I did a lot of research and couldn't find a proper solution for my problem.
I want to make an iPhone app that plays a custom sound even when it is in background at a certain time (alarm clock app).
I did a research on the following points:
Local Notification -> no sound longer than 30 seconds allowed
Background Audio -> Apple refuses Apps that don't continuously run music in background, also there is no way to trigger sound when receiving a local notification
Is there any way to achieve this, i mean there has to be one.. i found dozens of apps in the app store that support playing sounds from your library even in background, and not only 30 seconds long (this one for instance: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/background-alarm-clock-free/id723243753?mt=8)
If possible in swift.
Related
I need to make an app that records heart rate data in near real time and send this data to a server as soon as possible.
First I took this approach: Watch os 2.0 beta: access heart beat rate
In fact it is working fine. There is new heart rate data in the HealthKit every five seconds. But now I have the problem that I can't sync that with a server.
My first approach was the Watch app. The watch was sending data to a server. That doesn't work because as soon as the screen turns black on the watch, it stops sending.
My next approach was to query the HealthKit on the iPhone every five seconds for new data. This works, as long as the app is in foreground.
Then I saw that there's some kind of background functionality that watches the HealthKit itself and revokes the app from background and you can do something.(enableBackgroundDeliveryForType) This doesn't seem to work for heart rate (the Apple Documentation says for things like steps this doesn't work, I guess heart rate is one of those).
I'm stuck now. Do you know how to it? I would need some background task that is executed every 5-10 seconds on the iPhone. That seems to be impossible
UPDATE
As noticed by #BootMaker, Apple made background mode available for HKWorkout apps in WatchOS 3, so it's working now. You have to run a HKWorkoutSession and this will keep your heartrate delivery in real time even when the app is in the background (dark screen on watch)
The closest you are going to be is while the watch app is open.
Why I'm stating this?
There are two HealthKit's Database (one at the iPhone and another at the Apple Watch). When they sync is arbitrary and decided only by the O.S.
The closest you are going to be to real time is when you don't have any password locking your screen in iPhone or Apple Watch.
Either way, there's no guarantee that the sync will happen every time a new measure is added to Apple Watch's HealthKit
The only way to force the Heart rate sensor into working in real time is via workouts or observer while your Apple Watch app is in FOREGROUND.
Background delivery is NOT available for Apple Watch apps.
Watch OS 2 request the sensor to measure automatically (in background) every 10 minutes minimum.
There's no other workaround, if you need real time for longer periods, or while the user is not using your app, you will need to use an specialized wearable.
If anyone still need to get heart rate or other data in real time. Use this solution:
Develop an apple watch app/extention
In watch app, using HKHealthStore, HKWorkoutConfiguration, HKWorkoutSession, HKLiveWorkoutBuilder to create an Workout. After create workout, your watch app will get heart rate in real time.
Using watch kit connection with WCSession to send data to iPhone app.
Enable background mode both in apple watch and iPhone.
I tested, even app terminated, we can still get heart rate (I used Local notification for posting heart rate data for debugging)
I already know how to keep play music at background in my app.
I don't want to know that.
I want this.
how to Automatically turn on ipot music in background & sleep mode at custom time.
it's thought impossible to me.
but that's possible. and no jail break.
i wanna know that. please help me.
Take a look at the following background task guide from the iOS docs
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/iphone/conceptual/iphoneosprogrammingguide/BackgroundExecution/BackgroundExecution.html
There are restrictions on what can be carried out in the background. Certain apps that support audio, location, and voip are allowed to run in background using the UIBackgroundModes key. With the audio background task, it will not be suspended until the audio session stops.
It seems that you don't want to initiate a session until a certain time. You could potentially look at beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: .
Also if you are looking for a timed alarm, you can always attach a different tone to a local notification.
As far as I am aware, there is no "out-of-the-box" way to do what your asking.
