yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
I can't see the images, but I think I just ran into that problem today as well. I think the color API is having trouble reading embedded or offline images. Have you tried finding one online? On the phone click the three dots for the more button and select "Find Match" or "Find Cover" if you already have a title and author. You should then be able to select an image online and it will get the correct colors. I've attached an example. Is this what you are seeing? The first image is the embedded cover art and the second one is one found online.

Hopefully I will find a fix for this bug and get back to you when I have an update. Thanks for letting me know! [Edit] I made a workaround to make these readable for now and pushed the update. Hopefully I will find something more reliable soon.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Yes, choosing an online cover worked! Thanks!

I also noticed another problem today, I'm still trying to diagnose exactly how it occurs though. What happens is that I'm listening to a book, then use the media button on my bluetooth device to try to pause. (This has happened both on my phone, with my car bluetooth pause, and on my watch, with my bluetooth headphones pause button.) Instead of pausing, it will start playing a second copy of the book, along with the first one (I think the second copy is starting at the beginning of the book again, it's hard to hear with both playing.) I then pause the second copy using the bluetooth button, and when I check my phone/watch, the notification now thinks the book isn't playing anymore (even though the first copy is still playing.) Using the notification play/pause continues to control the second copy of the book playing over the top of the first. Going back into the app directly and pausing, then playing again gets the notification synced up.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] xendula:
The same thing is happening to me on Wear OS. Would love if this could get fixed.

Joel, I’m consistently having issues with buttons not showing, or contrast not being there, even if I select higher contrast. I would really recommend just leaving the background black and making the buttons white, at least offering that up as the standard/simple theme under settings, at least for the watch, where eveything is smaller and closer together.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks for letting me know about the issues and for the suggestions. The latest update (0.5.3) should fix any Bluetooth issues, but let me know if you are still experiencing them. I also changed the high contrast option to black and white on Wear OS.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Hey,

Here is a method for downloading your Google Play Audio-books to play in any player. They should be DRM free so you could transfer them to your watch as well. Just put them in the Audiobooks folder.

https://the-digital-reader.com/2018...d-audiobooks-from-google-play-books-drm-free/
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Nice, I haven't had two copies of the book since that update. I have noticed a related problem though. When I pause the book via Bluetooth button while NavBooks is not in the foreground, the book pauses, but the timer continues to tick forward (and the icon remains a pause button instead of a play button.) The next time I go to play the book, it will be in a way farther place than when I left off.

BTW, when does the phone/watch syncing occur? I have been using my watch exclusively on vacation, but opened up the phone app today and found it was 5 hours behind my latest position.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks everyone for the feedback. I have been working hard to hopefully fix the Bluetooth issues that are occurring. :rolleyes:

The command to sync progress should occur every time you pause the book. It seems like Wear OS apps sometimes get out of sync and get the TARGET_NODE_NOT_CONNECTED error. Usually making sure both apps are updated and rebooting both devices fixes this for me, but I don't want to show an alert every time you get this error in case you are away from your phone so you won't be aware it is happening unless you are looking at the log.

If this continues to happen, please let me know. It is also necessary that the book on both devices has the same title and author which can be set manually.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Awesome, sounds good. I also noticed sometimes the bluetooth play/pause button fails to respond at all, though I can't be sure that was with your latest update, I'll continue to monitor and report if I have any issues.

The syncing does seem to be working, knowing when it syncs helps me to manually get them to sync up. I think my issue is that I don't wear my watch all the time, only to go out exercising. So, when I use the watch, I'm away from my phone when I pause, and when I use my phone, I'm away from my watch when I pause. Maybe there is a watch connected event it could also sync on, such that when I come back into range it syncs up?
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Well, been having some more issues with the sync. I have my phone and watch sitting right next to eachother sometimes, and am pausing and playing one a bunch, with still no sync occurring.

I've also noticed that the current time count and wrong play/pause icon issue (timer elapsing while book paused, or timer not elapsing while book playing) can occur whether or not the bluetooth play/pause button is used.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I haven't gotten sync between my phone and watch to work for the past week or more now. I verify I'm connected via bluetooth, then hit play and pause a bunch of times, but the position never updates on the other device.

I'm also having trouble manually moving the play position on the other device. Neither scrolling the bar, nor the skip buttons were working for a while, after the latest release, the skip buttons work again, but if I scroll to a new time on the bar, it doesn't change playback, and quickly reverts to where it was before.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Hey All,

The latest update changes the way background syncing works and should automatically save and sync progress every minute with a different type of protocol. Hopefully this makes it more reliable.

I'm still trying to pinpoint the Bluetooth issue. Has anyone had problems playing an audio book that is one file? I suspect it has something to do with file switching not working correctly, but haven't been able to fix it yet. I'm a bit swamped right now so thanks for the patience!
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] xendula:
Thank you, Joel. I know I am commenting late on this, but the b/w is a huge usability improvement for me :)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Hate to report it, but I still haven't had a successful sync on this version. It has also caused frequent crashes, when playing, pausing, or seeking. If there is any more specific info I can give to help, let me know. It's hard to figure out under exactly what conditions I have problems, because I hardly get to test before updating to a new version you release. ;)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Sometimes phone and watch apps themselves have trouble connecting. I'm not sure why this happens. Usually the logs show "TARGET_NODE_NOT_CONNECTED" even if you are still paired with Bluetooth. Rebooting both devices usually fixes this for me. I could always look at a bug report if you take one directly after a crash. I believe you can do this with developer options on the watch or through the Wear OS app.

Glad you are enjoying the high contrast option Xendula!

-Joel
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I have had 0 successful syncs in the past few weeks, and I've been rebooting both devices and testing explicitly quite a bit. Where can I find the log files?
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
https://support.google.com/wearos/thread/24110?hl=en

Here's some instructions. Please don't post your logs publicly on the forums as this might reveal personal information. If you want to PM or email me, I'd be happy to take a look to see if I can figure out what's wrong.

Thanks!

-Joel
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Sent you an initial crash log, will get some more info tonight when I'm back with my watch.

As for syncing issue, I'm not seeing anything related to that in my logs. Nothing like the "TARGET_NODE_NOT_CONNECTED" error you mentioned. I was reading up a bit and was wondering if the DataClient api was appropriate for the syncing? It seems to indicate it works even when the nodes aren't connected, and will automatically sync when the node becomes connected next. https://developers.google.com/android/reference/com/google/android/gms/wearable/DataClient
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
I am using the Wearable Data Client with NavBooks and am not experiencing problems on my end. So I'm not sure what's causing the issue. I will look at your logs and see if I can find the problem. Thanks!

-Joel

[Edit] Should be fixed now. Seems it would crash when trying to sync if the title or author of the book were not set. Thanks!
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Okay, the crashes seem to be fixed, nice! I'm still having trouble syncing though. I just investigated a little closer and it looks like my title/author might not be set exactly the same between my phone/watch. I'm confused though, as I copied the exact same folder to both devices. Are the 2 different versions of the app using different methods to detect the title/author? Having trouble getting them to match exactly because typing on my watch is a nightmare. I'll keep trying.

EDIT: Tried a bit more to get title/author in sync between the devices manually. It seems on my watch if I set an author, then exit and re-open the app the author is gone again. (And I still haven't gotten it to sync at all even right after I set title/author to match exactly manually.)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Most of the code like book loading is shared between apps. I did forget to update the wear app to fix the bug with book information not being saved. This might have happened if the book was currently playing since two instances of the book would have existed and the overwrote one another. The latest should fix that. For now, make sure you make any changes before you start playing the book. You could try using "Find Match" to make sure the information matches up correctly instead.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Awesome, after using 'find match' I am finally syncing between my devices. Still confusing why the same books ended up with different title/authors on both my devices. Maybe something to do with the phone having a sync directory for all the books, and the watch importing a single book at a time manually? Thanks for working through it with me.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I've been having a really weird bug the past couple of mornings: The alarm clock on my phone goes off, I hit snooze. The act of hitting snooze causes NavBooks to start playing on my watch in the other room. It doesn't happen on subsequent snoozes, just the first time I press it on the alarm.

Sync between devices has still been really spotty for me too, it works maybe 1 out of 5 times I switch devices, and I normally end up manually scrubbing to the right spot when it doesn't, because I can't figure out how to force it to sync.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
I am relying on the Wear OS data transfer to update progress. I do set the request to urgent before sending it. This is supposed to sync the data as soon as possible, but performance can still be slow especially if you are just getting back from somewhere without your phone. You should not need to force an update since the watch now sends one every minute that the book is playing and whenever you play or pause the book.

