, I only run this single app at the moment. N4 also does not have USB C.

mfietz on 8 Oct 2017

The problems only become apparent after a longer period of extensive use of the smartphone. For example, the problem with the resume point only becomes apparent after a longer pause in playback. And that's only after the second and all further pauses within an episode. Whether the interim use of other apps has an impact, I cannot say.

mrkmrk on 8 Oct 2017

Loss of current time seems to happen more often when playback is paused
because of disconnecting Bluetooth audio (in my case turning off the car
powering the Bluetooth to fm adaptor)

On 8 Oct 2017 11:50, "mrkmrk" notifications@github.com wrote:

The problems only become apparent after a longer period of extensive use of
the smartphone. For example, the problem with the resume point only becomes
apparent after a longer pause in playback. And that's only after the second
and all further pauses within an episode. Whether the interim use of other
apps has an impact, I cannot say.

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kevinmarks on 8 Oct 2017

I have the same issues on Nexus5x, latest android, latest Antennpod from Google

bartdorlandt on 12 Oct 2017

As an update to this, I have switched to the beta version of the app and the problem persists. Additionally, I have disabled both the Headphones Reconnect and Bluetooth Reconnect options and this problem still occurs. Also, it happens regardless of whether or not the phone is plugged in to a charger, sometimes happening after the phone has sat idle for several hours. This is running on a Nexus 5x.

collinjc on 12 Oct 2017

Problem still present in version 1.6.4.1. Again, still having problems with the app forgetting the resume point and still (most annoyingly) having problems with playback starting randomly on its own. Options for automatic playback resume on headphone reconnect and bluetooth reconnect are still disabled, but the problem persists.

collinjc on 23 Oct 2017

I didn't even try to resolve this with 1.6.4.1
The problem comes down to this: I do not have a current smartphone with Oreo (and then, almost no one does...)
I was able to install a custom rom on my old Nexus 4 but the N4 does not show any of these issues.

If no one can provide me with either a rather exact description under which circumstances this happens (I'm still pretty much in the dark) or even a logcat with unusual processes or logs at the moment when this happens, I do not see any way that I can solve this issue.

mfietz on 23 Oct 2017

There have been several mentions to the number of people running Oreo. The reality is this: Oreo is the latest stable version of Android. It will soon become the defacto standard for newly produced handsets. So, while it may not be as big of a problem now, it has the potential to become one if not addressed.

The problem is that there is seemingly no pattern to when this occurs. I, too, have been struggling to try to determine what set of circumstances causes these problems to present themselves, but have been unable to discern any sort of association. The next time that this occurs, I will certainly try to collect as much information as possible to attach to this issue. If you have any specific requests for collection or things to try, I'm open to them.

collinjc on 23 Oct 2017

for what it is worth, i upgraded my phone when the krack exploit was announced and i haven't had any such issues in the past few days. for what it's worth i use antennapod for hours each day and intermittently.

I have a pixel xl and it's on the official rom. i wonder if the people having problems are either installing custom roms or are all using the same handset that has a bug unique to that device? seems like many of the people have been having this issue with the nexus 6p and the nexus 5x both of which are from the same generation of google phone. i wonder if that's a coincidence?

it's also possible that i haven't been using it long enough to come across such a bug, or i have just been lucky so far.

xrishox on 24 Oct 2017

Yeah, I was wondering too it this might have something to do with specific smartphone models.
But then I figured that only a small number of devices (the ones from Google) even get to update to Oreo.
Another thing that crossed my mind is that this could be related to a specific app that anyone else if using - like Spotify. Oreo seems to have changed how events are routed - Android seems to assume that an event is for the app that was last active. AntennaPod could be receiving events that are not actually meant for it...

mfietz on 24 Oct 2017

For what it's worth, I am having the random restarts, with the restart earlier in the episode, on Oreo 8.0.0 on Nexus 5X, AntennaPod 1.6.4.1.

UPDATED:
Sometimes It seems to be completely random - it does not depend on whether the Bluetooth or USB is connected or not (or events associated with connection and disconnection). On the other hand, I just plugged my phone into my laptop with USB-C and it started AntennaPod playing.

Sometimes it goes 3 or so days without happening, then happens 2 or 3 times in one day. I use AntennaPod in the morning on the drive to work each work day. I don't think it happens if AntennaPod has NOT been run since booting but can't be sure.

blokeley on 24 Oct 2017

👍1

I mentioned in a previous post that going from an area with no cellular reception and then getting reception triggered an auto play incident. That one I observed directly. Other times I've noticed that the auto play behavior is happening when leaving WiFi, but I was not looking at signal indicators on the phone when that happened.

As it stands, I traded in my Nexus and back on Nougat so problem temporarily solved.

mattwiggins on 24 Oct 2017

Just to add some info from someone who does not own a Google device with Oreo:
I've been using AntennaPod (latest F-Droid stable) for nearly 4 weeks on a Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, which is one of the very few devices actually having an official Oreo version. For me it not even once started playing randomly without my interaction and it also never reverted my last resume point. The only time this happened was today, but with my interaction: I was in the main view and accidentally switched from portrait to landscape (without having an episode playing at that time) and it suddenly started playing a random episode I never started before. I tried to reproduce this for the past half hour with no luck.

