Dive into the technical aspects of audio on your device, including codecs, format support, and customization options.

Audio Documentation

Posts under Audio subtopic

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AVAudioEngine obtains channel audio data
Currently, I have successfully used ChannelMap to map hardware input channels and obtained audio data from the hardware device's MIC and OTG inputs. Additionally, I have used ChannelMap to map output channels to freely feed data for playback to each output channel. However, I now have a problem. I have a hardware device that only has output channels (no input channels), and the system has set this hardware device as the default playback device. In this case, how can I obtain the audio data being played to the output channels for modification?
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280
Dec ’25
AVAudioSession automatically sets the tablet audio volume to 50% when recording audio.
Environment→ ・Device: iPad 10th generation ・OS:**iOS18.3.2 I'm using AVAudioSession to record sound in my application. But I recently came to realize that when the app starts a recording session on a tablet, OS automatically sets the tablet volume to 50% and when after recording ends, it doesn't change back to the previous volume level before starting the recording. So I would like to know whether this is an OS default behavior or a bug? If it's a default behavior, I much appreciate if I can get a link to the documentation.
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122
Apr ’25
Mic audio before and after a call is answered
I have an app that records a health provider’s conversation with a patient. I am using Audio Queue Services for this. If a phone call comes in while recording, the doctor wants to be able to ignore the call and continue the conversation without touching the phone. If the doctor answers the call, that’s fine – I will stop the recording. I can detect when the call comes in and ends using CXCallObserver and AVAudioSession.interruptionNotification. Unfortunately, when a call comes in and before it is answered or dismissed, the audio is suppressed. After the call is dismissed, the audio continues to be suppressed. How can I continue to get audio from the mic as long as the user does not answer the phone call?
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74
May ’25
Unstable Playlist.Entry.id causes crashes when removing duplicates
When multiple identical songs are added to a playlist, Playlist.Entry.id uses a suffix-based identifier (e.g. songID_0, songID_1, etc.). Removing one entry causes others to shift, changing their .id values. This leads to diffing errors and collection view crashes in SwiftUI or UIKit when entries are updated. Steps to Reproduce: Add the same song to a playlist multiple times. Observe .id.rawValue of entries (e.g. i.SONGID_0, i.SONGID_1). Remove one entry. Fetch playlist again — note the other IDs have shifted. FB18879062
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547
Jul ’25
When to set AVAudioSession's preferredInput?
I want the audio session to always use the built-in microphone. However, when using the setPreferredInput() method like in this example private func enableBuiltInMic() { // Get the shared audio session. let session = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance() // Find the built-in microphone input. guard let availableInputs = session.availableInputs, let builtInMicInput = availableInputs.first(where: { $0.portType == .builtInMic }) else { print("The device must have a built-in microphone.") return } // Make the built-in microphone input the preferred input. do { try session.setPreferredInput(builtInMicInput) } catch { print("Unable to set the built-in mic as the preferred input.") } } and calling that function once in the initializer, the audio session still switches to the external microphone once one is plugged in. The session's preferredInput is nil again at that point, even if the built-in microphone is still listed in availableInputs. So, why is the preferredInput suddenly reset? when would be the appropriate time to set the preferredInput again? Observing the session’s availableInputs did not work and setting the preferredInput again in the routeChangeNotification handler seems a bad choice as it’s already a bit too late then.
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872
Oct ’25
Different behaviors of USB-C to Headphone Jack Adapters
I bought two "Apple USB-C to Headphone Jack Adapters". Upon closer inspection, they seems to be of different generations: The one with product ID 0x110a on top is working fine. The one with product ID 0x110b has two issues: There is a short but loud click noise on the headphone when I connect it to the iPad. When I play audio using AVAudioPlayer the first half of a second or so is cut off. Here's how I'm playing the audio: audioPlayer = try AVAudioPlayer(contentsOf: url) audioPlayer?.delegate = self audioPlayer?.prepareToPlay() audioPlayer?.play() Is this a known issue? Am I doing something wrong?
