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Brainwaves

Keeping PinePhone Awake With Podcasts

Lately, I experimented with listening to podcasts on my PinePhone. The idea was to listen to some interesting topics while I’m on a walk, returning home. As you’d expect, nothing “just works” on a Linux phone.

I set up an automated download process via podget so that I can listen even with no network access. I got a pair of Bluetooth headphones to avoid fighting with headphone cords and to make this easy and convenient (as much as using a Linux phone can be). I picked up pragha as my new dedicated podcast player (‘P’ as in ‘Podcasts’!). The player even supported MPRIS2 via a plugin, so everything was great. Well, apart from my phone auto-suspending while the player was running.

One day later, I was halfway into creating a sleep-inhibit plugin for the pragha player. And then I found out there is an even better solution: sleep-inhibitor. This is a system service that monitors the audio output and if there is some sound playing through ALSA, it keeps the system from suspending. Just what I needed!

The service is even better than a player plugin, since this solution is generic. I also had a similar problem with the VLC player. And seeing this VLC ticket, I wasn’t the only one. Actually, this ticket brought me to the sleep-inhibitor, while researching ways to inhibit the system suspend.

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