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Pixelated artwork in notification and lock screen (1024x1024 PNG) #3134
Description
Version
Media3 1.9.2
More version details
I'm experiencing an issue where the artwork displayed in the media notification and on the lock screen appears heavily pixelated / blurry, even though the source image is high quality.
The image used is a 1024x1024 PNG, so resolution should be sufficient.
The issue has been specifically observed on Samsung devices.
Image format: PNG
Resolution: 1024x1024
I also tried:
- Passing artwork as a ByteArray
- Converting the image locally to WebP from ByteArray
- Bump library to 1.10.0-rc02
The issue persists in all cases
internal fun MyAudio.mapToMediaItem(): MediaItem {
return MediaItem.Builder()
.setUri(audioEndpoint)
.setMediaId(id.toString())
.setMediaMetadata(
MediaMetadata.Builder()
.setArtworkUri(artworkUrl?.toUri())
.setTitle("Title")
.setDescription("Description")
.build()
)
.build()
}
Devices that reproduce the issue
Samsung S24
Samsung A54
Devices that do not reproduce the issue
Motorola Edge 30 Pro
Pixel 7 Pro
Reproducible in the demo app?
Yes
Reproduction steps
Create a MediaItem with artwork using MediaMetadata.setArtworkUri
Provide a high-resolution image (1024x1024 PNG)
Start playback using Media3 session/player
Observe notification and lock screen artwork
Expected result
Artwork should be displayed in good quality (properly scaled, no visible pixelation).
Actual result
Artwork appears pixelated in:
Media notification
Lock screen media controls
Media
Bug Report
- You will email the zip file produced by
adb bugreportto android-media-github@google.com after filing this issue.
Activity
AleksanderMielczarek commentedon Mar 24, 2026
Seems like downgrade to 1.8.0 fix the issue.
icbaker commentedon Mar 24, 2026
The symptoms sound like a duplicate of #3084
nift4 commentedon Mar 24, 2026
@icbaker The fix for #3084 only changed code for SDK<31, while S24 have launched with Android T/U respectively. I think this a subtly different bug resulting from a Samsung customization.
joselynerodrigueztorres2-ai commentedon Apr 5, 2026
Exo?internal fun MyAudio.mapToMediaItem(): MediaItem {
return MediaItem.Builder()
.setUri(audioEndpoint)
.setMediaId(id.toString())
.setMediaMetadata(
MediaMetadata.Builder()
.setArtworkUri(artworkUrl?.toUri())
.setTitle("Title")
.setDescription("Description")
.build()
)
.build()
}
tonihei commentedon Jun 16, 2026
I was able to reproduce a slight blurriness if the provided artwork size is just a power-of-2 multiple above the system enforced size limit. As the current logic was only using the efficient subsampling logic during decoding, which may cause the Bitmap to be only half as large as it should be. From the screenshots above I can't 100% confirm this is the complete explanation for what you are seeing, but it's at least a likely explanation.
The relationship to these devices is probably the exact size limit configured in the system. On the Samsung S24 I tested, the limit was 480 pixels, so your 1024px artwork was scaled down by a factor of 4 to only 256 pixels.
We'll provide a fix that still uses the efficient subsampling for decoding itself, but then applies proper scaling to the exact size limit to prevent under shooting the limit significantly.
Fix double-downscaling of artwork in MediaSession.
chore(deps): bump media3 1.10.1 -> 1.11.0