Timer turns music off

[dkzlv]

Hi!
Cool small app you created there, thanks!
Bit of a feedback:

iOS 13, iPhone X, PWA mode.
A few days ago I noticed that when the app triggers the timer to start, the music stops for some reason. I suspect your app plays some sound, which makes the system to stop all other sounds.
Also for some reason you cannot leave the app without freezing it (menu won't open, timer would stop, etc.).
So every timer forces me to trigger music again and then reboot the app. Kind of annoying :)

Seems to me working out with music turned on is more important than minor sounds.

[z-x]

Hi, thanks for reaching out!

In recent weeks Apple did pushed an system update that disabled the ability to prevent screen from dimming by playing a muted video in the background. It was the only way PWAs could do that. Currently to prevent the screen from dimming the only solution is to play a hidden video with the sound. Now, this sound can be silent, but the track needs to be played for the screen to stay visible.

This also means that each time the hidden video starts to play, any sound in the background needs to be stopped. It has nothing to do with those countdown sounds, those can be played alongside any other sounds in the system.

Unfortunately, there is no fix for this currently. If we want the screen to stay active, we need to play this hidden video with sound. And we want the screen to stay active as the countdown won't progress without it.

This happens only on iOS as Apple is trying to do anything to prevent PWAs from gaining popularity as it won't get the money from App Store. On Android devices we have Wake Lock API that allows us to prevent the screen from dimming as we can do in any normal app. If Apple decides to implement Wake Lock API for iOS it will work without any update needed to pushu.ps. If they won't do that then I guess native apps win. :<

[dkzlv]

Thanks for reply!

Holy moly, what a mess.
I always knew Apple secretly hated web apps, but I never thought they would actively harm the technology with unreasonable software patches. Hope this madness will eventually be done with.

Closing this for now!

[z-x]

I will leave this opened so it will be clear that I'm aware and waiting for any fix to come. :)