Playing a list of audio files without blocking audio from other apps

jaalburquerque

Hello everyone. I am planning to write a short script to play a list of audio files in order. I was thinking of using the sound.play_effect() function because I would like the audio to play without blocking other audio from other apps from playing. I wonder if this is a good idea. If it is, I am also wondering if there would be a way to know when an effect has finished playing. This would allow me to play the audio files in order, one after another. If using sound.play_effect() would not be recommended, I am willing to use the sound.Player class. I would just like to be able to play the audio, allowing audio from other apps to be played also. Would anyone have any recommendations for me? I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks so much.

JonB

This can be done for sure using objc_util. Look into AVAudioSession options (duckothers to soften other output, or mixWithOthers to not soften other music.

What I'm not sure about is whether you can modify the sharedAudioSession() that the sound.Player uses, or if you need to use AVAudioPlayer directly.

jaalburquerque

Thanks so much. Very helpful information. Have a good day.

jaalburquerque

Hello. I was able to write a preliminary version of the script to play the audio files. The script is designed to play audio files contained in a directory in the file system. It assumes that all of the files in the specified directory are audio files. It uses the “FolderPicker” class mentioned in the other topic that I opened asking how to allow the user to select a directory in the file system [1]. I am attaching the script below. The script plays the audio files fine when I run it in the Pythonista app, but when I minimize the app, the audio stops playing. I would like the audio to continue playing even if the app is minimized and I use other apps. Would anyone know if this is possible?

[1] https://forum.omz-software.com/topic/7506/allowing-the-user-to-select-a-directory-from-the-file-system

Note: I edited the original post to move the [1] reference directly below the paragraph that references it. Also, I added a change to the script to make it runnable using a pythonista URL scheme, for example “pythonista://PlayAudioDirectory?action=run&argv=audio_directory

PlayAudioDirectory.py:

import sys
import re
import dialogs
import FolderPicker
from pathlib import Path
import sound
import time

IPHONE_VOLUME_PATH = '/private/var/mobile/Containers/Shared/AppGroup/193D444B-2870-447A-A797-33D935C572B3/File Provider Storage'
ICLOUD_VOLUME_PATH = '/private/var/mobile/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs'

audioDirectory = None

if len(sys.argv) > 1:
  audioDirectory = sys.argv[1]
  audioDirectory = re.sub(r'^On My iPhone', IPHONE_VOLUME_PATH, audioDirectory)
  audioDirectory = re.sub(r'^iCloud Drive', ICLOUD_VOLUME_PATH, audioDirectory)
else:
  volume = None

  volumerChoice = dialogs.list_dialog('Select location of directory', ['This iPhone', 'iCloud'])
  if volumerChoice == 'This iPhone':
    volume = IPHONE_VOLUME_PATH
  elif volumerChoice == 'iCloud':
    volume = ICLOUD_VOLUME_PATH
    
  if volume != None:
    audioDirectory = FolderPicker.folder_picker_dialog('Please select the audio folder', root_dir = volume)

if audioDirectory != None:
  audioPath = Path(audioDirectory)
  for child in sorted(audioPath.iterdir()):
    audioFilename = str(child.resolve())
    player = sound.Player(audioFilename)
    duration = player.duration
    player.play()
    time.sleep(duration)

cvp

@jaalburquerque First of all, you have to know that the numeric part 193D444B-2870-447A-A797-33D935C572B3 of your path is different on each device, thus if somebody wants to use your script, he has to identify this code by the little script explained some posts above in this forum.

Your question is the same as a lot of users asking to run Pythonista in background. What is not really possible. Try to find the word background in this forum and read the big number of topics with that subject. 😢

Thé nearest approach I could do is explained here but it has not been a real success.

Anyway, the Pyto app provides a background possibility.

jaalburquerque

Thanks for taking the time to answer the question that I had. Thanks for the information. Have a good day.