Detect attached audio devices iOS

Question

I'm trying to figure out how to detect which if any audio devices are connected on iphone/ipad/ipod. I know all about the audio route calls and route change callbacks but these don't tell me anything about what's attached. They only report where the audio is currently routing. I need to know, for instance, if headphones and/or bluetooth are still attached while audio is routed through the speakers. Or, for instance, if a user plugs in the headset while using bluetooth then decides to disconnect bluetooth, I need to know that the bluetooth is disconnected even as audio is still routing through headphones.

Answer 1

Unfortunately, as of iOS11, it seems there's no API to reliably get the list of the output devices that are currently attached - as soon as the current route changes, you only see 1 device (currently routed) via AVAudioSession's currentRoute.outputs, even though multiple devices may still be attached.

However, for the input, and that includes Bluetooth devices with HFP profile, if the proper Audio Session mode is used (AVAudioSessionModeVoiceChat or AVAudioSessionModeVideoChat for example), one can get the list of the available input via AVAudioSession's availableInputs, and those inputs are listed there even when that device is not an active route - this is very useful when a user is doing a manual override via MPVolumeView from Bluetooth to the speaker, for example, and since HFP is a 2-way IO (has both input and output), you can judge whether output HFP Bluetooth is still available by looking at the inputs.

BOOL isBtInputAvailable = NO;
NSArray *inputs = [[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] availableInputs];
for (AVAudioSessionPortDescription* port in inputs) {
    if ([port.portType isEqualToString:AVAudioSessionPortBluetoothHFP]) {
        isBtInputAvailable = YES;
        break;
    }
}