The Mute Button Won't Mute AVAudioPlayer

Question

I need to loop play a .caf file in my iPhone app.

The AVAudioPlayer looks promising. But there's one problem. It won't stop or mute even if I pressed the mute button on the iPhone.

And I understand that there would be no way to programmatically find out whether that mute button is pressed or not in iOS 5.

So, what I need to know might be some properties about AVAudioPlayer or AVAudioSession. Or, perhaps, I may need to consider other libraries to loop playing my .caf file.

Any idea?

Answer 1

I realized it was because I had this line of code

[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error: nil];

I then changed it into

[[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] setCategory: AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient error: nil];

Then the mute button would work and stop my AVAudioPlayer...

Answer 2

From docs:

So basically you just have to figure out which Audio Session category suits your need.

Answer 3

my 2 cents for swift 3.0:

let sharedSession = AVAudioSession.sharedInstance()

do {
    try sharedSession.setCategory(AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient)
} catch _{
    return false
}

or simpler:

try? sharedSession.setCategory(AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient)