What is the best pattern for an application to play sounds while enabling user to use his iPad app to play music as well? Right now if the music is playing any sound played by my app will stop the music. Is there a way to disable sounds while ipod is playing?
By default, sounds played interrupt iPod, as you have seen. In order to tell the system that you want the sounds you're playing to be mixed in with other sounds on the system, such as iPod, you need to set the category of your AVAudioSession to AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient, like this:
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient error:nil];
Do this before you begin playing sounds, and you should get the desired effect. Here's the documentation:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/AVFoundation/Reference/AVAudioSession_ClassReference/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008240-CH1-SW1
Related
I have an app that plays silent Movies using AVFoundation. Is there a way to allow the music to play and your iPod (if you're playing music) to continue playing? If I play the movie will my iPod is on, the iPod pauses so the movie can play, and vice versa - if I try to replay the music while the movie is playing, the movie pauses. Basically, I want them to play continue playing seamlessly....
Let me know if you need applicable code to answer.
In my experience, for standard AVAudioPlayer based sound in an app, managing the AVAudioSession is required to allow background music:
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient withOptions:AVAudioSessionCategoryOptionMixWithOthers error:nil];
But I can't tell you if that's the same as attempting to play encoded/compressed Video and encoded/compressed audio at the same time.
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];
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!
I need to play a custom sound synthesized using AudioUnit on an iPod.
This sound shall be played after up to one hour of playing music from a playlist on the iPod (it is played using MPMusicPlayerController).
The issue is that everything works fine if the screen in on, however my custom sound doesn't play if the screen is off.
If the sound is already playing when the screen is turned off it keeps playing well. So I assume I am using the correct audio session category.
Could you give me any hint?
According to Apple's developer library:
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.
(Also, check this table.)
It seems that setting the audio session category to AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback or kAudioSessionCategory_MediaPlayback would automatically fix your problem.
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.