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334
Jul ’25
Error resuming background audio while connected to CarPlay
My app utilizes background audio to play music files. I have the audio background mode enabled and I initialize the AVAudioSession in playback mode with the mixWithOthers option. And it usually works great while the app is backgrounded. I listen for audio interruptions as well as route changes and I am able to handle them appropriately and I can usually resume my background audio no problem. I discovered an issue while connected to CarPlay though. Roughly 50% of the time when I disconnect from a phone call while connected to CarPlay I get the following error after calling the play() method of my AVAudioPlayer instance: "ATAudioSessionClientImpl.mm:281 activation failed. status = 561015905" If I instead try to start a new audio session I get a similar error: Error Domain=NSOSStatusErrorDomain Code=561015905 "Session activation failed" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Session activation failed} Like I said, this isn't reproducible 100% of the time and is so far only seen while connected to CarPlay. I don't think Im forgetting so additional capability or plist setting, but if anyone has any clues it would be greatly appreciated. Otherwise this is likely just a bug that I need to report to Apple. One very important note, and reason I believe it's just a bug, is that while I was testing I found that other music apps like Spotify will also fail to resume their audio at the same time my app fails. Another important detail is that when it works successfully I receive the audio session interruption ended notification, and when it doesn't work I only receive a route configuration change or route override notification. From there I am able to still successfully granted background time to execute code, but my call to resume audio fails with the above mentioned error codes.
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307
Dec ’25
Making sense of AVAudioSession interruption notifications
I have an app under development - demo here - https://youtu.be/VbAfUk_eYl0?si=s6EDBx-4G6P_QbZO - which is sort of an audio player for airdropped files - something useful to musicians who dump work in progress to their phone, make notes, revise and update. I've been testing my handling of audio session interruption notifications, but seems to be a lot of inconsistency in how, when and why iOS delivers them, and I'm wondering if there is some rhyme or reason to it that I'm just not detecting. For example, I am playing a song in my app. Switch to Apple Music and start playing a song there. My app gets an interruption began notification - this is consistent. Switch back to my app, and about half the time, I will get an interruption ended notification (coupled often with a blast of the tail of whatever audio buffer was partially played when the interruption started, even though the engine was stopped - and followed by call to my AVAudioPlayerNodeCompletionCallback - is there some way to avoid this?). Half the time I don't get an interruption ended notification; my app can (as expected) end the interruption by activating the AVAudioSession and playing something. I have not been able to determine any pattern to this behavior, other than that if my app started playing using AVAudioPlayerNode.scheduleSegment rather than scheduleFile I think the notification will be consistently delivered on app activation rather than when I activate the session programmatically. I would like my app to behave deterministically, and would appreciate any help in deciphering what causes the inconsistent behavior in notifications from iOS.
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425
Mar ’25
"Baking together" two audio tracks into one for drag-and-drop
Hi all, with my app ScreenFloat, you can record your screen, along with system- and microphone audio. Those two audio feeds are recorded into separate audio tracks in order to individually remove or edit them later on. Now, these recordings you create with ScreenFloat can be drag-and-dropped to other apps instantly. So far, so good, but some apps, like Slack, or VLC, or even websites like YouTube, do not play back multiple audio tracks, just one. So what I'm trying to do is, on dragging the video recording file out of ScreenFloat, instantly baking together the two individual audio tracks into one, and offering that new file as the drag and drop file, so that all audio is played in the target app. But it's slow. I mean, it's actually quite fast, but for drag and drop, it's slow. My approach is this: "Bake together" the two audio tracks into a one-track m4a audio file using AVMutableAudioMix and AVAssetExportSession Take the video track, add the new audio file as an audio track to it, and render that out using AVAssetExportSession For a quick benchmark, a 3'40'' movie, step 1 takes ~1.7 seconds, and step two adds another ~1.5 seconds, so we're at ~3.2 seconds. That's an eternity for a drag and drop, where the user might cancel if there's no immediate feedback. I could also do it in one step, but then I couldn't use the AV*Passthrough preset, and that makes it take around 32 seconds then, because I assume it touches the video data (which is unnecessary in this case, so I think the two-step approach here is the fastest). So, my question is, is there a faster way? The best idea I can come up with right now is, when initially recording the screen with system- and microphone audio as separate tracks, to also record both of them into a third, muted, "hidden" track I could use later on, basically eliminating the need for step one and just ripping the two single audio tracks out of the movie and only have the video and the "hidden" track (then unmuted), but I'd still have a ~1.5 second delay there. Also, there's the processing and data overhead (basically doubling the movie's audio data). All this would be great for an export operation (where one expects it to take a little time), but for a drag-and-drop operation, it's not ideal. I've discarded the idea of doing a promise file drag, because many apps do not accept those, and I want to keep wide compatibility with all sorts of apps. I'd appreciate any ideas or pointers. Thank you kindly, Matthias
