Attempt to fix ExoPlayer crash

[sztomek]

Description

Noticed this crash in 8.13-rc-1, see ticket for details.

Claude's investigation:
ExoPlayer.seekTo() internally accesses playbackInfo.periodId.periodUid and passes it to PlaylistTimeline.getPeriodByUid(), which casts it to Pair. If the UID is a plain Object (not yet wrapped in a Pair by the PlaylistTimeline), it throws ClassCastException.
Why it happens: SimplePlayer.prepare() calls player.setMediaSource(source) then player.prepare(). The prepare() call is asynchronous — it kicks off work on ExoPlayer's internal playback thread. But our code immediately sets prepared = true and proceeds to playIfAllowed(), which calls player.seekTo(). At this point, ExoPlayer's internal playbackInfo may not yet have consistent period UIDs — the internal thread hasn't finished processing, and the masking state between the application thread and the playback thread can be momentarily inconsistent. We're seeking before the player's timeline is actually ready for timeline-dependent operations.

How the fix works:

1. Deferred seek: Before seeking, we check player.playbackState. If it's STATE_READY or STATE_BUFFERING, the timeline is initialized and seeking is safe. If it's still STATE_IDLE (the state right after prepare() is called but before the internal thread has processed it), we register a one-shot listener and seek
   when the player transitions to BUFFERING/READY. This respects Media3's async prepare contract.
2. Try-catch safety net: Even with the deferred seek, there may be other code paths where a seek reaches the ExoPlayer at a bad time (e.g., a Bluetooth controller sending a seek command through the MediaSession during player initialization). The ClassCastException catch prevents those from crashing.

UPDATE
after a discussion with @geekygecko we have decided not to include this fix in 8.13 as it only affected 2 users in the beta cycle. i will change target to main and milestone to 8.14

Fixes PCDROID-591 https://linear.app/a8c/issue/PCDROID-591/attempt-to-fix-classcastexception-crash-of-exoplayer

Testing Instructions

I was not able to reproduce it :(
Just smoke test playback, seeking, resuming from previous position on cold app start.

Checklist

• If this is a user-facing change, I have added an entry in CHANGELOG.md
• Ensure the linter passes (./gradlew spotlessApply to automatically apply formatting/linting)
• I have considered whether it makes sense to add tests for my changes
• All strings that need to be localized are in modules/services/localization/src/main/res/values/strings.xml
• Any jetpack compose components I added or changed are covered by compose previews
• I have updated (or requested that someone edit) the spreadsheet to reflect any new or changed analytics.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR attempts to prevent a Media3/ExoPlayer ClassCastException crash during seekTo() by deferring seeks until the player’s timeline is initialized (READY/BUFFERING) and adding a defensive try/catch around seekTo().

Changes:

• Defer seeks when ExoPlayer is still in STATE_IDLE, performing the seek once playback reaches STATE_BUFFERING/STATE_READY.
• Add a ClassCastException catch around ExoPlayer.seekTo() to avoid crashing on the reported Media3 timeline race.

[geekygecko]

Could there be an issue if the user changes episodes before isReadyForSeek is true?

[sztomek]

When the user changes episodes, handleStop() calls player.stop() which synchronously transitions the player to STATE_IDLE. The listener catches STATE_IDLE (line 148-149) and removes itself without performing the seek. This cleanup happens before release() is called, so the listener never fires a stale seek on the old player instance.
So in theory everything should be fine.

[sztomek]

as per or discussion, i made another change to only attach the listener when the player is idle 211872d

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 4 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

[wpmobilebot]

Version 8.14 has now entered code-freeze, so the milestone of this PR has been updated to 8.15.