I have a music app where I’m tracking the Player object to detect when songs change. Everything works perfectly when the app is active and visible on screen. The console shows the current track info without any issues.
However, once I minimize the app or switch to another application, it continues working for about 60 seconds and then stops responding. The background monitoring just dies after that short period.
What’s the best approach to prevent the system from suspending my app? I need it to keep listening for music changes even when it’s not the active window. Are there specific background permissions or lifecycle methods I should be using to maintain this functionality?
Yeah, classic battery optimization issue. Request DISABLE_BATTERY_OPTIMIZATIONS permission and get the user to whitelist your app from doze mode. Fixed the same problem in my music visualizer app.
for sure, that 60 sec thing is annoying! using a foreground service with a persistent notification really helps keep it alive. also, dont forget to go into battery optimization settings and whitelist your app; it can make a big diff!
Your app’s getting throttled by background execution limits. I hit this same issue building a last.fm scrobbler. Here’s what fixed it for me: use a BroadcastReceiver that listens for ACTION_AUDIO_BECOMING_NOISY and ACTION_MEDIA_BUTTON intents. The system doesn’t restrict these broadcasts since they’re part of the media framework. If you’ve got the permission, NotificationListenerService works too - it grabs media metadata changes straight from other apps’ notifications. This way you’re not trying to keep your process alive (which is what gets killed after 60 seconds). The receiver fires even when your main app’s suspended, processes the track changes, then goes back to sleep.
This happens because Android’s doze mode and app standby kick in after brief inactivity periods. I ran into the exact same issue last year building a similar monitoring app. Here’s what fixed it for me: you need wake locks plus proper service setup. Add WAKE_LOCK permission to your manifest and grab a partial wake lock so the CPU doesn’t sleep while your monitoring runs. Also, bind your monitoring logic to a foreground service - this tells the system your app’s doing important work. Move your Player object monitoring into the service instead of keeping it in the activity, and handle the service lifecycle properly. I’ve been running this setup in production for over six months with zero issues - no more 60-second cutoffs.
Had the exact same problem with a podcast tracker I built. Modern Android kills background processes like crazy to save battery. I fixed it by combining JobScheduler for periodic checks with MediaSessionCompat to hook into the system’s media framework. MediaSessionCompat works great because it integrates with Android’s built-in media handling - the system won’t kill it as often. You’ll need to register a MediaSessionCompat.Callback and override onPlaybackStateChanged. This way you’re working with the OS instead of fighting it. Just heads up - Xiaomi and Huawei have their own aggressive power management that can still cause problems, so definitely test on different devices.