# Paid user here-

Noticed MacroDroid's background keep-alive mechanism (silent/short audio clip) registers an active MediaSession on Android. This has a few real consequences:



* Hijacks the Now Playing slot, displacing Spotify or any active media app.
* Breaks Cast/media session continuity — audio apps lose their session state.
* Appears in media controls on lock screen and notification shade.

This is a known dirty-but-functional hack to survive aggressive OEM killers (I'm on Funtouch OS / Vivo, which recently got updated to *OriginOS*), but the side effect is significant for anyone who listens to music or podcasts while MacroDroid runs in the background.  
I specially feel this bug after updating to *Origin OS*.



# Two possible fixes I'd love to see:

1. Add a stream selector to the Play Sound action so the audio can be routed to the notification or alarm stream instead of media — this alone would stop the MediaSession conflict.

2. Or officially document that enabling "Run in Foreground" notification (Actions → MacroDroid → Run in Foreground) is a clean replacement for the audio keep-alive, so users can disable the audio hack entirely.



The permissions it is requesting in the screenshot that's because i wanted to turn the app of for this annoying bug, these showed up after i deactivated the device admin, nothing to do with the real problem, that was consistent from long before



Happy to provide logs or more detail or my purchasing details if helpful. Just wanted this on the radar since it's a real quality-of-life issue for daily media users.

  


Silent audio keep-alive creates persistent MediaSession, breaks Spotify / media apps