change UIBackgroundModes audio at runtime

Question

I have an app that plays music, and I want to enable the background modes. My audio category is set to kAudioSessionCategory_MediaPlayback and if I add the audio string in my UIBackgroundModes inside my info.plist file it keeps playing back the audio. So far so good.

Now I want to give this option to my users, to choose if the audio plays in the background or not. I tried getting the file and deleting the key but so far nothing happens. What I did was (in a selector handled by a UIButton) :

    -(void) disableBackgroundAudio:(UIButton*)button{
        NSDictionary *plistDict = [[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary];
        [plistDict setValue:@"" forKey:@"UIBackgroundModes"];
    }

If i print this value in the console, before and after, I can see that it had "audio" before, and after this is called, I get a blank string. However, if I then push the home button the audio is always playing no matter if I disabled the audio.

My guess is that this is probably not the way to update (although I'm not sure if it's even possible) the info.plist file. Is this possible at all? After all I think giving the users a choice is better for my specific app, and I've seen other apps doing it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The Info.plist is a part of you application's bundle. All files in this bundle are immutable.

Keep the audio value there and just pause the music when application enters background (in case the user turned that option off).

Answer 2

Why would you want to solve it this way? If the user does not want to hear background audio, simply shut off the music when the application goes in the background...You probably shouldnt be modifying the apps plist at runtime anyway..

Answer 3

Can't you just stop audio when your app entered the background if the user doesn't want background running? Furthermore if you want your app to fully exit if backgrounded when the user doesn't want background running then call the exit(...) Function.

But in answer to your question, no you can't change the background modes (or anything in the info.plist) at runtime.