Intermittent crash when playing audio attachment – FileNotFoundException in stream_cache

[raphaelaazevedo]

Describe the bug
We are experiencing an intermittent production crash related to audio playback using the Stream Chat Android Compose SDK.
The crash occurs when tapping on an audio message attachment. The SDK attempts to play a cached audio file, but the file no longer exists at the expected path inside cache/stream_cache.
This results in a FileNotFoundException thrown from MediaPlayer.setDataSource, which ultimately crashes the app.

Root exception

Caused by java.io.FileNotFoundException:
 /data/user/0/br.lgfelicio/cache/stream_cache/audio_recording_Wed Nov 19 16:51:17 GMT-03:00 2025.aac:
 open failed: ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Caused by:
android.system.ErrnoException: open failed: ENOENT (No such file or directory)

Relevant stack trace

android.media.MediaPlayer.setDataSource
io.getstream.chat.android.client.audio.NativeMediaPlayerImpl.setDataSource (NativeMediaPlayer.kt:414)
io.getstream.chat.android.client.audio.StreamMediaPlayer.setAudio (StreamAudioPlayer.kt:247)
io.getstream.chat.android.client.audio.StreamMediaPlayer.play (StreamAudioPlayer.kt:127)
io.getstream.chat.android.ui.common.feature.messages.list.AudioPlayerController.play (AudioPlayerController.kt:212)
io.getstream.chat.android.ui.common.feature.messages.list.AudioPlayerController.togglePlayback (AudioPlayerController.kt:90)
io.getstream.chat.android.compose.viewmodel.messages.AudioPlayerViewModel.playOrPause (AudioPlayerViewModel.kt:49)
io.getstream.chat.android.compose.ui.attachments.content.AudioRecordAttachmentContent

The crash is triggered from a click event inside AudioRecordAttachmentContent in Compose.
Observed behavior
The audio file path points to the stream_cache directory.

• The file does not exist at the time MediaPlayer.setDataSource() is called.
• The SDK does not seem to handle the missing file gracefully.
• The exception propagates and crashes the entire application.

Expected behavior
If the cached audio file is missing, the SDK should:
Either re-download the file before attempting playback
Or fail gracefully (e.g., emit an error state to the UI)

• But not crash the app

SDK version
6.23.0

App version
11.181.0 (production)

Platform

• Android
• Mostly reported on Android 14 (based on Crashlytics distribution)
• Various vendors (Samsung majority, also others)

To Reproduce
We were not able to reliably reproduce this locally.
Based on Crashlytics patterns, it seems to happen when:

1. Opening a channel containing audio attachments
2. Quickly tapping on audio messages
3. Potentially after cache cleanup by the system

This suggests a possible race condition between:

• Cache eviction / file cleanup
• And playback initialization

Additional context
This crash is intermittent but recurring in production.
It affects multiple users.
It appears to be specifically related to audio attachments recorded via Stream.

• The failure happens during MediaPlayer.setDataSource() before playback starts.

Screenshots

[VelikovPetar]

Hi @raphaelaazevedo,

Thank you for the detailed report, we will be taking a look at it as soon as possible.
I will post an update here as soon as we have concrete findings!

Best regards,
Petar

[VelikovPetar]

Hi @raphaelaazevedo,

We had a look at the issue and indeed, there is an edge case where such exception could occur. First to give you some context how this feature works:

1. The SDK will always try to play the recording by loading the remote upload URL(attachment.assetUrl) - which is generated after the recording is uploaded and the message is successfully sent. If the recording was successfully uploaded to the server, the SDK would never attempt to read the local recording file.
2. The SDK will try to play the local recording file only: before the file is uploaded (when the recording preview is shown in the MessageComposer (not sent yet)), or if the remote URL is not populated (before the recording upload is complete). Note that the second case, is almost impossible in the common scenarios, because the "Play" button is not visible in the MessageList during upload.

We were able to detect a scenario where something like this could happen:

• Cache gets evicted during the voice recording upload. The upload fails - but the message is still rendered in the MessageList (with an error indicator), and the play button is still clickable. In this case, since the upload wasn't successful and we don't have assetUrl, the SDK will attempt to read the local file. And since the local file (from the cache) was evicted, the exception would occur.

On the latest version of the SDK (6.32.3 at the moment), we have already made improvements in the audio playback logic (now using ExoPlayer instead of MediaPlayer) including improvements in the error handling. Failing to resolve the file in such scenario would no longer crash the app, such errors would be gracefully handled.

My suggestion would be to update the Stream Chat SDK version to the latest one, where you would get the benefits of the improved audio playback logic.

Best regards,
Petar