Allow audio.play() on safari for chat app

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Since Apple disabled the ability to autoplay audio via HTMLMedia​Element​.play() in javascript without user interaction, I am not sure how I should play a sound when a user gets a chat message before interacting with the DOM after the page loads.

socket.on("receive message", data => {
  const receiveSound = new Audio("1.mp3");
  messages.push(data);
  receiveSound.play();
});

I tried playing the audio element on a mousemove event. I also tried to fake a click() through an element on a React ref to initially activate it. Neither solutions worked.

Is there a way to autoplay an audio element if there is a message coming in? It must be possible since YouTube can autoplay videos without interaction.

Every time I try to play the audio, I get this error:

Unhandled Rejection (NotAllowedError): The request is not allowed by the user agent or the platform in the current context, possibly because the user denied permission.
html5-audio safari macos javascript ios
1 Answers

There is a way that you can make Safari play a sound without necessarily having to allow it there in the site settings.

According to the webkit documentation, it makes explicit that the user needs to interact to play the audio/video, in this case by the click, but he does not say that after you play some audio he lets you play any other audio then without any problem. With this in mind, you can for example run some script on your index.html where it will play your notification audio without any volume and then you can run it again without any problem, as in the example below:

function unlockAudio() {
    const sound = new Audio('path/to/your/sound/notification.mp3');

    sound.play();
    sound.pause();
    sound.currentTime = 0;

    document.body.removeEventListener('click', unlockAudio)
    document.body.removeEventListener('touchstart', unlockAudio)
}

document.body.addEventListener('click', unlockAudio);
document.body.addEventListener('touchstart', unlockAudio);

To run your code after this workaround, just do it this way:

function soundNotification() {
    const sound = new Audio('path/to/your/sound/notification.mp3');

    const promise = sound.play();

    if (promise !== undefined) {
        promise.then(() => {}).catch(error => console.error);
    }
}

Remembering that the above example is just to show you an alternative, there are several ways you can solve this problem, just keep in mind that you will need to play some sound before...

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