For instance, I got back from a run today and the book had not synced up after about 5 minutes. About an hour later I checked and it had. Using the message client before is more instant, but this proved more unreliable because it would not sync progress at all if the devices were not connected. I don't think there is a more reliable way using the Wear OS data client or message client. Apps like Google Fit sometimes take 30 minutes to sync up a run.

As for the weird alarm bug, I guess I would have to know more about your setup. What alarm app are you using? Does it play music? I'm wondering if it is sending a play/pause signal. I will sometimes experience this where I pause a book with Bluetooth and then Music from another app starts playing at the same time.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Okay. I have a big update that will hopefully solve the syncing problem. I basically implemented Google Fit's solution in their new app where a watch icon is at the top. It will show a syncing animation when the app starts. If the sync was successful, it will change to a checkbox. If not, it will change to an X. You can tap the watch icon at any time to force a refresh.

You can view an example here:

http://turndapage.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/device-2018-08-24-144753.mp4

The Wear OS app will show a syncing indicator at the top when it opens. If it gets a sync from the phone, it will disappear. If not, you should get a toast message letting you know it wasn't able to get progress from the phone.

Hope this fixes any problems!

-Joel
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Oh, this seems awesome. I gave it a quick test with good results, I'll do some more real life testing over the next few days. Thanks for continuing to work on this!

Another issue I've been noticing: Sometimes when I click on the playing book notification on my phone, it pulls up navbooks, but the now playing screen doesn't have the currently playing book details. It's a generic now playing screen that just says "title" and "author". If I back out to the book list and click the book again there is a short skip then I get the proper now playing screen.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks for letting me know! That should now be fixed.

I also fixed a bug where filenames with "!" in them were not being read. I know I had a hard time figuring this bug out and some users where having trouble with it.

[Edit] Make sure you're on 0.6.7 as this has the fix.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Man, still having trouble with the sync. It seems to sync better from my watch to my phone than the other way around. I make sure to hit the sync button on the phone before checking my watch, which always results in a check mark. The watch however pops up the 'sync failed' message every time I open it, and doesn't seem to pick up my current place. Worse yet, the watch's location then sometimes syncs back to my phone, meaning I've lost my current place on both devices.

EDIT: I accidentally deleted some files on one of my devices while troubleshooting, and had to remove and re-add on both devices. Sync seems to be working... differently now, though I hesitate to say better yet (the sync error message has gone away on the watch though) until I test further. I wish I had more concrete info, but it seems I have a different problem every time I try.

Another maybe unrelated problem I'll mention again: It seems that sometimes the book continues to 'play' in the background, (even though I paused it and there is no sound coming out,) such that when I go back to the device, it is much farther than when I left it.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
One possible solution I am trying in the latest update is to only sync progress if it is farther along than the other device. This way it will never be reset to zero or an earlier position if the other device syncs first. Does this sound like it would work? Please give it a try and let me know if the experience is better.

I'm afraid some sync issues are just part of the Wear OS platform at the moment. For example, Google fit often has a lot of trouble syncing for me. About the 10th try worked this morning and this is one of Google's apps.

I'm not saying I'm giving up, just that data transfer with Wear OS does fail. Some steps that help me:

Try turning off bluetooth or WiFi to force a different method

Reboot both devices

Close out both apps and start them both again

Could I have more information about the bug where progress seems to sync in the background? Does it only happen on a certain device? Do you have the app open on the device (not just using the notification). Where do you pause from? (Bluetooth, the notification, the app). This information should help my try to reproduce the issue. Thanks!
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I just caught my watch with the continuing to play bug. I paused with my bluetooth headphones button, then opened the app to check where I was in the book in case the sync didn't work. There was nothing playing, but the main play/pause icon was still showing the pause symbol, and the time continued to tick away. When I clicked the pause icon, the book continued playing, and the icon remained a pause icon (i.e. it went back to normal, but I missed the few seconds of the book between when I paused it from my headphones and resumed it from the app.)

Still trying to investigate sync issue, I'm back to getting the "sync failure" every time I open watch app, and despite the phone reporting a check mark every time I hit the sync button, it never does sync.

---------- Post added at 07:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:04 PM ----------

I may have figured out at least some of the problems with my syncing. It seems that my phone (I'm not sure if the watch also does it) forgets the book match sometimes, causing it to no longer sync properly with the watch. After doing a 'find match' again on my phone, my progress from the watch synced back over.

