Music stops playing in background on iOS

[stefandesu]

I found your project yesterday and I love it! Unfortunately, the music stops playing as soon as you put the PWA in the background on iOS. The thing is that I once researched this particular issue and it seems like this is an iOS restriction/bug that prevents it, so there might be nothing you can do.

However, I also noticed that the same thing happens in Safari on iOS (i.e. not installed as a PWA). In theory, sites in Safari should be able to play music in the background, at least that was my conclusion from the research I've done one.

Might be something to look into.

[maxence-charriere]

the music stops playing as soon as you put the PWA in the background on iOS

Unfortunately, this is a limitation related to all web browsers on mobile. Even when pinned on the home screen, it is still Safari that is running it.

Also, it is a Youtube video in the background but since I wanted the content you be embedded in the UI, I deactivated the feature that launches the video in full screen so there is no in picture mode.

[stefandesu]

Unfortunately, this is a limitation related to all web browsers on mobile. Even when pinned on the home screen, it is still Safari that is running it.

Okay so I haven't researched the technical details about this, but it is definitely possible to play audio in the background through Safari on iOS. That's what I found out back then: You can play audio in the background in a browser tab in Safari (example: https://epidemicsound.com), but not inside a PWA that was added to the home screen (I don't have an example to show this behavior, but back then I tested it with a simple example I made myself).

I guess since you are using a YouTube video embed, it will stop playing as soon as it goes in the background. The same happens with YouTube videos playing through the YouTube website in Safari. So I guess there's no way around this. Too bad. 😕

[maxence-charriere]

Yeah, it is a bummer but it is a limitation but also, I was thinking of hacking something like put the video in in-picture mode when the app loses focus but Youtube is blocking that mode if you are not a premium user.