This plugin wraps around your existing audio code to allow it to run in the background or with the screen turned off, and allows your app to interact with headset buttons, the Android lock screen and notification, iOS control center, wearables and Android Auto. It is suitable for:

• Music players
• Text-to-speech readers
• Podcast players
• Video players
• Navigators
• More!

You encapsulate your audio code in a background task which runs in a special isolate that continues to run when your UI is absent. Your background task implements callbacks to respond to playback requests coming from your Flutter UI, headset buttons, the lock screen, notification, iOS control center, car displays and smart watches:

You can implement these callbacks to play any sort of audio that is appropriate for your app, such as music files or streams, audio assets, text to speech, synthesised audio, or combinations of these.

If you'd like to help with any missing features, please join us on the GitHub issues page.

Audio focus, interruptions (e.g. phone calls), mixing, ducking and the configuration of your app's audio category and attributes, are now handled by the audio_session package. Read the Migration Guide for details.

Yes! audio_service is designed to let you implement the audio logic however you want, using whatever plugins you want. You can use your favourite audio plugins such as just_audio, flutter_radio, flutter_tts, and others, within your background audio task. There are also plugins like just_audio_service that provide default implementations of BackgroundAudioTask to make your job easier.

Note that this plugin will not work with other audio plugins that overlap in responsibility with this plugin (i.e. background audio, iOS control center, Android notifications, lock screen, headset buttons, etc.)

Wrap your / route's widget tree in a `AudioServiceWidget:

void main() => runApp(new MyApp());
class MyApp extends StatelessWidget {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return MaterialApp(
      title: 'Audio Service Demo',
      home: AudioServiceWidget(child: MainScreen()),
    );
  }
}

Start your audio task in a background isolate with a media notification. Android notifications have some additional customisability (options with the android prefix). All supported options are shown below:

  RaisedButton(
    child: Text("Start"),
    onPressed: () =>   AudioService.start(
      backgroundTaskEntrypoint: _entrypoint,
      androidNotificationChannelName: "Channel name",
      androidNotificationChannelDescription: "Channel description",
      androidNotificationColor: 0xFF2196f3,
      androidNotificationIcon: 'mipmap/ic_launcher',
      androidShowNotificationBadge: false,
      androidNotificationClickStartsActivity: true,
      androidNotificationOngoing: false,
      androidStopForegroundOnPause: false,
      androidEnableQueue: false,
      androidArtDownscaleSize: const Size(96, 96),
      fastForwardInterval: const Duration(seconds: 10),
      rewindInterval: const Duration(seconds: 10),
    ),
  ),

Interact with your background audio task via the AudioService API:

  // Stop the background audio task
  RaisedButton(child: Text("Stop"), onPressed: AudioService.stop),
  // Play/resume playback
  RaisedButton(child: Text("Play"), onPressed: AudioService.play),
  // Pause playback
  RaisedButton(child: Text("Pause"), onPressed: AudioService.pause),

Refer to the full documentation for more (addQueueItem, addQueueItemAt, removeQueueItem, addQueueItems, updateQueue, updateMediaItem, click, prepare, prepareFromMediaId, playFromMediaId, playMediaItem, skipToQueueItem, seekTo, skipToNext, skipToPrevious, fastForward, rewind, setRepeatMode, setShuffleMode, setRating, setSpeed, seekBackward, seekForward, customAction).

