Music Notification

Music Notifications

Android Notify ships a full media notification for music playback in Kivy apps:

MusicNotification - a media-style notification with a system MediaSession. Play / pause / next / previous controls are shown on the notification, the lock screen and Quick Settings, and the seek bar moves (and seeks) on its own.
SoundLoader - an Android MediaPlayer wrapper with Kivy events (on_load, on_play, on_pause, on_seek, on_complete).
requestAllFilesAccess() - a helper that opens the "All files access" permission screen on Android 11+.

The whole point: button presses and seek commands typed from the notification are routed back into your SoundLoader automatically. You only react to its state events; you never re-post or poll the notification yourself.

The music module is Android + Kivy only (it builds on `pyjnius` and Kivy's `EventDispatcher`).

Setup

Add android-notify to your buildozer.spec requirements:

requirements = python3, kivy, pyjnius, https://github.com/Fector101/android_notify/archive/main.zip

A small Java bridge file is required so transport controls from the notification reach Python. You won't write any Java; the whole file is copy-pasted from below, and you only only have to add the gradle dependency in yourbuildozer.spec

Point buildozer to bridge in buildozer.spec:

android.gradle_dependencies = io.github.fector101:android-notify-music-bridge:1.0.1

Note

If the gradle_dependencies is missing, the notification will still build successfully, but the media control buttons and slider won't function.

Reading audio files

To load a track by absolute path (e.g. /storage/emulated/0/Music/song.mp3) you need to ask for All files access on Android 11+:

from android_notify.media.music.helper import requestAllFilesAccess

requestAllFilesAccess()

`MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE` ("All files access") is a restricted permission under Google Play policy. For Play-published apps, prefer `READ_MEDIA_AUDIO` (Android 13+) / `READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE` (Android 12 and below) with the Storage Access Framework (`ACTION_OPEN_DOCUMENT`) instead.

Minimal example

The notification is built when the sound finishes loading (its on_load event) and is dispatched automatically. setSoundLoader handles both call orders: wire it before the load completes (it waits for on_load), or after the sound is already loaded (it builds the notification immediately).

import os

from kivy.app import App
from kivy.uix.button import Button

from android_notify.media.music import MusicNotification
from android_notify.media.music.helper import SoundLoader, requestAllFilesAccess

TRACK = "/storage/emulated/0/Music/test.mp3"


class MyApp(App):
    def build(self):
        requestAllFilesAccess()

        # 1) The notification: builds a media notification and wires it to
        #    the same player.
        self.notification = MusicNotification(
            on_next=self.next_track,
            on_previous=self.previous_track,
        )
        self.notification.setTitle(os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(TRACK))[0])
        self.notification.setArtist("Example Artist")

        # 2) The player: prepares the MediaPlayer asynchronously,
        #    fires on_load when ready.
        self.sound = SoundLoader.load(TRACK)
        self.sound.loop = True
        self.sound.bind(on_load=self.on_loaded)
        self.sound.bind(on_complete=self.on_track_finished)
        self.sound.bind(state=self.on_state_changed)

        self.notification.setSoundLoader(self.sound)
        self.notification.set_skip_available(has_next=False, has_prev=False)

        return Button(text="Playing...")

    def on_loaded(self, *_):
        self.sound.play()

    def on_state_changed(self, instance, state):
        # Called whenever playback starts/stops, including from the
        # notification or lock screen.
        self.root.text = "Paused" if state != "play" else "Playing..."

    def on_track_finished(self, *_):
        # loop=True auto-restarts the track; no-op needed here.
        pass

    def next_track(self):
        print("point this at the next file in your queue")

    def previous_track(self):
        print("point this at the previous file in your queue")

    def on_stop(self):
        self.sound.stop()
        self.sound.unload()
        self.notification.release()


if __name__ == "__main__":
    MyApp().run()

Two ready-to-run variants ship inside the package:

android_notify/media/music/examples/simple_example.py - load + play only.
android_notify/media/music/examples/example_1.py - full player UI with loop toggle, end-of-track handling and next/previous wiring.

`SoundLoader` reference

SoundLoader.load(source) returns the singleton instance, so calling it again reuses the same player (call unload() first to release the old track).

sound.state - 'stop', 'play' or 'pause' (a Kivy ObjectProperty, so sound.bind(state=...) works).
sound.loop - when True, the track restarts from 0 after finishing.
sound.length - duration in seconds (once loaded).
sound.play() / sound.pause() / sound.stop() - control playback.
sound.seek(seconds) - seek to a position.
sound.get_pos() - current position in seconds.
sound.unload() - release the MediaPlayer.
Events: on_load, on_play, on_pause, on_stop, on_seek, on_complete.