Timer is inconsistent

[Bencherished]

Poweramp timer is inconsistent, especially when set from 45 minutes up. I set up the timer, play songs and purse, go to other apps, eg file manager, chrome to download songs and back to Poweramp to delete and rescann for new files and finally letting the phone be, Poweramp will not stop playing until I unlock the phone. 

[andrewilley]

I use a 30 minute timer every night and it always works. Once set, I tend to just turn the screen off and listen - no point in setting the timer if I'm still using the phone rather than actually trying to get to sleep. Occasionally I might re-open the phone to change the music selection, but usually it's on Shuffle anyway so I just use the headset buttons.

What do you see if you tap the Timer icon again - has it continued to decrement the remaining time while you have been doing other things?

Andre

[Bencherished]

Please try the 120 minutes 

[andrewilley]

It'd be almost time to wake up again if I selected 120 mins. I never hear the end of 30 minutes!

As I said, if you enable 120 minutes keep checking every so often to see that the counter is decreasing as expected, and if not what activity might have stopped it.

Andre

[andrewilley]

@Bencherished  I think I may have encountered your bug last night. I went to bed a bit after 12:30am last night, and set the PA Sleep Timer to 30 mins as I always do. I fell asleep within ten minutes or so but I stirred at about 2am and vaguely noticed music was still playing from my headset. I stopped playback with a click on the headset button and went back to sleep.

This morning when I checked my phone, the PA 'Sleep Timer' icon was still illuminated on the player screen (which should mean that a countdown is currently in progress):

When I tapped on the Sleep Timer icon, instead of the normal idle "Sleep Timer: disabled" wording on the status line, it still showed a full 30 minute countdown (which should only be visible during an active countdown). The countdown value did not continue to decease:

Next time you encounter this issue, could you check if you see the same incorrect idle message on the Timer screen after the clock should have run out?

Andre

[andrewilley]

A bit more testing and I can fairly reliably replicate the issue I noted above. Could you confirm if you find the same?

If you enable the Sleep Timer first, but do not immediately start playback - maybe you are searching for a song, or adding to the Queue - then the Timer gets stuck at the starting value. It initially looks like it's working, and it shows the "Sleep Timer: in <nn> min" message, but it doesn't continue counting down even after you start music playback. However if you start playback fairly soon after setting the Timer, it works as expected.

I think this is what happened to me last night anyway; I enabled a 30 minute timer, plugged in my headset and spent a bit of time choosing a playlist, but I didn't start playback quickly enough and the timer got stuck at 30 minutes.

 

[Edit]

Also while testing, on one occasion I set the Timer to 5 minutes and the countdown reduced as expected through 4, 3, 2, 1 - but instead of playback stopping at the end, the Timer count changed to "-:--" and music continued anyway. @maxmp I've saved a log of this incident, and can forward it in case it helps:

Andre

[Bencherished]

Just like I said, it doesn't happen every time, I have been using Tasker (app) to turn off Bluetooth, using one stone to kill two birds, once Bluetooth is off, music stops and headphone power's off, I think I noticed the bug because I always set long timer and which at intervals I sometimes go back to delete any low quality mp3 that does not sound well and re-download another then scan for it to appear in library. Maybe these actions affects the timer. 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Bencherished
Not finished

[andrewilley]

Deleting files and/or full rescanning does not seem to affect the timer's countdown.

Could you try what I mentioned above, to see if your issue might be a case of setting the Timer a little while before you commence music playback? For me, this seems to result in a stuck timer status which appears to think it has been set but does not start counting down over time:

Also try starting playback and then activating the Timer as normal, but then pause playback for a few minutes during the countdown period and resume playing again. This seems to result in the count apparently continuing, but instead of playback stopping at the end of the countdown I instead see the timer dialogue show "Sleep Timer: -:--"

 

It would be nice to confirm this so it can be resolved, rather than trying to find workarounds with Bluetooth connections and other apps. 

Andre

[Bencherished]

I tried it, I set the timer with no song playing, switched to chrome browser then back to Poweramp after few seconds and hit play, then checked the timer, it was not counting down. It is showing that it is active but it not reducing. 

So with the song playing, I reset the timer, it starts counting, (reducing) so it's clear that the problem occurs when the timer is set while song is not playing. 

[andrewilley]

Thanks, this does sound like the trigger for the bug you are encountering then.

@maxmp There seem to be two slightly different versions of this bug. Steps to reproduce:

• While PA is NOT playing, set the Sleep Timer to (for example) 10 minutes.
• After a short while, start music playback.
• Result: The Timer icon is illuminated as expected, and the top line of the timer page changes to "Sleep Timer: in 10 min". However no countdown occurs, the timer display stays like that, and the player screen icon remains illuminated.
   
• While PA is playing music, set the Sleep Timer to (for example) 10 minutes.
• Pause playback, and then a short while later, unpause it again.
• Result: The Timer icon is illuminated, and the top line of the timer page counts down as expected from 9, 8, ... 3, 2, 1 mins. At the end of the countdown, the timer display changes to "Sleep Timer: -:--" but playback does not stop, and the player screen icon remains illuminated.

Andre

[andrewilley]

This bug happened to me again last night, so it's not fixed in build 909.  I temporarily paused playback for about a minute during a 30-minute Timer, and although it did continue to count down all the way to zero, playback continued and this morning the Timer icon was still illuminated and the timer display showed "Sleep Timer: -:--".

