Unifying the Now Playing Source of Truth

When the screen is off or the user has switched to another app, the lock screen media controls are the primary interface for playback. If that state diverges from what the app holds internally, the actual playback status becomes unreliable on return. The root issue was that the mini player, lock screen remote controls, and reels playback each reflected a different state.

The scope of this work was not individual screen fixes but the overall architecture governing how playback state is read. The current audio and video source, and what Now Playing points to, were realigned so all entry points reference the same state. Video loop transitions and the initial splash-to-onboarding flow were brought into the same alignment. Content visibility conditions were also standardized so the same content appears consistently regardless of entry point.

These inconsistencies do not surface in feature checklists, but they directly degrade playback reliability. In flows where continuity matters — sleep routines, alarms — state mismatches translate into failures at critical moments. The goal was to ensure a consistent playback state regardless of which surface the user interacts with.