How can I autoplay media in iOS >= 4.2.1 Mobile Safari?

23
votes

I cannot seem to get audio media to play in Mobile Safari on iOS 4.2.1 in any situation other than the handler of a click event performed by the user. Even then, if player.play() is called in any asynchronous fashion (ajax, setTimeout, etc) it doesn't work.

I've tried calling player.load() before player.play(). I've tried triggering a click event on a dom element whose handler calls player.play(). I've tried using both audio and video tags.

All the loopholes that worked prior to iOS 4.2.1 seem to be closed. Any ideas?

9
iphoneipadhtmliosmobile-safari
Pretty sure that’s by design. Some of your users may be on cell plans that charge by data usage, and they don’t want your media to auto-play. – Jeff Kelley
possible duplicate of Autoplay an Audio File on Mobile Safari – Jeff Kelley
I understand it's by design. However, prior to 4.2.1 there were several loopholes that allowed circumvention. FWIW, I'm not actually trying to autoplay audio on page load. The audio source urls I'm using are unstable and cannot be cached, so I'm making an ajax call inside the click handler to resolve the audio source. This in itself is enough to trigger iOS's defense mechanisms apparently. – David Gouldin
I spent about an hour today shuffling code around because I had the play() function within an asynchronous function (Ajax call). Even in a click handler, with an actual click, it still didn't work. So: beware, I guess. I wish Apple would publish the specific criteria we need to follow. – JKS

9 Answers

16
votes

Starting from iOS 4.2.x, the download of media will not be started if there isn’t a user-input event, like touchstart.

So the answer is no, there is no method to autoplay media by JavaScript or something else.

14
votes

There is one way to play the video/audio file automatically on 4.2.1. Create an iframe and set its source to the media file's URL and append the iframe to the body. It'll be autoplay.

var ifr=document.createElement("iframe");
ifr.setAttribute('src', "http://mysite.com/myvideo.mp4");
ifr.setAttribute('width', '1px');
ifr.setAttribute('height', '1px');
ifr.setAttribute('scrolling', 'no');
ifr.style.border="0px";
document.body.appendChild(ifr);
6
votes

As others have said here and according to Apple documentation, MobileSafari does NOT support the autoplay attribute in the video tag. However, in iOS 6 it DOES work. This appears to be a bug which Apple fixed in iOS 6.0.1 (and presumably in iOS 6.1).

Don't rely on autoplay working in iOS 6 if you happened to stumble across it working in iOS 6.0.

-Michael

4
votes

As a workaround, I tried tying the load()/play() code to a click event, and then triggering the click event programmatically. This approach worked in Desktop Safari, but not Mobile Safari.

1
votes

This worked on the iPad until last nights 4.2 upgrade:

$(function() {
    var Beep = document.createElement('audio');
    Beep.setAttribute('src', 'beep-23.mp3');
    Beep.load();
    Beep.play();
}

My Beep.play(); still works for a click event, but the initial Beep.play() stopped working...

1
votes

How about this?

Create an audio sprite with Sound Manager 2, preload & cache it from the first user interaction, and then play as and when needed.

Would that work?

0
votes

Autoplay is supported (in my tests) with an iPhone 5 (iOS 6) using the headphone jack.

0
votes

On my 3rd-gen iPad running IOS 6, autoplay of HTML5 tags has suddenly begun working! (I've had IOS 6 installed for a couple of weeks, and am pretty sure I tested this feature right away, but only noticed it working tonight.) I don't recall seeing any notice of this from Apple, although I did see that mobile Safari had been granted the ability to support file uploads via 

<form><input type="file" .../></form>

-- another feature I needed but which Apple had withheld.

-1
votes

Please Try this Code it is working both version, you need to add the audio control dynamically in page. it is working.

var isiPad = false;
if (navigator.userAgent.match(/iPad/i) || navigator.userAgent.match(/iPhone/i) || navigator.userAgent.match(/Android/i) || navigator.userAgent.match(/webOS/i)) { 
    isiPad = true; 
}
$(function() { 
    if (isiPad) { 
        var audioElement2 = document.createElement('audio'); 
        audioElement2.setAttribute('src', 'img/bgsound.mp3'); 
        audioElement2.controls = true; 
        audioElement2.loop = true; 
        audioElement2.load();
        audioElement2.play();
    }
});