Android: Keep MediaPlayer running during Activity screen orientation update

Question

I use a MediaPlayer to play an MP3. Currently I disabled screen orientation changes by using

android:screenOrientation="portrait"
android:configChanges="keyboardHidden|orientation"

in the manifest. I do want to support landscape mode now - i.e. removed those tags - but have the problem that during the destroy/create cycle the player gets stopped and then restarted. This is okay and I actually do this even manually in onPause() to stop the player when the activity goes in the background.

To keep it running during orientation changes now, I tried making it static (and using the Application Context to create it once). Of course, when I remove the player.stop() in onPause() now, it does what I want - well, until the Activity goes in the background.

So, two questions:

How can I determine if the Activity will be recreated directly after the call to onStop()
Or: How can I keep the MediaPlayer running during that cycle, yet stop it when the App goes in the background?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 04 '11 at 19:22

3

Have you looked at using the onConfigurationChanged() callback to handle some of this logic?

answered Nov 04 '11 at 19:22

Kurtis Nusbaum

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It doesn't get called due to the removed `android:configChanges` in the manifest. – sunside Nov 04 '11 at 19:25
If you want to differentiate between when you just change configurations and when you actually stop, I don't know of any other way of doing it other than using onConfigurationChanged(). Which I guess means you'll have to keep the `android:configChanges="orientation"` in your manifest :\ – Kurtis Nusbaum Nov 04 '11 at 19:28
Ouch. Simply adding it again did it already; Seems the default implementation does indeed handle the layout changes. Thanks a million! :) – sunside Nov 04 '11 at 19:35
@Kurtis It's not true that you can't determine configuration changes reliably; see my answer. – class stacker Jan 25 '13 at 10:38

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

1

Regarding your question how you can reliably determine whether your Activity is destroyed due to a configuration change, see my answer here: How to save/restore(update) ref to the dialog during screen rotation?(I need ref in onCreate method of activity.)

With this, the answer to your second question should be easy.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Jan 25 '13 at 10:36

class stacker

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '13 at 12:26

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Try running MediaPlayer in different Thread.

You can add to this thread a more complex API to which you can call from onCreate/onStop/on*

answered Mar 30 '13 at 12:26

talel

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score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Aug 14 '13 at 08:40

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If you are using fragments (and you should :P), then calling setRetainInstance(true) inside your fragments onCreate() call will make this problem go completely go away.

answered Aug 14 '13 at 08:40

Brian Attwell

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score 0 · Answer 5 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

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Please see the following answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/31466602/994021

It is a POC I've created for this purpose. Tired of solving this issue over and over again for different projects. I hope it helps.

I really recommend to switch to a third party player like ExoPlayer from google guys: https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Jul 17 '15 at 00:18

Gaspar de Elias

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i m using ExoPlayer but how will i handle this ? – Erum Sep 17 '15 at 06:30
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@Erum you will have to use the flag android:configChanges="screenSize|orientation" in your activity. – Gaspar de Elias Sep 18 '15 at 10:50
@Gasper de Elias i already did this but there is something other issue my layout i not adjusting programatically once i change orientation ? – Erum Sep 18 '15 at 11:19

Android: Keep MediaPlayer running during Activity screen orientation update

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