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> as a user, I would find it too "buried" behind Safari How is this any different than music playing on say Google Play Music on my iPhone? I listen to music f
by addicted 9y ago
> as a user, I would find it too "buried" behind Safari
How is this any different than music playing on say Google Play Music on my iPhone? I listen to music from YouTube, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Google Play Music, Pandora, and other apps occasionally. Why don't I feel it's buried in those situations? Because of the simple reason that Apple allows only one source of audio on iOS at any point of time (including Safari), which can be controlled from Control Center. Control Center also displays the app, and tapping on it, takes me straight to the app.
There is no reason a tab on Safari couldn't similarly queue up a playlist, and if I want to get back to it, I go to control center, and tap the safari icon which takes me to Safari and the tab playing the music.
Now I don't think Apple prevents this out of malicious reasons. It's likely a vestige of their older restriction mechanisms which they haven't gotten around to changing because most people do in fact just create apps for things like music playlists.
But I seriously doubt there is any good UI reason to prevent a tab in Safari from queuing a playlist, any more than there is for preventing native app from doing so.
- sitharus 9y agoFrom observing non-techy people it's because of intent. When you go to YouTube or Pandora or whatever you intend to make your phone make noise. When you follow a random link from your Facebook news feed on to an unknown website with a 'funny' article you don't. This is why autoplay videos are now blocked from playing audio as well. This can't be resolved with a confirmation dialog as people don't read those either. I do hope Apple add support for PWAs in the future, though perhaps with some very guarded APIs available to avoid exfiltration of contact lists and excessive background work etc.
- swebs 9y ago>How is this any different than music playing on say Google Play Music on my iPhone? Because when I'm browsing the internet, random websites don't use Google Play Music as an attack vector for some autoplaying video that I never asked to see.
- Angostura 9y agoI can have 30 tabs open in Safari on iOS. It would drive me absolutely potty trying to find the one that had decided to start playing advert audio.
- mceoin 9y agoSurely we can improve the Safari UI to overcome this. (Thinking of how effective chrome tabs on desktop that show which tab is playing audio)
- Angostura 9y agoDon't care. Don't want to have to unlock my phone in a meeting and sort though the tabs to stop the racket.
- mthoms 9y agoThis could be as easy as: 1. Open control center. 2. Control music from there. 3. There is no step 3.
- kalleboo 9y agoYou hit pause, 5 minutes later the webpage starts playing again. So now we need to add a "block webpage" button to control center?
- rapind 9y agoAndroid w/ Chrome will keep playing audio for a website when I lock my phone (I use it here: http://listentothe.cloud/ http://listentothe.cloud/), and the pause / play / skip controls are available on the lock screen. One touch required to pause it, same as any native music apps. It's super convenient and I'm surprised iOS doesn't offer the same? Seems like a no-brainer no-risk feature to me.
- yoz-y 9y agoThe only way I think this could be done is to only allow autoplay for webpages that have been added to the homescreen. Allowing background play for tabs in Safari would be insane and I hope that will not happen.