Bluetooth headset play/pause key not fully effective in various media players

A quick additional not: using "xdotool key XF86AudioPlay" and "xdotool key XF86AudioPause" works correctly, so maybe it's not all media keys that are broken and there's something odd about my Bluetooth one.

I've made a small program out of parts of bluetoothd that demonstrates this problem without the need for any special hardware. Simply compile it and run it (as root) and it will create a virtual keyboard that generates "play" and "pause" keypresses at 5.1-second intervals. If you have Rhythmbox or Banshee playing when you start the test program, the first "pause" will pause the media player, but the subsequent "play" will not re-start it.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Tested the program with 14.04 up to date and it is confirmed. Can't resume music with my bluetooth headset.

I'm using gnome desktop, though. I don't know if that makes a difference.

I can confirm the problem with Ubuntu 14.10 and a Plantronics Backbeat Pro bluetooth headset.

I think I have the same problem with Sony SBH20, Ubuntu 15.04, kernel 4.0.4

Device is paired and bluetooth buttons detectable in "System Setings" -> "Keyboard" -> "Shortcuts" -> "Sound and Media"

* Previous Track detected as "Audio previous" and working as expected in all apps
* Next track detectable as "Audio next" and working as expected in all apps

* Play (or play/pause) detectable as "Audio play", but does not stop resume playback in all apps

Working apps:
1. Totem Movie Player
2. Spotify, but only if you click twice

Not working apps:
1. Pithos (pandora app for linux)
2. Chrome or FireFox (this is maybe app specific problem)
3. Rhythmbox

I would like to add that all apps (except chrome and firefox) are working with the keyboard pause/resume media key.
Question: who knows the flow of key events, please suggest how to debug this problem?

Here is output from "xev" for bluetooth pause/resume key

KeyPress event, serial 47, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73921661, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 209 (keysym 0x1008ff31, XF86AudioPause), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73921858, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 209 (keysym 0x1008ff31, XF86AudioPause), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73928594, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 208 (keysym 0x1008ff14, XF86AudioPlay), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 172
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73928618, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 208 (keysym 0x1008ff14, XF86AudioPlay), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 172
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73965210, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 209 (keysym 0x1008ff31, XF86AudioPause), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73965728, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 209 (keysym 0x1008ff31, XF86AudioPause), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    root 0xaf, subw 0x0, time 73971740, (212,2196), root:(1500,2856),
    state 0x0, keycode 208 (keysym 0x1008ff14, XF86AudioPlay), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 172
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 48, synthetic NO, window 0x5000001,
    ro...

VLC is working too, but you have to triple click quickly or double click slowly on bluetooth play/pause key...

+1 here, mine is a Philips SHB7150, and the problem was already present at least in 14.10, maybe earlier.

Reason I'm commenting though: playing around with xev, it seems to take some black magic to predict whether I'll get XF86AudioPlay or XF86AudioPause.

- If no app is playing, it's always XF86AudioPlay, regardless what combination of apps is running.
- If rhythmbox is playing, it's XF86AudioPause.
- If gmusicbrowser, mpv, or vlc is playing, it alternates between the two (but neither app responds to it regardless of state and event).
- And mplayer probably doesn't register itself with whatever it is, since it always gets XF86AudioPlay.

I also found that if vlc or mpv is focused, it does play when it's paused and I press the button; when it's playing, it will only pause every other press (thinking of the xev experiment above, I guess when the generated keysym is XF86AudioPause). The same is not true of gmusicbrowser. As for mplayer, if it's focused it responds exactly right.

I have the same problem with a Plantronics Backbeat pro and 14.04 up to date.

This bug persists in 16.04.

Hi, is there any way to work around this issue? I confirm that the bug is persistent in 16.04.

You can replace this setting-daemon by mate-system-daemon. But this solution can reproduce other bugs :-)

> Hi, is there any way to work around this issue? I confirm that the bug is persistent in 16.04.

Global application shortcuts still work correctly with bluetooth media buttons. So for me I worked around this problem particularly with rhythmbox by adding global application shortcut to command "rhythmbox-client --play-pause".

>Global application shortcuts still work correctly with bluetooth media buttons. So for me I worked >around this problem particularly with rhythmbox by adding global application shortcut to command >"rhythmbox-client --play-pause".

This is a good suggestion. A general workaround for all programs (at least in 16.04) is to, in the "Keyboards" utility, under the "Shortcuts" tab, in the "Sound and Media" section, change "Play (or play/pause)" to the the Bluetooth event. On mine, this changed it from "Audio play" to "Audio pause". Now, in Spotify, my bluetooth headphones can both pause and play the music (although I have to hit it twice for each).

For my case, with Bose QC35 bluetooth headphones, skip forward and backward worked with no configuration, but play/pause didn't at all.

The workaround I found was to use xbindkeys with the help of xbindkeys-config to set the following:

"xdotool key XF86AudioPlay"
    c:208

in my ~/.xbindkeysrc. This is strange, as pretty much everything else sees the button as XF86AudioPlay, but it wasn't being seen as a media key by the player. But it works now.

Because have 2 ways for listing keys:

1) native (as VLC). Application get keycodes self. It always work fine.
2) over dbus observer from gnome/unity/etc-settings-daemon.

unity/gnome-settings-daemon have been rewritten. Now they listen only first XF86AudioPlay key. Bluetooth key not work if keyboard (or other early connected device) have this key.

mate-settings-daemon have legacy code from gnome2, but work fine too.