I'm thinking the answer to this is no, but does anyone know if a Bluetooth connection can be maintained in the background with iOS? I'm thinking I might be able to keep it around with the finite-task background API, but I haven't found anything indicating whether that's true or not. Another option would be to use GPS notifications and just reconnect every time the app gets a location changed notification.
You a right. It's a NO.
But if you use location change notification to wake up your app, you may have a short period of time to use Bluetooth.
I think that the Bluetooth connection should be maintained, but if your bluetooth application is not the foreground application it will not receive any data / commands, when it becomes foreground it will.
It is possible, I use this trick to allow an App to use foreground APIs for iBeacons to allow the app to range even when the App is in the background.
To range for iBeacons it uses a high power API and as so this is restricted to only run when the App is in the foreground and stops all delegates being called once the App enters the background.
By playing a silent audio file and adding the AirPlay capability to your plist it allows your app to run in the background just as it would if it was in the foreground.
I'm not sure if it will work for your case but as iBeacons do use the Core Bluetooth and Core Location frameworks it might just do what you are asking.
http://yifan.lu/2013/12/17/unlimited-backgrounding-on-ios/
Note although this trick has not been patched by Apple in iOS8 beta 5 it is possible they will in an update.
If you're using iBeacons, there are built-in APIs for handling when you enter/exit a beacon region, and you typically get ~5 seconds to range for beacons at that point before the app is put to sleep. Theoretically, you could start a background task w/ expiration handler that might allow you to range for ~30 seconds while backgrounded, but I have not verified this is the case. I do know that the background task can be started when normal CLRegions are entered/exited while in the background, and there is functionally no difference between CLRegions and CLBeaconRegions in terms of region monitoring, so if I had to guess I would say this is more-than-likely possible.
I'm looking for some way to let my app play a sound at a specific time while it's in the background (IOS4 multitasking). Currently, I use local notifications for that which works quite well, except for:
the sound will not be played if the phone is muted
the 30 second playback limit
I saw there's setKeepAliveTimeout:handler: but it's only available for voip-apps and since that's not the purpose of my app, I guess Apple would reject it because of this. I also saw a solution where an "empty" sound is being played until it's time has been reached, but - ignoring that this is not a very elegant way, anyways - I read that this, too, might get the app rejected.
Since there are a few alarm clock apps that do just what I'm looking for, I wonder how they implemented this functionality.
Thanks for any hints in advance!
If you seek a solution that will be approved by Apple, you're right you can't use the setKeepAliveTimeout:handler and even if you could - you can't set the timeout to something that's smaller than 600 seconds, so I guess it won't be of a great use anyway (besides that It's not guaranteed to fire the event even remotely close to the timeout you specified. For example, I set it to 600 seconds and some event fired as early as 360 seconds..).
About playing the silent sound, except the waste of battery, if you're app has legitimate use for background audio (if you're implementing an alarm clock, that's pretty obvious), I don't see a reason for your app to be rejected, as long as you don't try to use other background features (GPS signal, VoIP handlers, etc).
Here's one example app that used this "feature" for their benefit:
http://tapbots.com/blog/pastebot/pastebot-music-in-background
About other methods, you can look in this thread:
How do I start playing audio when in silent mode & locked in iOS 6?
On a personal note, it's not very easy to cope with background policies of Apple. Me and my company had (have?) a hard time just to maintain a simple VoIP connection due to all the limitations. My best advice is try to do as less as possible in the background as you can. If the UILocalNotificaion solution suits you, you'll probably should stick to it and live with the limitations.
I have read many posts and still i cannot achieve the desired functionality while my application is suspended in the background.
My reference point is this radio alarm application.
The things i cannot do using local notifications (which are successfully implemented in the radio clock above) are:
play alarm sound in the background while phone is muted
change phone volume.
play mp3 songs.
Also i noticed that they are able to play sounds longer than 30 seconds and even radio as alarm sounds which probably means that local notifications are not being used (audio-wise)
any insight would be appriciated...
The reason that this Radio App succeeds in playing a long audio file , is that it actually plays a background silent loop audio while waiting for the alarm .
IMO that's the reason people complain it drains the battery.