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712
Mar ’25
MusicKit - Skipping Forwards or Backwards does not update
Hello everyone, I am working on an app that allows you to review your own music using Apple Music. Currently I am running into an issue with the skipping forwards and backwards outside of the app. How it should work: When skipping forward or backwards on the lock or home screen of an iPhone, the next or previous song on an album should play and the information should change to reflect that in the app. If you play a song in Apple Music, you can see a Now Playing view in the lock screen. When you skip forward or backwards, it will do either action and it would reflect that when you see a little frequency icon on artwork image of a song. What it's doing: When skipping forward or backwards on the lock or home screen of an iPhone, the next or previous song is reflected outside of the app, but not in the app. When skipping a song outside of the app, it works correctly to head to the next song. But when I return to the app, it is not reflected NOTE: I am not using MusicKit variables such as Track, Album to display the songs. Since I want to grab the songs and review them I need a rating so I created my own that grabs the MusicItemID, name, artist(s), etc. NOTE: I am using ApplicationMusicPlayer.shared Is there a way to get the song to reflect in my app? (If its easier, a simple example of it would be nice. No need to create an entire xprod file)
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99
Apr ’25
Lightning to HDMI mirrors
I am developing a VOD playback app, but when I stream video to an external monitor connected via HDMI with Lightning on iOS 18 or later, the screen goes dark and I cannot confirm playback. The app I am developing does not detect the HDMI and display the Player separately, but simply mirrors the video. We have confirmed that the same phenomenon occurs with other services, but we were able to confirm playback with some services such as Apple TV. Please let us know if there are any other necessary settings such as video certificates required for video playback. We would also like to know if the problem occurs with iOS 18 or later.
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283
Mar ’25
Live Translations on VOIP on iOS26
Hi team, With regards to Call (Live) Translations on VOIP: Is it possible to invoke live translations within the app? (without going into the Call System UI) Is it possible to navigate users from app to Call System UI via an API? (and also invoking the new live translations directly) Will Apple support more languages apart from the current ones? (Currently I see 4 supported languages)
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166
Aug ’25
In Speech framework is SFTranscriptionSegment timing supposed to be off and speechRecognitionMetadata nil until isFinal?
I'm working in Swift/SwiftUI, running XCode 16.3 on macOS 15.4 and I've seen this when running in the iOS simulator and in a macOS app run from XCode. I've also seen this behaviour with 3 different audio files. Nothing in the documentation says that the speechRecognitionMetadata property on an SFSpeechRecognitionResult will be nil until isFinal, but that's the behaviour I'm seeing. I've stripped my class down to the following: private var isAuthed = false // I call this in a .task {} in my SwiftUI View public func requestSpeechRecognizerPermission() { SFSpeechRecognizer.requestAuthorization { authStatus in Task { self.isAuthed = authStatus == .authorized } } } public func transcribe(from url: URL) { guard isAuthed else { return } let locale = Locale(identifier: "en-US") let recognizer = SFSpeechRecognizer(locale: locale) let recognitionRequest = SFSpeechURLRecognitionRequest(url: url) // the behaviour occurs whether I set this to true or not, I recently set // it to true to see if it made a difference recognizer?.supportsOnDeviceRecognition = true recognitionRequest.shouldReportPartialResults = true recognitionRequest.addsPunctuation = true recognizer?.recognitionTask(with: recognitionRequest) { (result, error) in guard result != nil else { return } if result!.isFinal { //speechRecognitionMetadata is not nil } else { //speechRecognitionMetadata is nil } } } } Further, and this isn't documented either, the SFTranscriptionSegment values don't have correct timestamp and duration values until isFinal. The values aren't all zero, but they don't align with the timing in the audio and they change to accurate values when isFinal is true. The transcription otherwise "works", in that I get transcription text before isFinal and if I wait for isFinal the segments are correct and speechRecognitionMetadata is filled with values. The context here is I'm trying to generate a transcription that I can then highlight the spoken sections of as audio plays and I'm thinking I must be just trying to use the Speech framework in a way it does not work. I got my concept working if I pre-process the audio (i.e. run it through until isFinal and save the results I need to json), but being able to do even a rougher version of it 'on the fly' - which requires segments to have the right timestamp/duration before isFinal - is perhaps impossible?
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164
Jul ’25
How to record voice, auto-transcribe, translate (auto-detect input language), and play back translated audio on same device in iOS Swift?
Hi everyone 👋 I’m building an iOS app in Swift where I want to do the following: Record the user’s voice Transcribe the spoken sentence (speech-to-text) Auto-detect the spoken language Translate it to another language selected by the user (e.g., English → Spanish or Hindi → English) Speak back (text-to-speech) the translated text on the same device Is this possible to record via phone mic and play the transcribe voice into headphone's audio?