Listen to state changes:

  // Display current state
  StreamBuilder<PlaybackState>(
      stream: AudioService.playbackStateStream,
      builder: (context, snapshot) => Text(
          "${snapshot.data?.processingState}\n"
          "${snapshot.data?.playing ?? false ? 'playing' : 'not playing'}",
          textAlign: TextAlign.center)),
  // Display current media item
  StreamBuilder<MediaItem>(
      stream: AudioService.currentMediaItemStream,
      builder: (context, snapshot) => Text(
          "Now playing: ${snapshot.data?.title}", textAlign: TextAlign.center)),
  // Display current position
  StreamBuilder<MediaItem>(
      stream: AudioService.positionStreamm,
      builder: (context, snapshot) => Text(
          "Position: ${snapshot.data}", textAlign: TextAlign.center)),

Define the callbacks for onStart, onStop, onPlay and onPause in your background audio task. This will run in a separate isolate detachable from your UI. The following example will play a song using the just_audio plugin:

// Must be a top-level function
void _entrypoint() => AudioServiceBackground.run(() => AudioPlayerTask());

class AudioPlayerTask extends BackgroundAudioTask {
  final _player = AudioPlayer(); // e.g. just_audio
  
  onStart(Map<String, dynamic> params) async {
    final mediaItem = MediaItem(
      id: "https://foo.bar/baz.mp3",
      album: "Foo",
      title: "Bar",
    );
    // Tell the UI and media notification what we're playing.
    AudioServiceBackground.setMediaItem(mediaItem);
    // Listen to state changes on the player...
    _player.playerStateStream.listen((playerState) {
      // ... and forward them to all audio_service clients.
      AudioServiceBackground.setState(
        playing: playerState.playing,
        // Every state from the audio player gets mapped onto an audio_service state.
        processingState: {
          ProcessingState.none: AudioProcessingState.none,
          ProcessingState.loading: AudioProcessingState.connecting,
          ProcessingState.buffering: AudioProcessingState.buffering,
          ProcessingState.ready: AudioProcessingState.ready,
          ProcessingState.completed: AudioProcessingState.completed,
        }[playerState.processingState],
        // Tell clients what buttons/controls should be enabled in the
        // current state.
        controls: [
          playerState.playing ? MediaControl.pause : MediaControl.play,
          MediaControl.stop,
        ],
      );
    });
    // Play when ready.
    _player.play();
    // Start loading something (will play when ready).
    await _player.setUrl(mediaItem.id);
  }

  onPlay() => _player.play();
  onPause() => _player.pause();
  onStop() async {
    // Dispose of any resources.
    await _player.dispose();
    // Shut down the background task.
    await super.onStop();
  }
}

These callbacks will be called not only when triggered by your Flutter UI, but also by headset buttons, the notification, lock screen, etc.

Refer to the full documentation for more (onClick, onPrepare, onPrepareFromMediaId, onPlayFromMediaId, onPlayMediaItem, onAddQueueItem, onUpdateQueue, onUpdateMediaItem, onAddQueueItemAt, onRemoveQueueItem, onSkipToNext, onSkipToPrevious, onFastForward, onRewind, onSkipToQueueItem, onSeekTo, onSetRating, onSetRepeatMode, onSetShuffleMode, onSeekBackward, onSeekForward, onSetSpeed, onCustomAction, onTaskRemoved, onClose).

If you are instead building a text-to-speech reader, you could implement these callbacks differently:

import 'package:flutter_tts/flutter_tts.dart';
class ReaderBackgroundTask extends BackgroundAudioTask {
  final _tts = FlutterTts();
  String article;
  
  onStart() async {
    // Tell clients what we're listening to
    await AudioServiceBackground.setMediaItem(MediaItem(album: "Business Insider", ...));
    // Tell clients that we're now playing
    await AudioServiceBackground.setState(
      playing: true,
      processingState: AudioProcessingState.ready,
      controls: [MediaControl.stop],
    );
    // Start speaking
    _tts.speak(article);
  }
  
  onStop() async {
    await _tts.stop();
    await AudioServiceBackground.setState(
      playing: false,
      processingState: AudioProcessingState.stopped,
      controls: [MediaControl.play],
    );
    await super.onStop();
  }
}

See the full example for how to handle queues/playlists, seeking, headset button clicks and media artwork.

