Running Roon on a dedicated Android device? Pin the app! 📌

I’m using Android devices since 2013 but it was only yesterday that I discovered a feature which is great if you have a dedicated device to run Roon. The feature is called Screen pinning.

With Screen pinning you can lift an app outside of the lock screen, meaning that at wake-up from standby you don’t have to swipe, unlock, or do what ever in order to use the Roon app, it is just there. It is what is often referred to as kiosk mode.

I enabled this on my Pixel C tablet (Android 8) on which the Roon app has an issue that it crashes when getting unlocked (unless the battery optimization for the Roon app is switched off). Now the nice thing with pinning is that the tablet no longer locks and that the battery optimization can be enabled again. (I could also turn off the location function again that I used for Smart Lock.) The result is that Roon is available after a press of the power button and a short reconnect, the best remote experience in the 3.5 years that I’m running Roon on this tablet.

Screen pinning was first introduced on Android 5 (Lollipop), so the majority of devices that are still around will have it. How the feature is enabled can be seen in this video (it might look different on later Android versions):

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Thanks for the tip, have just enabled on my fire hd 10, really handy, cheers.