No MediaPlayer controls on lock screen (Huawei EMUI)

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-04, 01:55 UTC

There are no controls for Total Commander MediaPlayer on the lock screen on my Huawei P8 Lite (Firmware B190, EMUI 3.1, Android 5.0.1).

I allowed all types of notification types in the "Benachrichtigungsmanager": "Statusleiste", "Banner" and "Sperbildschirm".
Changing the value for "Statusleiste" is working well and I can swith the Play-Icon on and off. The other options have no effect.

I'm using just the normal lock screen ("Nur Passwortsperre verw.") with "Muster". Also without "Muster" there are no controls.

I think it's a problem of Emotion UI but I hope there is a solution for the problem.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-04, 08:52 UTC

It seems that several devices do not support the newer Android 5 controls interface used by Total Commander.

Here someone has this problem with a Zenphone 2:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=43669

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-04, 15:14 UTC

I saw the thread, but for me it was a not specific enough.

It seems to be a - more or less - general problem with widget on the lock screen, starting with Android 5.

Nevertheless: Google Play Music and the Huawei Player Musik (V7.1.35) support controls on the lock screen. So these players are not open source, we cannot look how they do it.
Maybe the only solution will be to add an own lock screen to Total Commander.

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-04, 15:18 UTC

BTW: I saw "Read Metadata directly from mp3" in the announcement of "Total Commander 2.80 beta 1 for Android".
I hope this feature is optional because I prefer just the filename.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-07, 09:06 UTC

2rsa
In the beta, you can turn off metadata in the player settings now! TC MediaPlayer will then show just the file names.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-11, 08:35 UTC

2rsa
Could you try with the latest beta, please? I have now disabled the new player control interface of Android 5, and returned to the older interface.

Instructions to get the beta are here:
http://ghisler.ch/board/viewtopic.php?t=43853

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-11, 15:09 UTC

2ghisler(Author)
I've installed 2.80b2 but there is no change: no controls for Total Commander MediaPlayer on the lock screen on my Huawei P8 Lite.

There are also other things not working or not nice on my device:
*) Album art is not shown although I have a "folder.jpg" in the directory with the mp3 files. (I've also tried to turn off ID3 tags)

*) *.wma Files will not be played if I add the total folder for playing in the background (as I usually do it with my mp3-folders). They have the music-icon (musical note) and will be played in foreground and also in background if I add then one by one to the queue. If I add the total folder, there will be a filled square icon in the status bar. In the notification screen I see the controls (play, next/last) but there is no music.
If I add the folder and open the media player (the queue-app), I see strange items like "248,49. <unknown>A - 01 Titel 1 /storage/sdcard1/Music/_Compilations/E4B/00". The real file for this is "/storage/sdcard1/Music/_Compilations/E4B/01 Titel 1.wma". Note: ID3-tags are disabled.

*) On Huawei EMUI there is no app drawer and all apps are directly on the home screen (like in iOS). For Total Commander I have the main app "Total Commander" and "Total Commander (..", which is the queue-app of the media player. Because the name of the queue-app is too long, the name is truncated and so I have to look very carefully to select the app I want. It's not possible to change the name of the app on the home screen. If I move the queue-app to a folder, I see the letters more: "Total Commander (Qu..". This is with the normal EMUI-theme with font size small. If I use the default font size ("normal") I see in a folder only "Total Commander.." for the queue-app. If I have both apps directly on the main screen, I only see "Total Comman.." as name for both apps and then I can't distinguish between the main-app and the queue-app. The names are truncated more if I use bigger font sizes.
Suggestion: Use shorter names (like "TC" and "TC (Queue)" or like you do it for the editor-widget: "Totalcmd-Editor") and/or use different icons.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-14, 09:08 UTC

I've installed 2.80b2 but there is no change: no controls for Total Commander MediaPlayer on the lock screen on my Huawei P8 Lite.