Note that your UI and background task run in separate isolates and do not share memory. The only way they communicate is via message passing. Your Flutter UI will only use the AudioService API to communicate with the background task, while your background task will only use the AudioServiceBackground API to interact with the UI and other clients.

You can also send messages to your background audio task from another background callback (e.g. android_alarm_manager) by manually connecting to it:

await AudioService.connect(); // Note: the "await" is necessary!
AudioService.play();

If your app uses audio, you should tell the operating system what kind of usage scenario your app has and how your app will interact with other audio apps on the device. Different audio apps often have unique requirements. For example, when a navigator app speaks driving instructions, a music player should duck its audio while a podcast player should pause its audio. Depending on which one of these three apps you are building, you will need to configure your app's audio settings and callbacks to appropriately handle these interactions.

Use the audio_session package to change the default audio session configuration for your app. E.g. for a podcast player, you may use:

final session = await AudioSession.instance;
await session.configure(AudioSessionConfiguration.speech());

Each time you invoke an audio plugin to play audio, that plugin will activate your app's shared audio session to inform the operating system that your app is actively playing audio. Depending on the configuration set above, this will also inform other audio apps to either stop playing audio, or possibly continue playing at a lower volume (i.e. ducking). You normally do not need to activate the audio session yourself, however if the audio plugin you use does not activate the audio session, you can activate it yourself:

// Activate the audio session before playing audio.
if (await session.setActive(true)) {
  // Now play audio.
} else {
  // The request was denied and the app should not play audio
}

When another app activates its audio session, it similarly may ask your app to pause or duck its audio. Once again, the particular audio plugin you use may automatically pause or duck audio when requested. However, if it does not, you can respond to these events yourself by listening to session.interruptionEventStream. Similarly, if the audio plugin doesn't handle unplugged headphone events, you can respond to these yourself by listening to session.becomingNoisyEventStream. For more information, consult the documentation for audio_session.

Note: If your app uses a number of different audio plugins, e.g. for audio recording, or text to speech, or background audio, it is possible that those plugins may internally override each other's audio session settings since there is only a single audio session shared by your app. Therefore, it is recommended that you apply your own preferred configuration using audio_session after all other audio plugins have loaded. You may consider asking the developer of each audio plugin you use to provide an option to not overwrite these global settings and allow them be managed externally.

These instructions assume that your project follows the new project template introduced in Flutter 1.12. If your project was created prior to 1.12 and uses the old project structure, you can update your project to follow the new project template.

Additionally:

1. Edit your project's AndroidManifest.xml file to declare the permission to create a wake lock, and add component entries for the <service> and <receiver>:

<manifest ...>
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK"/>
  <uses-permission android:name="android.permission.FOREGROUND_SERVICE"/>
  
  <application ...>
    
    ...
    
    <service android:name="com.ryanheise.audioservice.AudioService">
      <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.media.browse.MediaBrowserService" />
      </intent-filter>
    </service>

    <receiver android:name="com.ryanheise.audioservice.MediaButtonReceiver" >
      <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="android.intent.action.MEDIA_BUTTON" />
      </intent-filter>
    </receiver> 
  </application>
</manifest>

2. Starting from Flutter 1.12, you will need to disable the shrinkResources setting in your android/app/build.gradle file, otherwise the icon resources used in the Android notification will be removed during the build:

android {
    compileSdkVersion 28

    ...

    buildTypes {
        release {
            signingConfig ...
            shrinkResources false // ADD THIS LINE
        }
    }
}

Insert this in your Info.plist file:

	<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
	<array>
		<string>audio</string>
	</array>

The example project may be consulted for context.

The minimum supported macOS version is 10.12.2 (though this could be changed with some work in the future).
Modify the platform line in macos/Podfile to look like the following:

platform :osx, '10.12.2'

• Tutorial: walks you through building a simple audio player while explaining the basic concepts.
• Full example: The example subdirectory on GitHub demonstrates both music and text-to-speech use cases.
• Frequently Asked Questions
• API documentation