2041904 - Music controls in the notification drawer STILL fail to work on Android 15

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Core :: Audio/Video, defect, P2)

Description

[Dan [:dan23]]

STR:

1. Open a youtube video page, press play. (Music starts)
2. Press the Android home button, minimizing Firefox. (Music stops)
3. Pull the upper phone notification shade down. There should be a media control visible with a play button and youtube artist info.
4. Press play.
   Issue: Play button not changing into a pause button and video audio not playing, hinting at the mechanic failing entirely.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:titouan, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit BugBot documentation.

Comment 2

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

(In reply to Dan [:dan23] from comment #0)

STR:

1. Open a youtube video page, press play. (Music starts)
2. Press the Android home button, minimizing Firefox. (Music stops)
3. Pull the upper phone notification shade down. There should be a media control visible with a play button and youtube artist info.
4. Press play.
   Issue: Play button not changing into a pause button and video audio not playing, hinting at the mechanic failing entirely.

Hi Dan, thanks for filing this bug. YouTube blocks background playback for non-YouTube Premium subscribers. If your account has a YouTube Premium subscription, media control should be visible and work as expected. Otherwise, the playback will stop and media control will disappear accordingly. Could you please confirm that you've logged in as a subscriber when reproducing the bug?

Comment 3

[Dan [:dan23]]

No this is not correct. Just tested with Brave browser. There working flawless without Premium.

Comment 4

[Alastor Wu [:alwu]]

(In reply to Dan [:dan23] from comment #3)

No this is not correct. Just tested with Brave browser. There working flawless without Premium.

My guess is that this happens because they aren't handling the visibility change events correctly as defined by the spec.

Alternatively, you can install the "Video Background Play Fix" extension. If I remember correctly, it works by preventing the page from receiving visibility-related events, which stops sites from detecting that the tab has been backgrounded and disabling playback.

Comment 5

[John Lin [:jhlin][:jolin]]

As Alastor said, Brave overrides events for Youtube specifically, and the add-on does similar things to workaround the Youtube blocking.

Closing this as INVALID.