I use Pandora on my Nexus 4 (Android 4.2, Jelly Bean) to listen to music on my way to work and on my way home. About a month ago they patched the Android client and kind of broke the "Are you still listening?" timeout.
Before this update, you could listen to Pandora for an hour or so before you were prompted with the "Are you still listening?" popup. However, after this update, the popup shows up even if the app has been loaded for a few hours. That means that when I play Pandora in the morning, and then leave it paused during the day, by the time I get in my car to go home, the very next song is going to trigger the "Are you still listening?" popup. Usually by that point I'm barreling down the highway and can't fumble with my phone. Not cool, guys.
There are a couple of ways to fix this. One is to force the app to quit when you know you're not going to listen for a while:
- Tap the button on the Home screen that takes you into the Apps view.
- Locate the Settings app and tap it.
- Under the "Device" category, tap "Apps"
- In the upper right, tap "Running"
- Find Pandora in the list and tap it
- Press the big "Stop" button
This will force Pandora to quit, and then when you load it later the "Are you still listening?" timeout will have reset.
The other trick I use whenever I've forgotten (or am too lazy) to quit Pandora before I'm going to leave it for a while:
- Load the Pandora interface
- When the track starts playing, tap the "P" icon in the top left to go back to your channels
- Pick a different channel (I only have one, so I pick Shuffle instead)
- Wait for the video ad to complete (usually mine bails out after 5 seconds or so, for whatever reason...)
- Tap the "P" again to go back to the track list
- Pick the first channel again
You'll immediately get the "Are you still listening?" popup. You can then say "YES DAMMIT I AM OMG" and then resume listening to Pandora until the dreaded timeout rears its ugly head again.
I was hoping they were going to fix this at some point, but it doesn't look like that's likely. It seems like a bug to me, but who knows, perhaps this is their latest attempt to milk us for upgrade revenue? I'd like to ask them: - "Are you still listening?"