Is there a way to remove the "sync folder" once I've set it? I'm wondering if that's what's resetting my book title sometimes and wanted to try to manually add the books again. I noticed one time that it added a second copy of the same book, one with the native title from the mp3s, and one with the title that I forced with 'find match'.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks so much for the information! I have changed the Bluetooth controls it might be a problem that I was only overriding the separate pause and play commands and not the pause/play command. Not sure, but hopefully this will fix it. Let me know if you see it again.

The re-syncing of books you already added seems like it might be the cause. For now, I added a checkbox in the phone app to disable automatic syncing in the settings. I will look into it more though.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks! That's a weird bug. I guess I still had syncing turned on for Overdrive and RBDigital apps so it would crash if you didn't have anything for it to do.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Nice, syncing has been working better. My watch still gives the 'sync failure' message every time I open the app, but it seems when I get the check mark in the phone app the sync works properly. (I do still have an issue with it getting an X repeatedly sometimes, but as you mentioned, it seems a similar problem in google fit, so I suspect it's unrelated to NavBooks.)

Unfortunately, the book continuing to play silently problem is still happening. I just make sure to open the app after I pause from my headphones and press play/pause a couple times to get a real pause.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Okay. Could I have some more details about it. Does this happen when the app is open on your device? How did you close the app? Did you swipe out of it or press the home button?
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I open the app on my watch, then leave it running in the background (press the home button, don't swipe out.)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks. That helps. I was able to reproduce the bug and correct it.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I've had some more problems recently:

- Just when I thought sync was being reliable, it totally stopped working. (Despite getting a checkmark in the phone app every time I pushed it.) Restarted both of my devices to try to fix, and my phone lost my place completely and started the book over. (sync is still not working after that restart either)

- Sometimes the bluetooth play/pause button fails to do anything.

- Sometimes advancing/rewinding with the skip forward back buttons (the small ones, not the full track ones,) moves my playback several hours to a chapter border (I assume a file border), rather than the desired 30s/60s. (I have also seen seeking with the seek bar lock on to chapter borders as well.)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Most of these issue are probably due to me adding gapless playback and the app switching back and forth between two files. I also had it set that if the player was not prepared yet, it would default the position to 0. This might have been what was resetting the progress.

Do you have more than one watch? I am wondering if this is causing sync issues.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Just one watch, one phone.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Syncing is still a bit back and forth for me. Sometimes it's already ready on my other device, sometimes it won't sync no matter how many checkmarks I've gotten from the manual sync.

Separate issues I've been noticing though:

- Sometimes the skip forward/back buttons don't respond in the app (both on phone and watch.) The play/pause button continues to work, but I can't skip forward or back. Exiting and re-opening the app fixes this.

- A couple times, my bluetooth buttons have failed to respond at all. No pause/play, no skipping forward back. This has happened much more rarely, don't have much extra debug info about it.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks for the patience on this. I believe I found a breakthrough. I found a nice app that shows all the active media sessions on a phone. I could see that there were actually multiple media sessions for NavBooks being created. I believe this would happen every time a new book was started or the service had been closed while paused for about a minute by Android. This would result in the old media session still being the controller which would cause the problems with Bluetooth and other controls not working. I believe this is why progress would suddenly be hours ahead after playback had been stopped because the automatic save would still be running and progress would still be going.

I really hope the latest update helps. I will be testing it over the next few days to see if I still encounter the issue.

-Joel
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
I think this is working. A lot of my random weirdness problems have now gone away. Syncing is still occasionally a problem, but that too seems to be working a much greater percentage of the time.

0.8.2 however seems to crash on load, even after clearing my storage and cache

I like that android auto is integrated now, that was one of my wishlist features. :) Sometimes however when I try to use it in Auto mode, there is just spinning circle which never goes away. (I use android auto from my phone, don't have a compatible head unit.)
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] joelphilippage:
Thanks for letting me know about the crash. Not sure how the IDE didn't catch this on the build but should be good in the latest update. I've just got the basics for Android Auto right now, but will try testing more in the near future.
[Wear OS Software and Hacking General] gazpachoking:
Thanks. Crash on load is fixed, but it seems now that when adding a book it says 'no files found in this directory'