How can I prevent an app from interrupting audio playback of some other app?

Question

I am using Duolingo to practice Japanese, and I'd be able to practice a lot more if I could actually do this while listening to music. Right now, when you get to the next question, it turns down the volume for all other apps, reads the question, and restores the volume again. This is annoying enough that it makes listening to music while practicing practically impossible for me.

Preferably I'd like to mute Duolingo altogether, but I'd settle for it not lowering the volume for other apps (NewPipe is what I usually use to listen to music, and which I want to keep playing at the same volume).

I saw this other question: how to have two applications play sound simultaneously?, from six years ago, which seems somewhat related, but which doesn't apply to NewPipe, and probably wouldn't apply anymore anyways, given the age of the question.

How can I achieve this? (I have a rooted phone, which might help, IDK).

Answer 1

You can set TAKE_AUDIO_FOCUS permission of that app to ignore:

appops set <PKG_NAME> TAKE_AUDIO_FOCUS ignore

Using Permission Manager X (PMX) this can be done conveniently for any app:

Disclosure: I'm the author of PMX.

Answer 2

If you have a Samsung phone then Sound Assistant has a Multi Sound option that can allow specific applications to be able to play audio at the same time as other applications.

Once you toggle it on then you will be able to select apps that can play audio regardless of whether another application is playing.

Answer 3

It's not the best solution but if you use YouTube music, y-music (which integrates with youtube music) has the option to ignore audio focus and so can play uninterrupted in the background with duolingo, which worked really well for me :)