1355407 - The music from youtube does not continue once the Firefox is sent to background

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Audio/Video, defect, P1)

Description

[u589491]

*Environment*
Firefox: Release 52.0.2
OS: Android 7.0

*Steps to reproduce*
1. Run Firefox.
2. Go to youtube.com.
3. Play any video (with sound).
4. Send Firefox to background and observe the behavior.

*Expected results*
The music continues in background and media controls are available in the notification list.

*Actual results*
The music is stopped and no controls are available in the notification list.


*Notes*
1. Reproducibility: 5/5.

Comment 1

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

(In reply to Rares Macarie, QA [:RaresM] from comment #0)
> *Environment*
> Firefox: Release 52.0.2
> OS: Android 7.0
If this is reproducible at FF52, then it should has nothing to do with bug 1348085 and bug 1293963. Anyway, I will take a look.

Comment 2

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Devices:
 Tablets:
  - Nexus 9 (Android 7.1.1);
  - Xiaomi Mi Pad 2 (Android 5.1); 
  - Huawei MediaPad M2 (Android 5.1.1);
 Phones:
  - HTC Desire 820 (Android 6.0.1);
  - Huawei Honor 8 (Android 6);
  - LG G4 (Android 5.1);
  - LG G4 (Android 6.0);
  - Huawei Honor 5X (Android 5.1.1).

Hello Tzuhao,

 I've looked into this further and the issue does not seem to be reproducible on any of the tablets that I've tested on. The only devices I've managed to successfully reproduce the issue on were the LG G4 (5.1 & 6.0) and the Huawei Honor 5X. I've attached a log from the LG running Android 5.1 that hopefully might help you detect where the issue is.

Comment 3

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Attachment: log LG G4 (Android 5.1).txt

Comment 4

[u589491]

The devices on which I've managed to reproduce the issue:
Samsung S7 - Android 7.0
OnePlus 3T - Android 7.0

Comment 5

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

Hi Rares and Bogdan,

Thanks for sharing further information and I have also found something interesting. I guess that the reason why we cannot 100% reproduce this issue is that we're loading different Youtube.com versions and so the root cause might not be at Firefox or Android.

The reason why I have this guess is that if you reset your Firefox (via the Android setting > App info > Firefox > Storage > Clear data) and then perform the STR, you're going to have different behaviors (audio keeps playing or audio stops) randomly. At the same time, other websites have consistent behaviors. 

I have tested all Firefox channels (Release, Beta, Aurora, Nightly, and m-c) on an LG G5 (Android 7) and a Sony Z3C (Android 5) and I can reproduce what I described in the previous paragraph. Could you help to test on more devices to confirm the phenomenon?

Comment 6

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

Sorry, my LG G5 runs Android 6.

Comment 7

[u589491]

Hi Tzuhao,
I've followed your notes and after clearing the data from Android settings I came to the conclusion that you mentioned: the behavior is not consistent. Sometimes the scenario is reproducible, sometimes not. I was not able to find a specific pattern why is that. I repeated the same scenario several times. I've also tried to see if there are errors thrown in the console but no luck (attached logSTR.txt).

Tested on:
Samsung S7 - Android 7.0
OnePlus 3T - Android 7.0

Firefox release 52.0.2.

Comment 8

[u589491]

Attachment: log - Samung S7 - Android 7.0.txt

Comment 9

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Phones:
 - 2x Nexus 5 (Android 6.0.1);
 - HTC 10 (Android 6.0.1);
 - Motorola Razr (Android 4.4.4);
 - Prestigio Grace X5 (Android 4.4.2);
 
Tablets:
 - Asus ZenPad 8.0 Z380KL (Android 6.0.1);
 - Lenovo Yoga Tablet 2 (Android 4.4.2);

Hello Tzuhao,

 I've tested on some more devices following your instructions and I was able to reproduce it on both of the Nexus 5 devices.

 I've tried a new scenario where I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and the issue did not reproduce anymore. Did the same thing of one of the LG devices from yesterday and it also fixed the issue. It would seem that after a fresh install the problem is fixed on my end.

