Windows 10: Video keeps pausing on all websites and browsers. Spotify desktop also. Bluetooth is turned...

Title explains the issue.

:)

 

Videos on all media players and browsers keep unpausing immediately after I pause

Hello,

I am a Windows 10 user. Videos on all media players and browsers keep unpausing immediately after I pause. I will pause a video on spotify or youtube or netflix, and it immediately begins playing after a second of being paused.

When I have headphones plugged in and outputting to my speakers instead, I have to pause 5 times exactly before the video remains paused.

When I have multiple tabs open with paused videos, when one is paused / ad begins / or is closed, the subsequent tab videos immediately unpause.

When I have headphones not plugged in and outputting to my speakers instead, no matter how many times I pause, the video always keeps unpausing and playing.

My speakers are an Alexa.

I use Realtek drivers and Nahimic because of MSI Motherboard.

 

Videos on websites keep pausing themselves

This is a really bizarre issue that I started encountering a couple months ago. Videos on websites (Slack, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc) sometimes do not play correctly. Specifically, when I start playback, the video plays for a fraction of a second, and then pauses. The same exact behavior can be observed on multiple unrelated websites, and happens in every browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox), even in browsers that are newly installed.

I am seeing this problem on two separate machines (one laptop and one desktop), each running Windows 11, which is why I've posted this as a Windows 11 problem. I do *not* have issues on my Android phone and tablet playing the same videos. I also run a Linux VM on my desktop, and that VM is able to play videos correctly. The common thread for all my troubles seems to be Windows 11.

Both of my machines have plenty of CPU, disk space, memory, and Internet bandwidth. They can play 1080p videos in VLC just fine, and do everything else just fine, including high-powered gaming. But there seems to be a really nasty software bug in Windows that is blocking the correct playback of videos inside browsers.

Any ideas?

 

Pausing media in browser mutes all bluetooth audio

This is a bug in how Windows handles media sessions--it can be triggered by any browser. This has been reported and locked before:

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The workaround (described in the first link) is just to disable the media controls on your bluetooth device by turning off that feature in the browser that is playing media, or to disconnect and reconnect your bluetooth device after every pause. Which means the feature just doesn't work.

I'm not looking for another workaround here (it's known), I just want to contribute to the push for this to be escalated as the bug that it is.