So I think there is definitely some bug in Oreo, but the impact depends on the device and it is extremely hard to reproduce. If I find a way to trigger it using portrait to landscape switching I will report back, as this is rather easy to trigger compared to losing cellular signal.

deu13434 on 25 Oct 2017

Is AntennaPod treating an unknown event as play?

On 25 Oct 2017 19:00, "deu13434" notifications@github.com wrote:

Just to add some info from someone who does not own a Google device
with Oreo:
I've been using AntennaPod (latest F-Droid stable) for nearly 4 weeks on a
Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact, which is one of the very few devices actually
having an official Oreo version. For me it not even once started playing
randomly without my interaction and it also never reverted my last resume
point. The only time this happened was today, but with my interaction: I
was in the main view and accidentally switched from portrait to landscape
(without having an episode playing at that time) and it suddenly started
playing a random episode I never started before. I tried to reproduce this
for the past half hour with no luck.

So I think there is definitely some bug in Oreo, but the impact depends on
the device and it is extremely hard to reproduce. If I find a way to
trigger it using portrait to landscape switching I will report back, as
this is rather easy to trigger compared to losing cellular signal.

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kevinmarks on 25 Oct 2017

2468 is a fix for at least the problem with the jumping playback position

HaBaLeS on 25 Oct 2017

https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/android-8.0-changes.html#med

https://stackoverflow.com/a/46008566/1117509

In Android 8.0 (API level 26) the handling of media button events is different:

The handling of media buttons in a UI activity has not changed: foreground activities still get priority in handling media button events.
If the foreground activity does not handle the media button event, the system routes the event to the app that most recently played audio locally. The active status, flags, and playback state of a media session are not considered when determining which app receives media button events.
If the app's media session has been released, the system sends the media button event to the app's MediaButtonReceiver if it has one.
For every other case, the system discards the media button event.

kroegerama on 29 Oct 2017

Even with this changes, I do not see how AntennaPod would react differently.

A media button event comes in, it reacts. At this very moment, I cannot think of any circumstance where AP would ignore an event that reaches it...

mfietz on 29 Oct 2017

Maybe the other way round - AntennaPod gets a media button event that
something else has dropped when it's in a state without a clear idea of
what it is playing, so picks the queue or something?

On 29 Oct 2017 12:46, "Martin Fietz" notifications@github.com wrote:

Even with this changes, I do not see how AntennaPod would react
differently.

A media button event comes in, it reacts. At this very moment, I cannot
think of any circumstance where AP would ignore an event that reaches it...

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kevinmarks on 29 Oct 2017

It happened to me again last night. My wife is now furious with me. The bug has a lot to answer for.

Until it's understood, could we at least have an option like "never play when on charge", or "ignore events at night", or something? I've been setting my volume to zero at night, when I remember, but I'm tired of restoring my entire queue from the playback history. I don't want to uninstall Antennapod, but this is getting unbearable.

On this occasion I had been listening via bluetooth for a while. The playback stopped automatically when the bluetooth receiver powered off. All was fine for a few hours, during which time I did some light email and web browsing, but it started playback just moments after I plugged it in to charge. I hit the pause button on the lock screen, and left it alone. It then randomly started playback again about 4 hours later, in the middle of the night. The phone had not moved. I doubt the network connectivity had done much. The charge cycle takes only a couple of hours, I think, but it's possible it had just hit 100%, I suppose.

a-m-s on 31 Oct 2017

Here is a way to reproduce the bug:

Press play
Press pause
Swipe-Close the app
Open the app
This triggers an autoplay in almost every case for me.

Also the app seems to autoplay more often whenever I run apps with high memory-usage (certain games or Firefox on certain websites). My guess would be, that AntennaPod does not always store the last state correctly when it's (force-)closed and starts with a wrong state when it comes back.

Force closing AntennaPod through the "Apps" menu in Androids settings reliably prevents the bug from occuring for me.

Model: Nexus 5X
App-Version: 1.6.4.1

Scumpeter on 31 Oct 2017

👍1

Confirmed; those step cause it to play for me also.

However, when it started to play last night the app had not been swiped away. Not even the notification. Also, as an (unsuccessful) experiment, I had previously marked Antennapod as "not optimized" in the battery settings.

If Force Stop in Apps menu works I'm going to experiment with Greenify, because that's what that does on non-rooted devices.

a-m-s on 31 Oct 2017

I can reliably reproduce the "resume point is lost" issue by taking a photo while a podcast is playing. Phone Nexus 5x Android version 8.0.0, App version 1.6.4.1

miip on 5 Nov 2017

I upgraded to a Pixel 2 XL, i can not reproduce the "resume point is lost" issue by taking a photo while a podcast is playing. But playback started and the resume point was lost after Play Store installed some updates (not an AntennaPod update).

miip on 18 Nov 2017

Just a note on this issue: it seems that other Podcast apps have run into the same issues. Which must mean the problem is not in the code of the app but in the Oreo Android basis.