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274
Oct ’25
AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback is not allowed while CallKit call is active
We require assistance in resolving a critical audio design conflict within our Push-to-Talk (PTT) application. Our current volume amplification strategy—which relies on applying a GAIN factor to PCM samples in conjunction with setting the AVAudioSession category to Playback—is working successfully when PTT is used independently. However, upon integrating and reporting the same PTT call through the CallKit framework, this amplification effect is lost. The CallKit integration appears to be forcing a different, non-amplifying audio session category or configuration, negatively impacting the user's perceived call volume. We need guidance on how to maintain the AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback setting, or an equivalent high-volume configuration, while operating under the control of CallKit.
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376
Nov ’25
issue in recording using AVAudio
Hi, In my project I am using AVFoundation for recording the audio. We are using AVAudioMixerNode class below method to record the audio packet. **func installTap( onBus bus: AVAudioNodeBus, bufferSize: AVAudioFrameCount, format: AVAudioFormat?, block tapBlock: @escaping AVAudioNodeTapBlock ) ** It works perfectly fine. But in production env some small percentage of the user we are facing issue like after recording few packets it stops automatically without stopping the audio engine. Can anyone help here that why this happens? I have also observed for mediaServicesWereResetNotification and added log on receiving this notification but when this issue happens I don't see any occurence of this log. Also is there any callback when the engine stops?
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125
Apr ’25
ioreg AVBControllerState - AVB/EAV Mode
Hello. To determine wether "AVB/EAV Mode" of a AV-capable network interfaces is turned on or off I query the IO registry and evaluate the property "AVBControllerState". I was wondering if this is the "correct" approach and if there is anything known about the values for this property? Network interfaces without AV capability may also carry this property (e.g.: for my WiFi adapter the value of 1) whereas the value for interfaces with AV capability can be 0 and 3. At least as far as I could observe with my limited amount of test devices at hand. Is it safe to assume that a value of 3 means this feature is turned on, 0 that it is turned off and ignore values of 1? Is there another approach to get to know the status of the "AVB/EAV Mode"? Thanks for any insight. Best regards, Ingo
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2w
Best way to stream audio from file system
I am trying to stream audio from local filesystem. For that, I am trying to use an AVAssetResourceLoaderDelegate for an AVURLAsset. However, Content-Length is not known at the start. To overcome this, I tried several methods: Set content length as nil, in the AVAssetResourceLoadingContentInformationRequest Set content length to -1, in the ContentInformationRequest Both of these cause the AVPlayerItem to fail with an error. I also tried setting Content-Length as INT_MAX, and setting a renewalDate = Date(timeIntervalSinceNow: 5). However, that seems to be buggy. Even after updating the Content-Length to the correct value (e.g. X bytes) and finishing that loading request, the resource loader keeps getting requests with requestedOffset = X with dataRequest.requestsAllDataToEndOfResource = true. These requests keep coming indefinitely, and as a result it seems that the next item in the queue does not get played. Also, .AVPlayerItemDidPlayToEndTime notification does not get called. I wanted to check if this is an expected behavior or is there a bug in this implementation. Also, what is the recommended way to stream audio of unknown initial length from local file system? Thanks!
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185
Mar ’25
Memory leak AVAudioPlayer
Let's consider the following code. I've created an actor that loads a list of .mp3 files from a Bundle and then makes it available for audio reproduction. Unfortunately, I'm experiencing a memory leak. At the play method. player.play() From Instruments I get _malloc_type_malloc_outlined libsystem_malloc.dylib start_wqthread libsystem_pthread.dylib private actor AudioActor { enum Failure: Error { case soundsNotLoaded([AudioPlayerClient.Sound: Error]) } enum Player { case music(AVAudioPlayer) } var players: [Sound: Player] = [:] let bundles: [Bundle] init(bundles: UncheckedSendable<[Bundle]>) { self.bundles = bundles.wrappedValue } func load(sounds: [Sound]) throws { try AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().setActive(true, options: []) var errors: [Sound: Error] = [:] for sound in sounds { guard let url = bundle.url(forResource: sound.name, withExtension: "mp3") else { continue } do { self.players[sound] = try .music(AVAudioPlayer(contentsOf: url)) } catch { errors[sound] = error } } guard errors.isEmpty else { throw Failure.soundsNotLoaded(errors) } } func play(sound: Sound, loops: Int?) throws { guard let player = self.players[sound] else { return } switch player { case let .music(player): player.numberOfLoops = loops ?? -1 player.play() } } func stop(sound: Sound) throws { guard let player = self.players[sound] else { throw Failure.soundsNotLoaded([:]) } switch player { case let .music(player): player.stop() } } }
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134
Mar ’25