I am making a jailbroken iOS tweak and have a question. How can I stop all device audio while running from the background. Example: The user is playing Spotify and then clicks the power button on the device(turning off the screen and putting it to sleep) meanwhile Spotify is still playing music. At this point how can I stop stop all audio on the device(whether it's Spotify, default music app, Pandora, or whatever)? I have look into AVAudioSession and AVAudioPlayer but have not found a consistent reliable method to do this. I am testing this on a jailbroken iPhone5 running iOS7.0.4.
I am open to using AVAudioSession or AVAudioPlayer if it works consistently. I am also open to using something from a private framework to accomplish this. Thanks!
Thanks!
I figured it out, use this:
SBMediaController *mainMediaController = [%c(SBMediaController) sharedInstance];
[mainMediaController pause];
Related
I am building a iOS app with Ionic and Capacitor. I use AVFoundation inside a Capacitor plugin which provides a public method to play an audio file accessible at a remote URL. The basics work, the audio file is successfully played. Now I want to correctly handle interruptions and background audio. By background audio I mean start playing an audio file while the app is in the background and not continue playing it in the background when it was started in foreground before. To summarize, the app should behave the following way:
If another app (e.g. Spotify) is playing audio and my app wants to play audio, the other app should be interrupted and my app's audio should start playing without mixing.
If my app's audio is finished playing, the other app's audio should resume.
My app must be able to start playing audio without mixing when it is in the background.
I want to show a play/pause button and the audio title on the lockscreen and in the notification center.
I added the background mode audio capability. I use AVPlayer, AVAudioSession, MPNowPlayingInfoCenter and MPRemoteCommandCenter, followed best practices, especially regarding activation and deactivation of an audio session and interruption handling. I followed this question and this question. I tried several solutions, but never managed to achieve all of the above goals. What I found out so far is the following:
Goal 1. above is easy to achieve. Simply activate an audio session without mixing and start playing the audio.
After the audio of my app is finished, I deactivate the audio session. Unfortunately, I can only achieve goal 2. above if I don't use remote commands nor notification info. This means, my app then has no audio control UI on the lockscreen nor in the notification center. Somehow the configurations of MPNowPlayingInfoCenter and MPRemoteCommandCenter seem to affect the interruption behavior. As far as I could see, Apple documentation doesn't say anything about this.
I only manage to start playing audio in the background when setting the option .mixWithOthers. Apple documentation doesn't say anything about this, either.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Rony
I checked Google and here as well. Maybe the question hasn't been asked yet or I am just asking it in a very weird way. There are certain apps, one that I've noticed in particular is Snapchat, where when the app opens, the music continues to play even with the camera and even while taking a picture with silent switch turn on or off. The camera sound goes off as well.
So for an example, right now I am listening to music through Soundcloud and when I open my app, the music stops playing, but I can press play and continue to play music while using my app once I put this line of code in my appWillEnterForeground method: [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient error:nil];
When I do this in Snapchat, the music continues to play. Even when I take a video too!
How?
There has to be some code that uses the AV system for audio in the way. Check for a call like
[session addInput:audioDeviceInput];
where session is an instance of AVCaptureSession.
To demonstrate and research, you can take the Apple example AVCam (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/AVCam/Introduction/Intro.html) and run it from XCode. When music is playing, it will stop playing when the AVCam app starts.
Now open the source file AVCam/AVCamViewController.m and search for the line
[session addInput:audioDeviceInput];
When you delete this line or comment it out, music will continue to play when you run the app.
Off course, there may be other statements that block the sound playing in your app. Check calls to methods from AV objects and look especially for audio input and output.
Phonegap media play method has a magic option playAudioWhenScreenIsLocked = false that does good job:
Prevents app music from playing when app is in background;
Makes app music obey the hardware "mute" button: without this option your app will ignore if user device is muted and play sound anyway.
But there is third hidden magic in this option. It stops current playing song from native Music app. Most of all it's annoying when I want to play short single sound.
Actually I would like to implement this scenario:
Music: Check if system music is playing on the app start. If it is not, play my app music, otherwise let user enjoy his own media.
Sound FX: Just play my little sound once and don't spoil anything.
And never play anything in background and when device is muted! Even if system Music app can let itself do so.
Has anyone managed to do something similar?
Thank you.
