Stopping/Pausing when a player is idle results in an error

[rccoleman]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

2.8.0.dev2026032204

How is the MA server installed?

Docker Container

Mandatory: Carefully read the Troubleshooting FAQ and confirm that

• I have examined the logs and tried to resolve this issue
• I have fixed any errors or warnings in the logs that relate to tags
• I am not running MA across a VPN, VLAN, subnet, behind a firewall, or using local SSL or have any other complex network setup
• I am not using or have disabled tools such as AdGuard, Pi-hole or pfSense and retested
• I have checked my network setup to ensure mDNS/multicast is not being blocked
• I have reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions
• I have reviewed the applicable player or music provider documentation
• I have reviewed the MA Status Page
• I have tried restarting MA and rebooting the host

As Applicable: Carefully read the Troubleshooting FAQ and confirm that

• If using HA, I have confirmed the internal URL is set correctly
• I have tried a wired connection for issues related to interrupted or poor playback quality
• If the problem relates to a device then I have checked the device settings
• If it is a frontend issue, I have tried a different widely used browser
• For voice problems, I have sought help elsewhere before returning here
• For playback problems, I have recycled power to the physical device

The problem

If I attempt to stop or pause a player from Home Assistant that's currently idle, I get this message, and it's relayed back to HA as an error, causing a currently running script to stop (unless I add continue_on_error: true). Seems like it goes down a strange path, rather than just returning (it's already stopped) or something else that doesn't result in a user-unfriendly error.

How to reproduce

1. Start playing to a VPE from MA (I use a TuneIn radio station)
2. Use this command to pause the audio, targeting the media_player entity exposed by MA to HA

    - action: media_player.media_pause
      target:
        entity_id: media_player.mbr_voice_pe_ma

3. Audio will pause and player will return to idle
4. Call that same service again and observe the following warning in MA:

2026-03-22 14:58:09.700 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.webserver] Handling command players/cmd/pause
2026-03-22 14:58:09.701 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_pause for player MBR Voice PE (by user rob)
2026-03-22 14:58:09.701 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Handling command cmd_pause for player MBR Voice PE (by user rob)
2026-03-22 14:58:09.758 DEBUG (MainThread) [music_assistant.players] Player/protocol MBR Voice PE does not support pause, using STOP instead
2026-03-22 14:58:09.759 WARNING (MainThread) [music_assistant.webserver] players/cmd/pause: stop needs to be implemented when PlayerFeature.PLAY_MEDIA is set

and this in HA:

2026-03-22 08:12:38.288 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.script.websocket_api_script] websocket_api script: Running websocket_api script
2026-03-22 08:12:38.288 INFO (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.script.websocket_api_script] websocket_api script: Executing step call service
2026-03-22 08:12:38.348 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.helpers.script.websocket_api_script] websocket_api script: Error executing script. Error for call_service at pos 1: stop needs to be implemented when PlayerFeature.PLAY_MEDIA is set
2026-03-22 08:12:38.349 ERROR (MainThread) [homeassistant.components.websocket_api.http.connection] [140560198478848] Error handling message: stop needs to be implemented when PlayerFeature.PLAY_MEDIA is set (home_assistant_error) Rob from 192.168.1.169 (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/146.0.0.0 Safari/537.36)

It only happens if I try to pause an idle media_player entity that was exposed from MA to HA. Pausing a native media_player in HA that's currently idle works fine (just does nothing). Further, it only seems to affect VPE/Sendspin players. If I do the same for a Sonos speaker pair exposed from MA to HA, the same service call does nothing if I try to pause an idle player (as I would expect).

Music Providers

Happens regardless of provider (tried TuneIn radio and local)

Player Providers

VPE/Sendspin

Full log output

musicassistant.log

Additional information

N/A

What version of Home Assistant Core (if used) are your running

2026.3.3

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Container

On what type of hardware are you running?

Generic x86-64 (e.g. Intel NUC)

Have you included ALL of the information specified in the Troubleshooting FAQ or explained why you cannot

• Yes

[MarvinSchenkel]

Thanks for reporting, should be fixed in the next 2.8.1 release. For now, you can change your HA script to use action: media_player.media_play_pause instead to prevent this from happening.

[MarvinSchenkel]

2.8.1 has been released with a fix. Could you please test and verify this?