Notes:
I. As for yesterdays tests here are the steps that I followed:

  1. Update the Nightly/Release builds to the latest version (I am performing app updates using ADB with the -r argument);
  2. Perform a clear data;
  3. Open Nightly/Release and press on the search bar in order to display Top Sites;
  4. Tap on YouTube and play any video;
  5. Minimize the app.

 The issue reproduced yesterday following these steps exactly as described by Rares. But doing a fresh install of the app and not updating it seems to have fixed the problem.

II. The issue did not reproduce on the Release version of Firefox on any of the devices that I tested on yesterday and today, I was only able to reproduce it on Nightly.

Rares could you also try the scenario where you perform a fresh install of Firefox and the latest Nightly and see if the issue still persists?

Comment 10

[u589491]

Hi Tzuhao and Bogdan,
I've tried Bogdan's scenarios - uninstall, then reinstall the app and here are the results:

Release 52.0.2
OnePlus 3T - Android 7.0 - 10/10 tries, did NOT reproduce the issue
Samsung S7 - Android 7.0 - 10/10 tries, DID reproduce the issue

Nightly 55.0a1
OnePlus 3T - Android 7.0 - 10/10 tries, did NOT reproduce the issue
Samsung S7 - Android 7.0 - 10/10 tries, DID reproduce the issue

Comment 11

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

(In reply to Bogdan Surd, QA [:bogdan] from comment #9)
>  I've tried a new scenario where I uninstalled and reinstalled the app and
> the issue did not reproduce anymore. Did the same thing of one of the LG
> devices from yesterday and it also fixed the issue. It would seem that after
> a fresh install the problem is fixed on my end.
No, I tried to re-install the Firefox several times and the problem are still there: keep resetting the Firefox and I still encounter inconsistent behaviors of Youtube.com (audio keeps playing or audio stops).

Comment 12

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

Per comment 1 and the findings above, this should have nothing to do with suspend-video-decoder feature, remove the dependencies.

Comment 13

[Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku]]

(In reply to Tzuhao Kuo [:kaku] from comment #5)
> I guess that the reason why we cannot 100% reproduce this issue is that we're loading different Youtube.com versions and so the root cause might not be at Firefox or Android.

BTW, :bwu has some information might support this guess, he might leave some comments later.

Comment 14

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Hello,

 While verifying bug 1348085 & bug 1348864 I've noticed that the issue seems to be constantly reproducible now on the latest Nightly build(2017-04-17) on some devices (HTC Desire 820 - 6.0.1, LG G4 - 5.1, Oneplus Two - 6.0.1).

 The issue reproduced even after a Clear Data or a fresh app install. I think we should investigate further and find a fix since it might affect other devices.

Comment 15

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

[triage]
From product perspective this is a regression that causes feature not working as expected.
So i'm setting P1 here.

:bwu can media team help?

Comment 16

[Blake Wu [:bwu][:blakewu]]

It is discussed in Bug 1357412 as well. 
BTW, could you let me and John Lin to set the priority? We use that to prioritize our resource. 
As we discuss in the bug 1357412, it seems we may not be able to do any thing to fix this quickly since it may be related to Youtube behavior.

Comment 17

[Wesley Huang [:wesley_huang] (EPM) (NI me)]

(In reply to Blake Wu [:bwu][:blakewu] from comment #16)
> It is discussed in Bug 1357412 as well. 
> BTW, could you let me and John Lin to set the priority? We use that to
> prioritize our resource. 
> As we discuss in the bug 1357412, it seems we may not be able to do any
> thing to fix this quickly since it may be related to Youtube behavior.

The P1 setting was per the Fennec triage meeting.
We concluded that from product standpoint since unfortunately we didn't have media team attending in person.
Anyways, we surely can alter it with the proper discussion on bugzilla.

Comment 18

[Joe Cheng [:jcheng] (please needinfo)]

on my pixel with 7.1.2, only beta from Google play (53.0b11) works as expected in the background/screen off. The feature isn't working on Release,Aurora,Nightly on the same phone.

