1670069 - Background playback of (Youtube) playlists doesn't work on Android

Status: NEW

(Core :: Audio/Video: Playback, defect)

Description

[Jan Henning [:JanH]]

STR:

1. Use a current Nightly of Firefox for Android.
2. Install https://addons.mozilla.org/android/addon/video-background-play-fix/ (alternatively a Youtube Premium subscription might work as well)
3. Raise dom.media.silence_duration_for_audibility to some large value like 10 seconds or so to make sure you're not running into bug 1670066.
4. Open any Youtube playlist (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMvznKdlVUg&list=PL4B22D54E54AC7CB9) and start playback.
5. Switch to a different tab and/or a different app.

Expected:
The whole playlist plays through all tracks.

Actual:
The first track plays to completion. Then either
a) very rarely playback just completely stops at this point, or
b) more commonly, the next track in the playlist loads and starts playing, but after 15 seconds or so playback stops again. When you then switch to that tab, it's also in some weird state where it's displaying as blank, and you need to fiddle with the playback control in the Android notification drawer to get it back to normal again.

With the old Fennec codebase (Firefox 68) everything works fine, so it's unlikely to be a bug with Youtube and/or the Video Background Play Fix addon.

Comment 1

[C.M.Chang[:chunmin]]

Paul, I guess this is related to bug 1670066. Would you mind take a look?