Andre

[Bencherished]

Yes it's true, I tried it with ten minutes sleep timer, a song was playing then I set the timer and pause, exit the app and opened again, press play, but music did not stop after timer stopped counting. Samsung galaxy m30. Android 10. Poweramp 909.

[andrewilley]

Bug still seems to be present in build 910. Starting the Timer while playback is temporarily paused, or later pausing playback for a few minutes during an active countdown, will both cause the timer function to fail as described above, leaving the Timer page and the Timer icon in an invalid state.

Andre

[andrewilley]

I've just checked, and both variants of this bug are still present in build 911.

@maxmp have you been able to reproduce it in testing?

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley it's in TODO, but I'm afraid this will be rectified only in the next builds.

[andrewilley]

Thanks Max, wasn't sure if you'd been able to duplicate it.

Andre

[andrewilley]

@Bencherished Have you tested the timer inconsistency issues with paused music on recent builds of PA (e.g. build 918)? I realised that I hadn't been woken up by a sudden loud track at 4am recently, so I did a few tests and for me both instances of this bug appear to be corrected now.

1) If you set the Timer to 10 minutes but with Poweramp not currently playing music, the countdown will be held at that 10 minute point until such time as you commence listening. Then it will begin counting down from 10 minutes to zero, at which point playback will stop.

2) If you pause playback sometime during a 10 minute Timer session, the countdown will continue to decrement normally during the paused period. If you haven't started playback again within the countdown period, the Timer will simply be disabled. However if you do restart playback before the ten minutes is up, playback will stop as expected at the end of the 10 minute period.

Could you confirm if this is now working correctly for you too?

Andre

[Bencherished]

I have not taken the time to monitor the timer during pause, what I have tried is, tick and un-tiick play last song, and it has been working. 

Let me use this opportunity to ask, how is the timer supposed to behave? Is it supposed to continue counting even when the music is not playing? In my own opinion I would like it to count even though the music is not playing so that it will keep up with real time, independent whether the music is playing or not, five minutes should be five minutes timer not following the music playback.

I will get back to you. 

[Bencherished]

What the timer is doing is very funny, I set 15 minutes timer while a song is playing, then I let the song continue for 2 minutes, song is still playing, exited the app and opened chrome and back to Poweramp, checked timer (still counting down) paused music exited Poweramp open Chrome and back to Poweramp, timer was active but not counting, I did not deactivate the timer I pressed play, music was playing I checked the timer, timer  have started counting down from 15 minutes previously set. 

So what the timer is doing is, if you set the timer, at any given point (timer is active) and you pause the music and exit the app and you reopen the app and press play, the time I will start counting from the previous set time, (15 minutes) and start all over. 

[andrewilley]

I generally only use the Sleep Timer when I want music to stop a while after I've fallen asleep, so I only set it once I've finished doing any other stuff on my phone. Thus I have not tried stopping playback, leaving the app to do other stuff, and then coming back to PA and starting music again. I think I would probably expect the timer to have been disabled after a while of non-use of the app and with no music playing, but I've not tested that.

What I have observed is that if you activate the Timer without any music playing, the countdown does not commence until you actually start your music playing. I don't know if there's a delay/timeout beyond which a pending Timer gets disabled though, it certainly remains pending for at least five minutes anyway, but I wouldn't necessarily expect it to hang around for hours on end.

However if you activate the Timer while listening to music, you can pause and restart the music without affecting the progress of the countdown - e.g. playback will still be terminated exactly fifteen minutes after you activate a 15 Minute Timer, regardless of any intervening paused time or changing of tracks, etc.

So the two bugs originally reported in this thread where the Time could be left in an unknown state both appear to have been resolved as far as I can see.
 

The one extra feature that I would like to see though would be a tickbox option within the Timer setting page which would allow the countdown clock to reset itself back to the start each time you carry out some user-interaction in Poweramp - such as changing tracks, pause/unpause, check lists, change volume, etc. That way while you are still interacting with your device - such via headphone controls - the music would continue playing, but when you fall asleep and thus stop pressing any more buttons, the timer would start ticking down.

Andre

[Bencherished]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

The one extra feature that I would like to see though would be a tickbox option within the Timer setting page which would allow the countdown clock to reset itself back to the start each time you carry out some user-interaction in Poweramp - such as changing tracks, pause/unpause, check lists, change volume, etc. That way while you are still interacting with your device - such via headphone controls - the music would continue playing, but when you fall asleep and thus stop pressing any more buttons, the timer would start ticking down.

That is what is happening, if timer is set and you pause Music, exit and return and play music, timer starts all over. 

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Bencherished said:

if timer is set and you pause Music, exit and return and play music, timer starts all over. 

That happens if you pause playback during a Timer countdown and then exit the app for a while. When you do eventually restart the app, the timer will have reverted to the new 'active-but-pending' state which I mentioned previously, and will thus start counting down as soon as you press Play. That particular behaviour perhaps does not make sense: the timer should probably simply be disabled if you don't use the app for a while, as otherwise it could still be sitting there ready to trigger when you return to using PA a few days later for example.

Andre

[Geoff456]

Just wanted to mention I'm also having an issue with the timer not stopping playback. I have a feeling it occurs if I manually change the track while the timer is running, but need to test further. Hoping this is fixed soon. 

[andrewilley]

@Geoff456 What version of PA? Has been updated between 912 and 919.

Andre

[Geoff456]

@andrewilley I'm using Version 925