Just in case, guru meditation error occurs you are supposed to scroll down a little, click on
COPY FORMATTED REPORT button and paste it in the logs section of this GitHub issue. However, the steps how to reproduce the bug are required to be identified. Could you give us more information on how the error occurred while using the app?

I was driving and not using NewPipe at all. Since I needed to get to my destination on time I did not bother to copy the error log. No matter what the content of the stack trace might be, NewPipe should not ever steal focus like this.

Basically, if the app is not in the foreground, it should simply generate an error notification, instead of a full-screen one. I think that's the most straightforward solution, @Stypox?

A notification could be reasonable to cover the use case where someone needs to know that NewPipe is no longer running in the background. Ideally, DND mode would suppress that notification as well: in my case, I did not care at all what was going on with NewPipe at that time, which made the focus-stealing especially heavy-handed and frustrating.

It's not clear how this is replicated. The error will display when NewPipe is completely closed and hasn't been operating. First, fix the issue of the app stealing focus to display errors, second we can go through and determine what the issues actually are.

I think that's the most straightforward solution, @Stypox?

Yes, although I am not sure there is a simple way to distinguish whether the app was in foreground or not AFTER it has crashed.

Is that place the point of intervention? I was thinking that the moment the app goes into the background (which I think you can query programmatically?), you could tell the app to send all potential full screen error reports as error notifications instead.

I know a way to reproduce this problem.

Step 1:
Have NewPipe in background without playing any video (not just paused)

Step 3:
Press the play button on the Bluetooth headphones (by accident or not)

Step 4:
Wait a while, it really takes some time

Step 5:
NewPipe will crash and steal the focus from which ever app was open to show guru meditation

The core of the issue is NewPipe popping up with a full screen crash report while the app isn't in the foreground. For me this usually happens hours or even days after I last opened the app, and often repeatedly until I go and kill NewPipe manually. Most users won't care enough or have the skills to report it properly, making the unprompted focus-stealing pop-up solely a major nuisance.

Step 3: Press the play button on the Bluetooth headphones (by accident or not)

Another annoying thing (though less annoying than the crash jumpscare) is that the button press gets stolen even if there was an eligible background media app that was used more recently. You have to open that app and resume playback manually.

That's new. Some versions ago this used to be a workaround for another bug where headphones or Bluetooth would cause the last media app to resume, and if that happened to be Newpipe it would show an empty notification. Making sure another media app was the last one opened was the way to bypass the bug.

I have created a temporary fork that has guru code commented out. Branches off of dev branch. Download the apk from releases page. https://github.com/amokfa/NewPipe/releases/tag/v1.0.0

I'm experiencing this same issue on Android 14 (happened on Android 13 too) and have been for many months now. I'll try to remember to attach a log to this ticket next time. I find it difficult since it's usually when I'm driving. I wonder if it has to do with Google Maps or Waze since it never happens with OSM or OrganicMaps for me...

I use OSMAND and it happens frequently. This repro seems to be accurate.

I'll try to remember to attach a log to this ticket next time.

What log are you talking about? adb logcat? Otherwise it doesn't matter what specific crash report Newpipe generates. The idea is to redirect them all to an error notification.