Poweramp keeps appearing on locked screen and starts automatically in car in spite of settings

[Jos G]

Dear Poweramp,

My Samsung S10, android 11, keeps showing Poweramp at the lock screen and starts automatically when I start my car, altough all the settings in the chapter Headset/Bluetooth are disabled. What can I do to prevent Poweramp showing itself at the lock screen and starting automatically up?

[andrewilley]

Try turning and persistent Notifications off in PA Settings > Look and Feel > Notifications, as they are sometimes related to lockscreen notifications. Android 11 now insists that some sort of app is considered the default music player, and early Samsung ROMs went still further in terms of persistent notifications I believe. Most of those seem fixed now.

Similarly, when you connect to a BT device, it may send startup commands, which Android will forward to the current music app (in this case, Poweramp). PA ignores commands for 1 second after connection to remove spurious stuff, but it can't ignore forever as then it would miss genuine button-press commands. Have a look in PA Settings > Headset/Bluetooth > Last Processed Commands to see if your BT headunit is sending out any commands such as MEDIA_PLAY or MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE.

It's worth trying to reset the PA Settings > Headset/Bluetooth and the PA Settings > Audio > Outputs pages to defaults, or a re-pair with the BT device may help.

As a last resort, you can disable PA from responding to BT buttons completely, but of course then you can't use any of the headunit features to control playback.

Andre