AudioContext Interrupted State

Category: Multimedia
Type: New or changed feature
Status: Enabled by default (Chrome 136)
Intent stage: None

Summary

The current Web Audio API lacks a mechanism for the User Agent (UA) to interrupt playback for scenarios such as exclusive audio access (VoIP) or when a laptop lid is closed. To address this, we propose adding an "interrupted" state to AudioContextState. This new state would allow the UA to pause playback in these scenarios and enable web applications to respond appropriately.

Motivation

Currently, there is no way for the User Agent (UA) to interrupt a Web Audio API AudioContext playback on its own - i.e., the suspension must happen in response to a user action. There are scenarios where the UA must be able to interrupt audio playback on its own: - Interrupt an AudioContext when another application requires exclusive access to audio hardware; - Audio Session API (https://w3c.github.io/audio-session/) - "media-playback-while-not-visible" permission policy (https://chromestatus.com/feature/5082950457884672)

Standards & signals

Specification: https://webaudio.github.io/web-audio-api/#dom-audiocontextstate-interrupted
Firefox: Positive — Mozilla helped review and merge this feature into the Web Audio specification
Safari: Positive — Safari is supportive and already has a prototype implemented to support the Audio Session API.
Web developers: Positive — Even though this feature has not been explicitly asked by web developers, it is required to make other in-development browser APIs to work properly with Web Audio - e.g. media-playback-while-not-visible permission policy and the Audio Session API.
Tracking bug: https://issues.chromium.org/issues/374805121

Explainers: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/AudioContextInterruptedState/explainer.md

View on chromestatus.com