How to disable media Queue button in Android Auto when playing live stream.

[Guardiannw]

Question:

Under the previous version of the media library, when playing a live stream (HLS) for a radio station, the Queue button did not appear in Android Auto when playing a media item. However, after migrating to the new Media3 library, the Queue seems to be there by default. I have tried to look through the documentation, but cannot find a way to easily disable the Queue button on Android Auto. I assume it has something to do with the new implementation because it was not there for us on the old implementation. Is there any way that I can easily disable the viewing of the queue in Android Auto via the library.

[marcbaechinger]

Edit: This is incorrect. See #339 (comment)

I assume that in the legacy world the queue button is shown when FLAG_HANDLES_QUEUE_COMMANDS was set in MediaSessionCompat.

If that's correct, I think the only thing you can do, is to use a ForwardingPlayer and override the methods that get the available commands:

Media3 maps COMMAND_CHANGE_MEDIA_ITEMS to the flags to be set to the session.

    val forwardingPlayer =
      object : ForwardingPlayer(player) {

        override fun isCommandAvailable(command: Int): Boolean {
          if (command == COMMAND_CHANGE_MEDIA_ITEMS) {
            return false;
          }
          return super.isCommandAvailable(command)
        }

        override fun getAvailableCommands(): Player.Commands {
          val commands = super.getAvailableCommands()
          if (commands.contains(COMMAND_CHANGE_MEDIA_ITEMS)) {
            return commands.buildUpon().remove(COMMAND_CHANGE_MEDIA_ITEMS).build()
          }
          return commands;
        }
      }
    
    MediaSession.Builder(context, forwardingPlayer).build()
    ...

That should work but is not really nice, because with this all the other controllers (including Media3 controllers) can't use that COMMAND_CHANGE_MEDIA_ITEMS either because it is removed from the player. I don't think there is another solution with the current version though.

It may be sufficient for you when you do a 1:1 migration to Media3, because you didn't set FLAG_HANDLES_QUEUE_COMMANDS in the legacy world (or you didn't use a QueueEditor in case you were using MediaSessionConnector). In case your own app would want to use a Media3 controller internally, this could be probably problematic.

However, can you as a first step test whether this actually works the way I assume above?

[Guardiannw]

Thanks @marcbaechinger for responding. I have just tried your suggestions, but unfortunately, the queue button is still there. I have also tried removing these commands in the onConnect method of the MediaLibrarySession.Callback, but the issue still persists.

[marcbaechinger]

Ok, thanks! Will investigate.

[marcbaechinger]

The criteria is whether the queue is empty or not.

With Media3, the queue of the legacy session is a function of the media items added to the player. So if there is a media item playing, then the queue is never empty.

This is a regression compared to what apps can do with the legacy MediaSessionCompat API. I think we need to fix this.

I changed this issue to a bug and will update this issue when we have news.

[Guardiannw]

Thanks so much for looking into this!

[DenysLoboda]

@marcbaechinger do we have some option to override MediaSession::onTimelineChanged? Or perhaps there is some other workaround?

[DenysLoboda]

In fact, when using the support library, this behavior is also observed. I managed to get the playlist off by overriding MediaMetadataProvider and assuming QueueNavigator is not set. Are there any equivalents for this for media3?