Question

Is there a way to detect if something is plugged into the headphone jack of a Mac using c or objective-c?

Thanks

Answer 1

Should you still want to dive in and mess with this deep magic I was able to construct something together form the code I found here:

http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/54013-hardware-volume-change-listener-callback.html

You want to register a listen to the AudioProperties and catch any messages about ‘kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteChange’. Using the ‘reason’ and the ‘name’ you can parse togather what happened. You can also read more about that here:

http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/AudioToolbox/Reference/AudioSessionServicesReference/Reference/reference.html

// Registers this class as the delegate of the audio session.
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setDelegate: self];

// Use this code instead to allow the app sound to continue to play when the screen is locked.
[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error: nil];

// Registers the audio route change listener callback function
AudioSessionAddPropertyListener (kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteChange, audioRouteChangeListenerCallback, self);

Callback:

void audioRouteChangeListenerCallback (void *inUserData, AudioSessionPropertyID inPropertyID, UInt32 inPropertyValueSize, const void *inPropertyValue ) {
    // ensure that this callback was invoked for a route change
    if (inPropertyID != kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRouteChange) return;


    {
        // Determines the reason for the route change, to ensure that it is not
        //      because of a category change.
        CFDictionaryRef routeChangeDictionary = (CFDictionaryRef)inPropertyValue;

        CFNumberRef routeChangeReasonRef = (CFNumberRef)CFDictionaryGetValue (routeChangeDictionary, CFSTR (kAudioSession_AudioRouteChangeKey_Reason) );
        SInt32 routeChangeReason;
        CFNumberGetValue (routeChangeReasonRef, kCFNumberSInt32Type, &routeChangeReason);

        if (routeChangeReason == kAudioSessionRouteChangeReason_OldDeviceUnavailable) {

            //Handle Headset Unplugged
        } else if (routeChangeReason == kAudioSessionRouteChangeReason_NewDeviceAvailable) {
                    //Handle Headset plugged in
        }

    }
}