bug: cannot hear playback of text-to-speech audio on PWA

[nekomeowww]

Describe the bug

For iOS devices, if Silent mode toggled on, websites & PWA audio will be played but no volume.

System Info

Mobile. iOS 26.1

Validations

• Follow our Code of Conduct
• Read the Contributing Guide.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.
• Check that this is a concrete bug. For Q&A, please open a GitHub Discussion instead.

Contributions

• I am willing to submit a PR to fix this issue
• I am willing to submit a PR with failing tests (actually just go ahead and do it, thanks!)

[nekomeowww]

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21122418/ios-webaudio-only-works-on-headphones/46839941#46839941
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40789136/ios-ringer-switch-mutes-web-audio

Haha... what a shame for iOS...

[nekomeowww]

Geez, I can't believe I am writing this too!

On the other hand, there are things I still don't understand: other websites like YouTube played audio during my testing; how? Maybe because those are HTML5 new Audio() .play() elements, instead of using the Web Audio API?

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/76291413/no-sound-on-ios-only-web-audio-api
• https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=237322
• https://forum.playcanvas.com/t/why-does-audio-only-work-on-ios-when-phone-mute-button-set-to-loud/27668/2

Yeah so how does YouTube on Web work?

Workaround:

• https://www.audjust.com/blog/unmute-web-audio-on-ios
• https://github.com/swevans/unmute
• https://github.com/feross/unmute-ios-audio

[NJX-njx]

I'd like to work on this. iOS Silent mode issue requires setting the AudioContext to play through the media playback category instead of ambient. Will investigate adding webkit-playsinline and proper AudioContext resume/unlock logic triggered by user interaction, plus the Web Audio API playsInline configuration for PWA context.