Comment 22

[Itiel]

I'm also experiencing this issue on various channels (Firefox, Firefox Beta, Nightly)
Using Samsung Galaxy S5 G900F Android 6.0.1.
As others, I can't reproduce it 100% of the time. Sometimes clearing Firefox's data helps, sometimes it doesn't.

Comment 23

[Bogdan Surd, QA [:bsurd, NI]]

Hello,

I did a regression window for this issue on a device where it was 100% of the times reproducible (LG G4 - 5.1) and here are the results:

Last known good build: 2017-03-09
First known bad build: 2017-03-10
Pushlog: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=c40ca7a1bdd93632c6bdc5e23bd33d984d508b19&tochange=a8d497b09753c91783b68c5805c64f34a2f39629

Comment 24

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

@Bogdan: A mozregression update (2.3.11) will hopefully be out soon - in the meantime, you can get inbound/autoland bisection going again by manually copying this change (https://github.com/mozilla/mozregression/commit/97178fc26508cd4f9673fd6f57366156912a61f9) into your local mozregression installation.

Comment 25

[Itiel]

One of the users mentioned on Facebook that opening a youtube page as a desktop version can be a workaround.
Just tried- it works.

Comment 28

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola!

Ended up here form a SuMo question.

I believe this is Alphabet trying to corner users into getting https://www.youtube.com/red/ as background playback is being touted as a feature.

¡Gracias!
Alex

Comment 29

[Stephan Verbücheln]

Youtube Red is not even available in my country ...

Comment 30

[alex_mayorga]

¡Hola Stephan!

FWIW I've found https://addons.mozilla.org/En-us/firefox/addon/video-background-play-fix/ while trying to help a fellow user in the SuMo Spanish forums.

¡Gracias!
Alex

Comment 31

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Snorp, what should we do with this bug?

Comment 32

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Most of the work around this has been in bug 1357412

The gist is that this is a YouTube change and there isn't much we can do by default to help, but may be possible via an extension.

Comment 33

[Mike Taylor [:miketaylr]]

Thanks snorp. Given that it's a change from an external site let's not track as a Gecko regression. Someone else can decide if they want to WONTFIX the actual bug (or not), or move it to Tech Evangelism or whatever.

Comment 34

[Luke]

Would it be possible to make video playback API functions a no-op while the page is in the background, giving 100% control to the user via the notification's pause/rewind/etc buttons?

Comment 35

[Blake Wu [:bwu][:blakewu]]

As comment 32 and 33 pointed out, close this bug as WONTFIX.

Comment 36

[u524404]

(In reply to James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) from comment #32)
> Most of the work around this has been in bug 1357412
> 
> The gist is that this is a YouTube change and there isn't much we can do by
> default to help, but may be possible via an extension.

I am not authorized to view that bug.

I am not sure that position is defensible, as Firefox does things like block popups. Popups are created at the behest of an external site. Should I file a bug report about the popup blocking functionality of Firefox being inappropriate?

This is a case of a webpage subverting the user's expectations. There is also code in Firefox which relates to media playback that is now useless because of possible misuse of new JavaScript API.

Comment 37

[Luke]

In addition to seconding R030t1's comments, I'd like to add that being able to listen to youtube videos in the background was one of the biggest drawers to Firefox FA, after non-rooted ublock. There are hundreds of articles, like this one https://android.gadgethacks.com/how-to/quick-tip-use-firefox-play-youtube-videos-background-0173597/, that recommend downloading Firefox as a solution to youtube videos not playing in the background. For non-FF desktop users/syncers, what unique advantages are left for this mobile browser?

Comment 38

[Blake Wu [:bwu][:blakewu]]

FYI. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/some-videos-wont-play-background

Comment 39

[u524404]

(In reply to Blake Wu [:bwu][:blakewu] from comment #38)
> FYI. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/some-videos-wont-play-background

Thank you, I couldn't remember the page that told me about the page visibility API, or what it was called.

However that doesn't explain anything and just reinforces my point. By the logic on that article, if you visit a page that creates new windows using JavaScript then Firefox should not prevent them from being opened. Again: Should I file a bug about the current popup-blocking behavior of Firefox?