iPhone Music Controls on Control Center fail

[Jack.Straw42]

Hello. I recently updated to iOS 11.0.3 on my iPhone 5s. I am hugely disappointed with my decision, and have once again waited long enough to update that I can no longer downgrade. I won't turn this into a overall rant post though... i'm just going to keep it to my biggest annoyance and hope that someone here knows a solution.

One of the things that made me decide to update was the redesigned control center. In iOS 10 the control center had 2 different screens that you had to swipe left or right to access. I felt like this was a poor design, and when i heard that iOS 11 combined the two again I was intrigued. After the update I find that the music controls have once again been so squished together that it's nearly impossible for me to reliably hit play/pause on an 5s sized screen. A good percentage of the time i hit forward or back when trying to play/pause. I know you can press and hold for larger music controls, and so that's what i'll do. However, that's not an improvement over the 2 screen iOS 10 model. Anyway, that's not my actual problem. Sorry...

The real problem i have is with the control center music controls remembering what it's supposed to be controlling. I typically switch between audio books, podcasts, and music. The control center gets it right about 5% of the time. I can be listening to a podcast, and the control center will show the music i was listening to 4 hours ago. I can be listening to a podcast, and the control center will show the podcast i was listening to yesterday. I can be listening to a podcast, and it actually shows the correct podcast for once, but hitting play doesn't actually do anything. I'm using podcast as an example, but this happens across all my audio types.

I find this incredibly frustrating. I pause and play a lot... and i always have to re-open my phone, go find whatever app it is i was listening to, and play or pause it from there. Even if it's only been like 2 minutes since i was listening to a thing, control center still gets it wrong. Is there anything i can do? Is this even an iOS thing, or is it perhaps a problem with the specific apps i use? I mean, i use the stock music and audiobook applicaitons, but i also use audible, audiobooks.com, and the overcast apps. Or, could this be something to do with Apple's way of deciding what applications get to stay in memory? If there is any known issue or anything i can do to help this, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Thanks for your time!

 

[matty.p]

If you find the now playing controls too small you can 3D touch the panel in control center to expand it to get more controls and make it larger.

 

[Beeplance]

An alternative method to control music would also to be to swipe down to access the cover sheet/lockscreen. There is a bigger music control widget there?

But yeah, the Now Playing widget is super buggy now... Apple should fix it in the upcoming updates to ensure it works more reliably.

 

[trifid]

@Jack.Straw42 completely agree and feel your pain, I did some research during the beta period and actually found that there is a bug where there is a misalignment of the tapping area and what you see visually, I made a crude image showing the issue:

Notice the forward button has a much larger tap area, so what happens is, whenever I'm playing a podcast and want to play/pause, it's almost impossible, almost always I end up hitting the forward-15-sec button.

I reported it to Apple's bug reporting system during the beta , but got no reply.

PS: I haven't tested the larger iPhones but have a feeling this issue is only present in the smaller iPhones, I have an iPhone SE.

 

[iSayBoourns]

Hello. I recently updated to iOS 11.0.3 on my iPhone 5s. I am hugely disappointed with my decision, and have once again waited long enough to update that I can no longer downgrade. I won't turn this into a overall rant post though... i'm just going to keep it to my biggest annoyance and hope that someone here knows a solution.

One of the things that made me decide to update was the redesigned control center. In iOS 10 the control center had 2 different screens that you had to swipe left or right to access. I felt like this was a poor design, and when i heard that iOS 11 combined the two again I was intrigued. After the update I find that the music controls have once again been so squished together that it's nearly impossible for me to reliably hit play/pause on an 5s sized screen. A good percentage of the time i hit forward or back when trying to play/pause. I know you can press and hold for larger music controls, and so that's what i'll do. However, that's not an improvement over the 2 screen iOS 10 model. Anyway, that's not my actual problem. Sorry...

The real problem i have is with the control center music controls remembering what it's supposed to be controlling. I typically switch between audio books, podcasts, and music. The control center gets it right about 5% of the time. I can be listening to a podcast, and the control center will show the music i was listening to 4 hours ago. I can be listening to a podcast, and the control center will show the podcast i was listening to yesterday. I can be listening to a podcast, and it actually shows the correct podcast for once, but hitting play doesn't actually do anything. I'm using podcast as an example, but this happens across all my audio types.

I find this incredibly frustrating. I pause and play a lot... and i always have to re-open my phone, go find whatever app it is i was listening to, and play or pause it from there. Even if it's only been like 2 minutes since i was listening to a thing, control center still gets it wrong. Is there anything i can do? Is this even an iOS thing, or is it perhaps a problem with the specific apps i use? I mean, i use the stock music and audiobook applicaitons, but i also use audible, audiobooks.com, and the overcast apps. Or, could this be something to do with Apple's way of deciding what applications get to stay in memory? If there is any known issue or anything i can do to help this, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

Thanks for your time!

Long press on the music control and bring up the larger control panel.

(Screenshot is off an iPhone 7+, but still works just as effective on a 5s you have.)

 

[Jack.Straw42]

Thanks guys, i appreciate the responses. I did say that i already know about holding down on the music controls thing though, and that while that is an annoyance, my real issue is the control center not remembering what was last played/paused.