[quag]

iOS seems to mute the web audio apis when the phone is in silent mode (the switch on the side of the phone). If you toggle it on, then this site (and many others) play sound.

I have no idea why it works this way and it’s frequently annoying.

[bigstrat2003]

Why wouldn't it work that way? Whether it's a hardware toggle like on iPhone or a software one like in Android, I want silent to mean silent. Not "silent but if a web page decides to play sound it can".

[tialaramex]

There is some amount of the "Focus follows brain" problem here. What we want is for things to do what we meant, all the time, and in this case it's very possible that the visitor wanted to hear the music. It is not practical (without yet to invented technology) for that to work so we have a substitute - there's a switch and you should remember to press it.

"Focus follows brain" is how everybody wants windowed UIs to work. When I type on the keyboard the letters go where my brain thought they should go - duh, but of course that's unimplementable, so the Windows UI provides "Click to focus" - if I click on a Window the typing goes there until I click another window, meanwhile some Unix systems do "Focus follows Mouse" - if I move the mouse over a Window then my typing goes there even without clicking. Neither is what we actually wanted, both are trying to approximate.

[dylan604]

Many many times I have music playing in the background from another app while browsing. So no, there’s no way to focus follow brain. There’s just no way for this device to know what I want unless I tell it

[relaxing]

The phone will still make sound if I launch a music app, why is a web page different?

And I hate web pages making sound! But the UX is confusing, and it’s changed over the years, seemingly without reason.

Iphones now have a software toggle as well, which may have coincided with the shift from “mute ringer” to “mute (almost) everything” that came with the multifunction button.

[QuantumNomad_]

> why is a web page different?

Web browsers on desktop operating systems initially allowed any website to play audio without any interaction required. Some websites would blast annoying audio ads as soon as you opened a page on their site. So effort was put into making it so that web browsers on desktops would only play sound after user interaction via mouse click. Later, some websites were exempted from that by some desktop web browsers, for example YouTube I think.

Even without ads, background noise that starts automatically as soon as you visit a page can be distracting and disruptive.

I’m perfectly happy that Safari on iOS does not play background audio when I have my phone in silent mode. Even when I have tapped on buttons on the page.

Silent mode is not entirely only for notifications anyway. The built-in keyboard is also silent in silent mode, whereas when silent mode is off it makes an annoying click sound for every button that you press. Likewise the builtin camera app on iOS makes a shutter sound when you take photos with silent mode off. With silent mode the camera app is silent. Same with taking screenshots. I take a lot of screenshots, and prefer that people around me don’t think I’m taking photos when I am taking a screenshot on the phone.

Meanwhile, if I open a music player app on my phone and hit play, I have made a very deliberate choice about playing sound.

All of the games on my phone I can think of are also silent in silent mode. Not sure if all games have to be silent in silent mode or not on iOS (i.e. if “can play sound in silent mode” is a special permission in iOS and if Apple disallows apps categorized as games in App Store from having that permission or not). But I like that the games I play on my phone are silent in silent mode.

There is some inconsistency indeed about what is silent or not, but I am happy with the way that it is as someone who prefers surprising silence over surprising noises from my phone when it’s in silent mode.

[ShipScreens]

That screenshot matrix gets painful quickly once devices/locales grow. Are you doing iOS/Android and roughly how many locales x sizes?

[QuantumNomad_]

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[LordDragonfang]

Because silent mode is for the notifications. App volume has its own dedicated buttons.

[probabletrain]

media sound is generally unaffected by the silent mode toggle, which apple suggests is only for notifications. but the toggle inconsistently affects media, muting some things but not others. it's incredibly frustrating. android has much better audio controls for notifications, media, alarms, and vibrate.

[dylan604]

How old of an iPhone does one need to have that switch? My 6S+ has one, but a 15 doesn’t.

[sertsa]

My 14 has the switch. I believe the 15 is when they switched to a programmable "action" button in place of the switch.