Question

Firstly, I understand this is a copy of a similar objective C based question, but it wasn’t answered.

Im using AVPlayer for the audio in my app. I have it playing audio, setting up its audio session correctly (I think, the play icon appears in the status bar when I play audio tracks within my app, and my app icon appears beside the player transport controls in the multitasking dock). However, I cannot get it to continue playing in the background when I press the Home button. The music just fades out and stops.

I have the following key in my info.plist:

<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
<array>
<string>audio</string>
</array>

In my class that handles playback, I have:

AVAudioSession audioSession = AVAudioSession.SharedInstance();
NSError error;
audioSession.SetCategory(AVAudioSession.CategoryPlayback.ToString(),out   error);
audioSession.SetActive(true,out error);

UIApplication.SharedApplication.BeginReceivingRemoteControlEvents();

int taskID = 0;
taskID = UIApplication.SharedApplication.BeginBackgroundTask(delegate
{
    if(taskID !=0)
    {
        UIApplication.SharedApplication.EndBackgroundTask(taskID);
        taskID = 0;
    }
});


PlaylistManager = new ApolloPlaylistManager();
AudioPlayer = new AVPlayer();

Not sure if I need that BeginBackgroundTask part, but it doesn’t work if its in or out, im actually pretty sure I dont need it. Any tips at all greatly appreciated, as I’ve been stuck on this for a few days 🙁

Answer 1

Ok, I feel a little stupid. It turns out my key UIApplicationModes had a space in front of it. Doh!

Well, to anyone having similar problems, ensure your info.plist looks like this

<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
<array>
 <string>audio</string>
</array>

and setup your playback code like this (remember, this is Monotouch):

AVAudioSession audioSession = AVAudioSession.SharedInstance();
NSError error;
audioSession.SetCategory(AVAudioSession.CategoryPlayback.ToString(),out error);
        audioSession.SetActive(true,out error);

        UIApplication.SharedApplication.BeginReceivingRemoteControlEvents();

        AudioPlayer = new AVPlayer();