Then there is unfortunately no chance to make it work. There are two official remote control interfaces on Android, an older one and a newer one. They are used for lock screen controls, hardware controls (e.g. on a headset), and controls on Android Wear. They don't seem to work on your device. I guess that Huawei only uses these controls for their own player.

Album Art uses the same functions, so if Huawei didn't implement them, they will not work with TC.

There is probably no codec for WMA on your device. You will need a player like VLC which brings its own codecs.

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-17, 18:23 UTC

I don't know why, but now it's working! I have controls for Total Commander MediaPlayer on the lock screen now!

I also have Album Art on the lock screen, but it's very blurry (but I think this is normal). I don't see any Album Art in the "TC-Medienwiedergabe" (queue app) where I don't know if it should be there but it would be nice.

I reactivated Google Play Musik and did an update to test the Google-App again: Also the Google Player have controls on the lock screen and supports Album Art.

Moreover I didn't change anything: No changes in the settings, no update of Android, ...

One more thing: The controls in the notifications panel doesn't look very nice, because the icons for next and previous title are one above the other, even if there would be enough space to display them in a row. There is no Album Art in the notifications panel.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-18, 09:16 UTC

Nice to hear that it works now? Maybe the interface got confused by the newer calls used by TC release version.

The image is probably blurry because TC takes the thumbnail from inside the mp3 by default even if there is a separate folder.jpg file.

You can disable the "previous track" icon from the notifications panel if you don't like it. I don't want to show the buttons side by side because it takes away too much space from the displayed track title. And it's easier to use than when they are side by side and the distance is too small.

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-18, 15:18 UTC

Till now I thought that there are no track titles in the notifications panel, because I didn't saw them.
I have da dark background at the home screen and the notifications panel is black (transparent). Because the title info are in black font, I didn't see them.
Now I made a Screenshot and on my PC I see the title info!
Image: http://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bw0ezYku-9pVVEdBRVpmMFpVVG8/view?usp=sharing

On the screen of my smartphone I can't see the black font on black background.
I cannot find settings for changing the font color of the notification panel - neither in Total Commander nor in my Android/EMUI settings.

Other notifications (like "Screenshot aufgenommen" or time and date) are in white color text.
I can see the title info only if I use a bright background and also there it's not very good readable (black font on grey background).

Is it possible to have the notifications text in white or customize the font color?

BTW: I prefer dark background of the home screen and dark themes in general because they need less energy (I hope).

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-21, 08:32 UTC

That's very unfortunate: I'm not setting the font color, background color or theme in my custom notification, I just set a custom layout with buttons and text. I have never received a single complaint from a user that the notification text is invisible.

Sorry, I really don't know what I could do to make it visible on your system without making it invisible on other systems. Normally the system chooses the text color so it works well with the background color. For example, on my old Galaxy S4 mini with Android 4.4, the background is black, and the notification text is white and light grey (different for title and text). On my Galaxy S5, it's the reverse: The notification background is white, and the text is black.

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-04-25, 05:34 UTC

Too bad that there is (currently) no way/solution for the notification (black text on black background).

In the meantime I've updated my phone to Android 6 with EMUI 4 (Firmware ALE21-C432B550) and I have the same problems like before (2.70 and 2.80 Beta 2): No controls on the lockscreen, no album art, black on black notifications.

Post by *ghisler(Author) » 2016-04-25, 08:00 UTC

I have a question about your notifications: Do you have a different background color for them on the lock screen and in the notification drawer (which shows the notification when the device is unlocked and you drag down from the top of the device)?

I ask because Android defines only one style for the notification text, and I'm already using that:
Android v21 and newer:
<style name="NotificationText" parent="android:TextAppearance.Material.Notification" />
Android v9 and newer:
<style name="NotificationText" parent="android:TextAppearance.StatusBar.EventContent" />

rsa · Post by *rsa » 2016-05-01, 20:14 UTC