There is something wrong with the way Roon ARC handles its Playback notification on Android.
I use Roon ARC on my Pixel 9 phone (the latest version of Android 14). There are issues with the persistent ‘Playback’ notification, which unfortunately needs permissions to stay open in new versions of Android. After opening, pressing play, and then turning off my phone screen, ARC will play for a minute or two and then just stop, needing to be reopened.
If I open the ‘app info’ for the app, and force the ‘playback’ notification from ‘silent’ to ‘default’ and then back again, it will stick, and the app then continues to work. But upon shutting down the app, this behaviour occasionally goes back to being broken, and I have to repeat the process each time.
I don’t have this issue with other audio/music apps on my phone that show a ‘Playback’ notification. And this issue was present on my older Pixel 6 phone using Android 14.
Hi @Henry_Buckle,
Thanks for reaching out to us to ask about this issue.
I think the next step here is to enable some diagnostics on your account so our technical staff can get some more insight into what’s going on here.
However, before I enable this feature, I’d like to ask for your help ensuring we gather the right information.
First, can you please reproduce the issue once more and note the time at which the error occurs. Then respond here with that time, and I’ll make sure we review the diagnostics related to that timestamp.
Do you have an approximate timestamp of when this last occurred? We’ll be examining diagnostics with development and would like to confirm that we’ve isolated the event.
Does the source of the track (streaming services vs. local files vs. tracks you have downloaded onto your phone directly) have any impact on this behavior?
It happens all the time. It has nothing to do with the kind of track I am playing. It’s a problem with the way the ARC app handles notifications / playback in Android.
For me, it is whenever the current now playing queue ends, the notification still shows in playing state. So you can just play one song and wait for it to finish and then check the now playing notification.
I am starting to wonder whether the ARC app has problems with staying open in the background, rather than just the notification for playback.
Most other audio playing apps will retain their playback notification long after the app has been closed or put into the background. But the ARC app playback notification seems to disappear, and upon loading the app fresh it feels as if it’s starting from scratch. So the app seems to be closing when put into the background. I’ve checked all the related settings in Android for this including enabling background data access, and turning off ‘manage app if unused’, but nothing makes a difference.
There were changes to the interruption handling with recent ARC builds. These regressions/bugs were ticketed and development has implemented fixes Some of the fixes have merged into the most recent release already, while others are undergoing internal testing before release in Early Access.
If you’ve installed the Early Access version of ARC without also migrating your RoonServer, then you’ll end up in a mixed-branch environment. This won’t guarantee that any fixes will be applied. Please follow these steps to migrate to Early Access.
We ask for a specific timestamp so we can pinpoint the event in logs and confirm that we’re talking about the same thing. This precise mechanism on Pixel phones merits dedicated tracking, but we need your help confirming the mechanism before reproducing. One timestamp will suffice.
Thank you for the report. We’re investigating broader issues with playback notifications on Pixel phones - please stand by and we’ll provide additional context as its available.
Thank you for your post. Development merged a fix to this issue as reported in this thread in October of 2024. These were the reproduction steps for that particular bug:
Does this accurately describe the issue you’re currently encountering?
We’ll activate diagnostics for your account in the meantime. Please share an estimated time/date of when this issue last occurred.
I’ve noticed an additional issue, which is sometimes the notification either doesn’t created, or dies for some reason, so playback stops unless you have the phone unlocked and the app in the foreground.
I have to force stop and re-open to get the notification to appear.