Ended up using https://github.com/floatinghotpot/cordova-plugin-nativeaudio (https://build.phonegap.com/plugins/2291)
Be aware: simple sound effects are not working in Simulator.
I have done several apps with buzztouch for Iphone and Ipads, here is a free one as an example :
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/lr-basics-free-edition/id497563707?mt=8
I do not know code very much, I have very little basics that is why I designed my app using Buzztouch, which by the way is amazing !
The only one problem that I have is that the default behavior when you play a video (which was most of my apps are doing, playing tutorials) and if the silent mode is on either on Ipad or Iphone, there is no audio, even thought the volume slider is active, given the impressions to users that there is a bug, and I got some bad reviews due to that, I have also people writing me about it. I Then tell them all they have to do is to turn off the silent mode and they the audio is back, works everytime, but in the meantime I get complaits !
So here is my questions, is there a simple way I can located in the Buzztouch generated code a property that can easely be changed so that when a video is played, audio stays, despiste the silent mode being active.
I actually checked 4 or 5 other Iphones similar applications including the default youtube apple app, the default is that the audio plays even if the silent mode is turn on, giving my customer the impression that my app is bugged.
I'm not a programmer so please but as simple as possible in your answer.
Tku so much for the help.
Serge
What you are describing is the default behavior in iOS - when the ring/silent switch is in silent mode all audio from your app will be suppressed.
I don't know about implementing this from BuzzTouch, but here is a native solution I used to get around this for one of my apps that plays video:
MPMoviePlayerViewController *mpvc = [[MPMoviePlayerViewController alloc] initWithContentURL:myVidURL];
... set up player ...
// prevent mute switch from switching off audio from movie player
NSError *_error = nil;
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error: &_error];
[self presentMoviePlayerViewControllerAnimated:mpvc];
You will also need to include the AVFoundation framework for this to work.
Here's the link where I first found this tip:
http://www.24100.net/2011/05/ignore-ringtone-mute-switch-during-mpmovieplayer-video-playback-ios/
Right from documentation - iOS has 6 audio session categories out of that 3 affects the behavior of Slient switch:
AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient or the equivalent kAudioSessionCategory_AmbientSound— Using this category, your audio is silenced by the Ring/Silent switch and when the screen locks. Used when we want our app audio with built-in app audio
AVAudioSessionCategorySoloAmbient or the equivalent kAudioSessionCategory_SoloAmbientSound—Use this category for an application whose audio you want silenced when the user switches the Ring/Silent switch to the “silent” position and when the screen locks. This is the default category
AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback or the equivalent kAudioSessionCategory_MediaPlayback—Use this category for an application whose audio playback is of primary importance. Your audio plays even with the screen locked and with the Ring/Silent switch set to silent.
Hint: Upload the audio file to your buzztouch account files. This is the only way Buzztouch will recognize the audio. next, add the audio file to your xcode bttouch sound folder and add all references. You should be fine!
We built our music-oriented app in html5 and javascript with Sencha touch. For distribution we wrapped it in xcode with UIwebView. Everything runs fine except one thing that does not work: audio playing in multitask mode.
I know the general idea: add the UIBackgroundModes in info.plist.
Done. Now we can play the audio even in background mode.
Until we reach the end of the song. To start the next song we have to bring the app to foreground again or we can hit the play or 'next song' button on the iPhone audio controller.
After some research I found a promising workaround at: " Entering background on iOS4 to play audio " where the workaround is to edit AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback and work with the UIBackgroundTaskIdentifier.
The problem for me is (just like in any other fix I found so far) that those solutions always assume that the audio is played either with AVaudioPlayer or MPMusicPlayerController. But in my case I user neither, our audio is played by our html5 player wrapped in UIwebView.
Anyone has any advice on how to continue playing the audio in iOS multitask mode when the audio player is a html5/javascript player?
My app plays audio via an <audio> tag in html hosted in UIWebView, and it supports background playing.
As you suggest, you need to have the 'App plays audio' background mode defined in your plist.
Try adding this to your applicationDidFinishLaunching: handler:
NSError *setCategoryError = nil;
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error: &setCategoryError];
Thanks, guys, but I ended up simply keeping the app busy in a loop when in background mode. This was enough to bridge the time when connecting to the next song on the playlist.
The code I used is similar to this one:
iPhone - Backgrounding to poll for events
You could try this, adding a function on the onend event.