Android Kotlin - ExoPlayer keeps playing when app goes to background

Question

So far I only found questions about how to make ExoPlayer keep playing when app goes to background. Why the hell is that the case by me without coding this bs??

This is what I have so far and it's inside RecyclerView OnBingViewHolder:

val player = ExoPlayer.Builder(context).build()
val mediaItem: MediaItem = MediaItem.fromUri(fileUrl)
player.setMediaItem(mediaItem)
player.repeatMode = Player.REPEAT_MODE_ONE
holder.vidPlayer.player = player
player.prepare()
player.seekTo(100)
// player.play()
holder.vidPlayer.setTag(mpTag, player)
holder.vidPlayer.setTag(manuelPlayTag, false)
holder.vidPlayer.setTag(manuelPauseTag, false)

player.addListener(object : Player.Listener { // player listener

    override fun onPlayerStateChanged(playWhenReady: Boolean, playbackState: Int) {
        if (playWhenReady && playbackState == Player.STATE_READY) {
            Log.d(tagg, "state: plays")
            holder.vidPlayer.hideController()
        } else if (playWhenReady) {
            // might be idle (plays after prepare()),
            // buffering (plays when data available)
            // or ended (plays when seek away from end)
        } else {
            Log.d(tagg, "state: pause")
            holder.vidPlayer.showController()
        }
    }
})

how I prevent the play when app goes to background?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 06 '22 at 23:56

0

When your app goes to the background the active Fragment/Activity's Lifecycle method onPause (and onStop) is called. In the onPause method you can cycle through your bound ViewHolders and stop the video player(s).

answered Jan 06 '22 at 23:56

Ma3x

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1

This is what I planned, I just hoped there is a setting in ExoPlayer which would prevent this instead of doing this kinda workaround. Thanks I'll keep your answer checked unless someone has a more comfy solution :) – Jan 07 '22 at 00:02
1

@CoffeeJunkie ExoPlayer runs on its own thread (and does its own background threading too) so it's constantly running unless you tell it to stop. That goes for any threads you start, or any components that handle their own threading - it allows you to keep stuff running in the background, but it also means you need to clean things up yourself. That's a general concept in Android - when the app goes to the background, you need to stop stuff that's running and release resources. Lifecycle-aware stuff *can* handle that automatically, but generally you'd have to explicitly provide it with one – cactustictacs Jan 07 '22 at 01:26
Well that has it's advantages too. Thanks for the detailed explanation @cactustictacs – Jan 07 '22 at 16:41

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 10 '22 at 14:36

You can simply stop the ExoPlayer when the app goes to the background.

override fun onStop() {
    super.onStop()
    simpleExoPlayer.stop()
}

And in onStart just prepare() the ExoPlayer again:

override fun onStart() {
    super.onStart()
    simpleExoPlayer.prepare()
}

In order to automatically play the media, you need to set playWhenReady = true.

simpleExoPlayer.playWhenReady = true

By setting playWhenReady = true it will automcatically play the content and we don't need to explicitly call simpleExoPlayer.play().

Android Kotlin - ExoPlayer keeps playing when app goes to background

2 Answers2