RemoteServiceException in Android 12 and Lower

Version

Media3 1.9.2

More version details

No response

Devices that reproduce the issue

Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola are the top 3 devices that being reported.
Android 10, 11, & 12 are the majority while 13+ is less than 1%

Devices that do not reproduce the issue

No response

Reproducible in the demo app?

Not tested

Reproduction steps

Hey team, this is not our first time reporting the issue and I know we have an extensive issue that's now closed about this particular crash. But we've been trying integrate the media3 MediaSessionService again to replace our own playback service, but after some experimentations on multiple release versions, we still cannot get rid of this crash.

Here's the summary of the implementation that have (some code preview are available in the next section):

• We're using the media3 MediaSessionService
• We're starting the service by connecting to the controller
• We're extending androidx.media3.session.MediaButtonReceiver and overriding the shouldStartForegroundService
• We're implemented the MediaSession.Callback#onPlaybackResumption, as of now this is just replaying latest playlist, if it's empty we're playing one silent media item, this is our latest effort on fixing the crash.
• Before doing the silent media item, we're implementing a "force stopper" for the MediaSessionService, with this approach, the crash rate was actually better.
• We have some custom media buttons that we setup in MediaSession.Callback

Now, some analysis on the crash itself. We're adding some logs across components above and we can say that:

1. When the crash happen there's no trace of the media button receiver is being invoked
2. When the crash happen there's no trace of playback resumption is being invoked
3. Most of the crashes follow this pattern: Service.onCreate -> onStartCommand -> Service.onDestroy, but some logs also just having the Service.onDestroy log, we haven't exactly log the onGetSession and onUpdateNotification

Code Preview

AndroidManifest.xml

<service
  android:name="com.app.MediaSessionPlaybackService"
  android:exported="false"
  android:foregroundServiceType="mediaPlayback">
    <intent-filter>
      <action android:name="androidx.media3.session.MediaSessionService" />
      <action android:name="android.intent.action.MEDIA_BUTTON" />
    </intent-filter>
</service>

<receiver
  android:name="com.app.MediaButtonReceiver"
  android:exported="true">
    <intent-filter>
      <action android:name="android.intent.action.MEDIA_BUTTON" />
    </intent-filter>
</receiver>

MediaSessionPlaybackService.kt

class MediaSessionPlaybackService : MediaSessionService() {

    @Inject private lateinit var sessionFactory: MediaSessionFactory
    @Inject private lateinit var callback: MediaSessionCallback
    @Inject private lateinit var player: AppPlayer

    private var mediaSession: MediaSessionFactory.ReleasableMediaSession? = null

    private val serviceJob = SupervisorJob()
    internal val serviceScope = CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.Main + serviceJob)

    private var scheduleStopJob: Job? = null

    override fun onCreate() {
        super.onCreate()
        mediaSession = sessionFactory.createSession(callback)
        setMediaNotificationProvider(MediaNotificationProvider(applicationContext))
        setForegroundServiceTimeoutMs(FOREGROUND_TIMEOUT_IM_MS)
    }

    override fun onGetSession(controllerInfo: MediaSession.ControllerInfo): MediaSession? = mediaSession?.session

    override fun onDestroy() {
        releaseMediaSession()
        serviceJob.cancel()
        super.onDestroy()
    }

    override fun onTaskRemoved(rootIntent: Intent?) {
        appPlayer.stopPlayback() // This eventually will triger Player.stop, we need this for some UX thing in our app
        releaseMediaSession()
        stopSelf()
    }

    private fun releaseMediaSession() {
        mediaSession?.release()
        mediaSession = null
    }
    companion object {
        private const val FOREGROUND_TIMEOUT_IM_MS = 0L
        fun stop(context: Context) {
            context.stopService(Intent(context, MediaSessionPlaybackService::class.java))
        }
    }
}

internal class MediaNotificationProvider(context: Context) : DefaultMediaNotificationProvider(
    /* context = */ context,
    /* notificationIdProvider = */ { _ -> DEFAULT_NOTIFICATION_ID },
    /* channelId = */ MediaNotificationChannel.channelId,
    /* channelNameResourceId = */ Strings.media_notifications_channel_title
) {
    init { setSmallIcon(Icons.ic_icon)  }
}

Service Starter

SessionToken(context, ComponentName(context, MediaSessionPlaybackService::class.java))
        val newFuture = MediaController.Builder(context, sessionToken)
            .setListener(object : MediaController.Listener {
                override fun onDisconnected(controller: MediaController) {
                    MediaSessionPlaybackService.stop(context)
                }
            })
            .buildAsync()

MediaButtonReceiver.kt

class MediaButtonReceiver : Media3ButtonReceiver() {
    private val scope = CoroutineScope(Dispatchers.Main + SupervisorJob())
    private var shouldStartService: Boolean = false

    override fun onReceive(context: Context, intent: Intent?) {
        scope.launch {
            // non-blocking load, if it's fails or not loaded, it will fallback to the default value which is `false`
            loadShouldStartServiceFlag(context, intent)
            super.onReceive(context, intent)
        }
    }

    override fun shouldStartForegroundService(context: Context, intent: Intent): Boolean = shouldStartService
}

Stacktrace

Fatal Exception: android.app.RemoteServiceException: Context.startForegroundService() did not then call Service.startForeground(): ServiceRecord{45e37c7 u0 com.app/com.app.MediaSessionPlaybackService}
       at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2188)
       at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:107)
       at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:237)
       at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:8167)
       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java)
       at com.android.internal.os.RuntimeInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(RuntimeInit.java:496)
       at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1100)

Expected result

Do not crash. If it's crash, we want to know the actual cause of error.

Actual result

Crashing.

Media

Bug Report

• You will email the zip file produced by adb bugreport to android-media-github@google.com after filing this issue.