iOS: How do I detect if music is playing in any background music app?

Question

I currently have my game correctly handling disabling its own BGM when music is playing in the built-in iPod app, but it does not detect when an app such as Pandora is playi

Answer 1

Check out this question

Seems you can see if another audio is playing by checking the property kAudioSessionProperty_OtherAudioIsPlaying like this:

UInt32 propertySize, audioIsAlreadyPlaying=0;
propertySize = sizeof(UInt32);
AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_OtherAudioIsPlaying, &propertySize, &audioIsAlreadyPlaying);

A complement to this could be to ask the user if he/she wants to have the game music or the already playing sound/music.

Answer 2

AudioSessionGetProperty (as mentioned in jake_hetfield's answer) is deprecated as of iOS 7.

Instead, try this one-liner that uses isOtherAudioPlaying:

BOOL isOtherAudioPlaying = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] isOtherAudioPlaying];

Works on iOS 6+.

Answer 3

You may want to do something like this.....

1. Create A class to handle your audio settings say... "AudioManager"

2. Poll the Boolean "isOtherAudioPlaying"... maybe assign it to your own Boolean value.

import Foundation
import AVFoundation

class AudioManager {
    static let successBingSoundID: SystemSoundID = <Your System Sound ID in Int>
    static func playSystemSoundIfBackgroundSoundIsOff() {
        guard !AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().isOtherAudioPlaying else {return}
        AudioServicesPlaySystemSoundWithCompletion(successBingSoundID, nil)
    }
}

usage:

AudioManager.playSystemSoundIfBackgroundSoundIsOff()

Answer 4

As of iOS 8, the secondaryAudioShouldBeSilencedHint property should be used:

/* Will be true when another application with a non-mixable audio session is playing audio.  Applications may use
this property as a hint to silence audio that is secondary to the functionality of the application. For example, a game app
using AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient may use this property to decide to mute its soundtrack while leaving its sound effects unmuted.
Note: This property is closely related to AVAudioSessionSilenceSecondaryAudioHintNotification.
*/
@property(readonly) BOOL secondaryAudioShouldBeSilencedHint  NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(8_0);