I've been struggling with the magic tap gesture on iOS when toggling media playback for the past couple of months, and I'm really hoping this isn't just another long-standing bug. When I perform the two finger double tap to unpause media from a third-party app, like YouTube or Spotify, my phone will start playing something from a native iOS media app instead of whatever I had going previously. For instance, I'll have an audiobook on BARD in the background, pause it while working on something where I don't want distractions, then attempt to resume playback with the magic tap, only to end up with some radio stream from Apple Music, which I find doubly strange since I don't even use Apple Music. I guess my issue is technically twofold: (1) third-party media I actually want to toggle keeps disappearing from the playback queue, and (2) iOS would rather play something random I never asked for through a native app than do nothing when the queue is empty. Is there anything I can do to at least prevent the second half of this from happening? And yes, I'm aware that there's a setting under VoiceOver > Commands which will disable the gesture's ability to toggle media playback entirely, but that isn't the behavior I'm looking for.
Comments
Off Load Apple Music
So there's no fix for this.
and to be honest I apreciate that it does that.
Sometimes it is annoying when it plays the rwrong thing.
sometimes I've expected it to play music from the aplle music but it's played my sound cloud.
Since you're not using apple music.
I suggest you off load it to icloud
I believe you can Actually set your default music ap to your prefered one.
but I may be wrong.
I also suggest you off load apps you don't use but that it also plays from.
Hope this helps.
I believe it's a feature not a bug and Personally I like it because it works as intended most times.
It plays the last thing you played before something like youtube
so if I was listening to audible it will play that.
if I was playing apple music.
it does that
or sound cloud
it plays that.
It plays the last played media.
so if that radio keeps playing
it's going to do that.
Which is why I recommended off loading it.
A couple of thoughts
For the first issue you're describing, it can sometimes depend on where VoiceOver's focus is. For instance, in YouTube, at least for me, if focus is within the video player, Magic Tap pauses and resumes playback. If focus is elsewhere, it may not, depending on which part of the app VoiceOver is interacting with. That behavior is largely determined by how the app implements VoiceOver support, so in this case Google would likely need to address it.
As for the second issue, I suspect that's related to how iOS handles apps in the background rather than being a Magic Tap-specific bug. If the app has been suspended, iOS may resume playback from another app, such as Apple Music, instead.
Phooey
Sigh, I guess there isn't all that much I can do then.