Bug 497080

Summary: "Pause media players when suspending" does not succeed in pausing Spotify on other machines with synchronized playback control
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: redford <redford>
Component: Power management & brightnessAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: minor CC: kde, natalie_clarius, nate, redford
Priority: LO    
Version First Reported In: 6.2.4   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Arch Linux   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description redford 2024-12-05 13:56:14 UTC 
SUMMARY

When using the "Pause media players when suspending" option from "Advanced Power Settings" it pauses my players when I'm _waking up_ the computer from sleep, not when moving it to sleep.

Example: When I'm using Spotify from my browser (Firefox), but playing on my TV (so, not on the laptop with KDE).

OBSERVED RESULT

When I suspend the laptop nothing happens (which is OK). But when I wake it, my TV pauses Spotify. This happens only if I have "Pause media players when suspending" checked.

EXPECTED RESULT

Ideally, nothing should happen, because I'm playing on a different device. Bad, but not as bad as current behavior would be to pause my TV when I suspend the laptop.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS

KDE Plasma Version: 6.2.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.8.0
Qt Version: 6.8.0
Kernel: 6.12.1-arch1-1 (64-bit)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

I just disabled this option and now it's good. I'm not really sure what's the intended purpose of it and why is it turned on by default. How should it actually work?
btw. This may be in fact two separate bugs, but I wasn't sure whether it's the same issue or not (stopping remote devices and pausing on resume, not suspend).
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2025-05-14 18:26:47 UTC 
Can reproduce. I imagine we implemented it this way assuming it wouldn't actually make a difference, and you've found an edge case where it does. :) 

That said, how did you get media playing on your TV to appear as a mater player on your laptop? Are the two connected via Bluetooth or KDE Connect or something else that forwards the MPRIS control from the TV to the laptop?
Comment 2 redford 2025-05-14 23:29:19 UTC 
Thanks for taking your time to verify this!

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> That said, how did you get media playing on your TV to appear as a mater
> player on your laptop? Are the two connected via Bluetooth or KDE Connect or
> something else that forwards the MPRIS control from the TV to the laptop?

I use Spotify, where all playing devices are kind-of synchronized. If I open Spotify on a few devices at the same time (e.g. my laptop and the TV), then I can choose which one will actually play the music. But! The others can still control it - e.g. the TV is playing the sound, but pause/resume in my laptop browser will pause and resume on the TV.
I guess what happens here is that when resuming my laptop, the web client of Spotify gets a command from KDE to pause the music, but it sees that there's a different device playing, so it forwards the command there.
Comment 3 Kai Uwe Broulik 2025-05-15 19:21:18 UTC 
It surely pauses on suspend, it just doesn't wait for that to propagate over the network.
Comment 4 Nate Graham 2025-05-16 13:16:53 UTC 
What a fascinating use case. Yeah, if what Kai says is right (and I believe him; he wrote this feature), then I think this is just one of those extreme edge cases that isn't expected to work.