I know this is likely way outside of the sandbox but I thought I'd ask anyway:
I want to put a "pause / play" button in my app that will pause or play any background audio. Basically I'm looking to implement the play/pause button found in the multi-task bar.
A simple example is someone stars music with Pandora app, then launches my app. Is it possible to pause the background audio and resume it?
As a curiosity I have wondered if there was a way to create or broadcast the "remote control" events. Can I publish a pause/play event to the OS, perhaps?
I think here's what you're looking for. The trick is to loop a short audio file with silence when you want the other audio to stop. Then tell the iOS audio system when you're done, as suggested in the link.
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'm looking to achieve the opposite effect of AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbientSolo.
Currently my options seem to be stick with solo(default) and have my app stop any pre playing music/sfx and play my apps music/sfx
or
I can use Ambient and have background audio mix with my apps music/sfx.
The effect I want is the opposite of solo. If the user is playing music or listening to a podcast from another app, then I dont want my app to play any sound. If the user isn't listening to anything else and starts my app, then my app can play it's music/sfx.
Seems ambient and solo are my only options unless I'm missing something.
If it has any bearing I'm using spritekit and swift.
I'm working on a game that has some simple sound effects, but would like it to not interrupt my music player which is on in the background (which happens as soon as I load sounds). Is this possible?
You may want to look into System Sound Services, I don't believe there's anyway to do it if you just want to use SpriteKit actions.
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.
Seems the default action for iOS 6 is to stop the video from playing after I switch to HOME screen. Then if I want to listen to the audio I have to go back to the app and press the 'Play' button again. I am using youtube API.
How can I continue playing the video when the application is in UIApplicationStateInactive and UIApplicationStateBackground. I just want to be able to listen to the audio even if I am on HOME screen or the screen is locked. Should I use a background thread or restart playing the video at the previous position as it was before turning the app inactive?
Take a look at the app 'Jasmine'. They managed to do something similar to what you are seeking. However, UIApplicationStateInactive/UIApplicationStateBackground will cause the video to pause. Double tapping the home button and then pressing the audio play button will cause the video's audio to resume without keeping the app active.
Take a look at the new iOS 7. You may have some luck there.
Inter-App Audio
Now your apps can make beautiful music together. With Inter-App Audio,
apps can register their audio streams to share with other apps. For
example, a series of apps could publish audio streams of instrument
tracks while another uses the combination of these streams to compose
a song. Inter-App Audio also provides for MIDI control of audio
rendering, remotely launching other registered Inter-App Audio apps
and more.