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On android how can I have music player and Pokemon GO active at the same time? Right now when I switch to Pokemon it closes the music player.

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    That probably depends on what music player you are using.
    – Ellesedil
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 18:12
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    Not that this answers the question, but be wary of your battery life when playing the game and having a music app open. Pokemon Go is enough of a drain as it is.
    – nightsurfer
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 18:12
  • its just "Music", the first one I found on google play...however I have the same problem with soundcloud???
    – crystyxn
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 18:13
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    @crystyxn I use google play music to listen to music while I play. Opening Pokemon go usually pauses the music, but if you pull down the menu drawer from the top of the screen, and press play on your music player in the notification screen, you should be able to continue listening while you play.
    – turbo
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 18:18

1 Answer 1

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I have been able to do this with several different apps that play sounds, and this process seems to work.

  1. Start up your music player and start playing. (I don't know why you need to do this, and you might not have to, but in my experience it works better this way, so I do it.)
  2. Use the home button to get back to your home screen, and launch PO:GO. It will eventually take control of the audio from your music player and the music will stop.

Once PO:GO is loaded and you're on the map screen, you can safely restart your music player. If you're lucky, as @Kevin notes, your player will insert playback controls into the tray, and you can use those. If not, you should do the following:

  1. Pull up the task list (long-press on Home, or whatever the keypress is for your phone) and switch back to your music player. It should be stopped, just restart it.
  2. Pull up the task list again and switch back to PO:GO. It will not try to recapture the audio again if it's already running.

The key is not to shut down either PO:GO or the music app once you have started them up; just task switch between them. PO:GO will give up the audio control when your music player asks for it, which it should do as soon as you tell it to start playing.

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  • I've been doing this with Spotify and I haven't had any issue doing both.
    – AxxieD
    Commented Jul 15, 2016 at 19:33
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    Some music player apps have a play/pause button that appears in the notifications tray once they've started playing. Using this, steps 3 and 4 can be replaced by just playing the music from the notification tray.
    – Kevin
    Commented Jul 16, 2016 at 16:37
  • good point, I'll include that in my answer
    – KutuluMike
    Commented Jul 16, 2016 at 17:08
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    This seems to be a bug or some rude feature on PoGo's end that sends a "StopAllSounds" to the device.
    – Rapitor
    Commented Aug 12, 2016 at 12:50
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    Did the Halloween update break this? Now switching back to the map screen captures my music every time...
    – Carl Walsh
    Commented Nov 3, 2016 at 15:30

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