Improve playback error handling and retry logic by SergioEstevao · Pull Request #4053 · Automattic/pocket-casts-ios

SergioEstevao · 2026-03-06T16:11:26Z

📘 Part of: # |
:---:

Fixes PCIOS-556

This PR improves error handling during playback in two ways:

Fix retry playback loop: Reset haveCalledPlayerLoad to false before retrying playback when a URL fails to load, so the player correctly reloads instead of skipping the load step.
Error detection on full screen player: Subscribe to playbackFailed notifications in NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController and add an updateError() method that reads and logs playback/download error details from the current episode.

To test

Open an episode that has a known bad/expired stream URL.
Observe that the player attempts to reload/retry instead of silently failing.
Open the full screen player during a playback error and verify the error details are logged.

Checklist

I have considered if this change warrants user-facing release notes and have added them to CHANGELOG.md if necessary.
I have considered adding unit tests for my changes.
I have updated (or requested that someone edit) the spreadsheet to reflect any new or changed analytics.

This is need to ensure that streaming playback can start again from zero.

dangermattic · 2026-03-06T16:13:19Z

	1 Warning
⚠️	View files have been modified, but no screenshot or video is included in the pull request. Consider adding some for clarity.

	1 Message
📖	This PR is still a Draft: some checks will be skipped.

Generated by 🚫 Danger

Copilot

Pull request overview

This PR improves playback failure recovery and surfaces playback/download error details in the full-screen Now Playing UI to aid debugging.

Changes:

Reset haveCalledPlayerLoad before attempting a playback retry after a URL-load failure.
Subscribe the full-screen player to playbackFailed notifications.
Add updateError() to read and log playback/download error details from the current episode.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

File	Description
podcasts/PlaybackManager.swift	Adjusts retry behavior after stream URL load failure by resetting internal “player loaded” state.
podcasts/NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController+Update.swift	Hooks full-screen Now Playing updates into playback failure events and logs stored error details.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (1)

podcasts/PlaybackManager.swift:2278

urlFailedToLoad runs inside an unstructured Task, and ServerPodcastManager.updatePodcastIfRequired invokes its completion on subscribeQueue (background). This means haveCalledPlayerLoad and load(episode:autoPlay:...) are being touched off the main thread, which can race with playback state and UI-driven calls into PlaybackManager. Consider hopping to MainActor (or a dedicated serial queue) before mutating PlaybackManager state and before calling load.

            haveCalledPlayerLoad = false
            FileLog.shared.addMessage("PlaybackManager: URL failed to load, trying to update episode and playing again")
            lastRetryEpisodeUuid = episodeUuid

            ServerPodcastManager.shared.updatePodcastIfRequired(podcast: podcast) { [weak self] wasUpdated in

Copilot · 2026-03-06T16:17:22Z

podcasts/NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController+Update.swift

        updateChapterInfo()
        updateChapterProgress()
        updateColors()
+        updateError()


Constants.Notifications.playbackFailed is wired to update(), and update() now calls updateError(). This can cause the same error details to be logged repeatedly on unrelated update triggers (play/pause, chapter updates, foreground, etc.) and does a full UI refresh on playback-failed events. Consider observing playbackFailed with a dedicated handler that only invokes updateError() (and/or remove updateError() from the general update() path).

Suggested change

updateError()

Copilot · 2026-03-06T16:17:22Z

podcasts/NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController+Update.swift

+        var errorMessage = ""
+        if let playbackError = playingEpisode.playbackErrorDetails {
+            errorMessage = playbackError
+        }
+        if !errorMessage.isEmpty {
+            print("Error: \(errorMessage)")
+        }
+
+        if let downloadError = playingEpisode.downloadErrorDetails {
+            print("Error: \(downloadError)")


updateError() uses print(...) for logging. In this codebase, playback-related logging appears to go through FileLog.shared.addMessage, and print can be noisy in production and hard to collect from real devices. Consider switching to the existing logging facility and include context (episode UUID/title, whether it’s playback vs download) to make the log actionable.

Suggested change

var errorMessage = ""

if let playbackError = playingEpisode.playbackErrorDetails {

errorMessage = playbackError

}

if !errorMessage.isEmpty {

print("Error: \(errorMessage)")

}

if let downloadError = playingEpisode.downloadErrorDetails {

print("Error: \(downloadError)")

let episodeTitle = playingEpisode.displayableTitle()

if let playbackError = playingEpisode.playbackErrorDetails, !playbackError.isEmpty {

FileLog.shared.addMessage("Playback error for episode '\(episodeTitle)': \(playbackError)")

}

if let downloadError = playingEpisode.downloadErrorDetails, !downloadError.isEmpty {

FileLog.shared.addMessage("Download error for episode '\(episodeTitle)': \(downloadError)")

Copilot

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 3 out of 3 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

podcasts/NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController+Update.swift

+    func updateError() {
+        guard let playingEpisode = PlaybackManager.shared.currentEpisode() else { return }
+        var errorMessage = ""
+        if let playbackError = playingEpisode.playbackErrorDetails {
+            errorMessage = playbackError
+        }
+        if !errorMessage.isEmpty {
+            print("Error: \(errorMessage)")
+        }
+
+        if let downloadError = playingEpisode.downloadErrorDetails {
+            print("Error: \(downloadError)")
+        }


podcasts/NowPlayingPlayerItemViewController.xib

+                <view contentMode="scaleToFill" translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints="NO" id="Owh-jf-YTg" userLabel="Error View">
+                    <rect key="frame" x="0.0" y="796" width="414" height="100"/>
+                    <subviews>
+                        <label opaque="NO" userInteractionEnabled="NO" contentMode="left" horizontalHuggingPriority="251" verticalHuggingPriority="251" text="Error Message" textAlignment="center" lineBreakMode="tailTruncation" baselineAdjustment="alignBaselines" adjustsFontForContentSizeCategory="YES" adjustsFontSizeToFit="NO" translatesAutoresizingMaskIntoConstraints="NO" id="96b-yr-mZE">
+                            <rect key="frame" x="8" y="8" width="398" height="16"/>
+                            <fontDescription key="fontDescription" style="UICTFontTextStyleBody"/>
+                            <nil key="textColor"/>


SergioEstevao added 2 commits March 6, 2026 16:01

Add error detection and log on full screen player.

40684b7

Force a reload of player when retrying playback

d824b3e

This is need to ensure that streaming playback can start again from zero.

SergioEstevao requested a review from a team as a code owner March 6, 2026 16:11

SergioEstevao requested review from bjtitus and Copilot and removed request for a team March 6, 2026 16:11

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of SergioEstevao March 6, 2026 16:11 View session

SergioEstevao added this to the 8.8 milestone Mar 6, 2026

SergioEstevao added the Player label Mar 6, 2026

SergioEstevao marked this pull request as draft March 6, 2026 16:13

Copilot AI reviewed Mar 6, 2026

View reviewed changes

SergioEstevao added 3 commits March 13, 2026 11:39

Compile missing string

48e4e25

Merge branch 'trunk' into sergio/improve_error_handling

a6817a9

Add error view

feeebee

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings March 13, 2026 17:22

Copilot started reviewing on behalf of SergioEstevao March 13, 2026 17:23 View session

Copilot AI reviewed Mar 13, 2026

View reviewed changes

Add containers and style them

1ceeca7

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Improve playback error handling and retry logic#4053

Improve playback error handling and retry logic#4053
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SergioEstevao commented Mar 6, 2026 •

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