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Feature Request: Music Control for 3rd Party Apps on iOS

Former Member over 9 years ago

(I posted this on the vivoactive HR forum and was told to post it here instead.)

I just got a vivoactive HR for my birthday, and I've been enjoying it so far.

I was tempted to get a Fitbit Surge because its music control can control 3rd party apps, whereas vivoactive HR can't.
But the features provided by vivoactive HR outweigh this drawback, so I chose vivoactive HR.

The fact that the music control can only control the default iOS music player is baffling to me.
I have multiple Bluetooth headsets and speakers that can control 3rd party music apps on iOS, so this can definitely be done.

I am a software engineer myself, although not an expert in Bluetooth communication, but I believe this is just a matter of sending the correct commands through Bluetooth to the phone that would trigger the 3rd party apps' playback actions.

Looks like sending playback commands using the AVRCP profile would do the trick.
https://developer.bluetooth.org/TechnologyOverview/Pages/AVRCP.aspx
https://searchcode.com/codesearch/view/13977666

Please, Garmin, have some engineers look into it.
This is the only missing feature that would make my vivoactive HR perfect for me.

0 lakaw over 8 years ago

I'm on the fence on this one...
On one hand, it would be nice to have music controls for the last active music player on iOS, but it seems just as easy to use my BT headphones for music player control. Button pushes, without looking at the screen. No exiting the activity screen and scrolling to the music control widget...

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

I'm on the fence on this one...
On one hand, it would be nice to have music controls for the last active music player on iOS, but it seems just as easy to use my BT headphones for music player control. Button pushes, without looking at the screen. No exiting the activity screen and scrolling to the music control widget...

Good point. Using the music control BT headphones doesn't require leaving the activity screen, which is nice and quicker.

Being able to control 3rd party music apps via the music control widget, though, would make the behavior consistent with most other BT devices with music controls. I haven't seen any other BT device with music controls that only control the default music app but not 3rd party music apps. It just seems to me that it's more intuitive to have the music control widget control whatever music app is currently running, rather than potentially starting a song from the default music app on top of a 3rd party music app that is currently playing.