iOS 8 - Videos and sound files won't play from home screen web app

Question

I have an HTML5 web app which uses JWPlayer for embedded videos and podcasts. This works fine in iOS 7, both within Safari and when saved as a web app to the home screen.

In iOS 8, the videos and sound files will also play within Safari, but when I save the app to my home screen and open it from the icon, none of the media files will play.

I've tried debugging through the Safari console on my Mac, with the app running on my phone, but don't see any errors, or anything else that may be causing the problem.

If I run the app on iOS 7, the output in the Console is identical to what I'm seeing on iOS 8.

It's as if the app is trying to load the media, but if I try to navigate away from the page where the media is embedded, the app crashes and closes.

Can anyone shed any light on this, and offer a work-around? Is it a bug, or a deliberate move by Apple to limit the functionality of home screen web apps?

Thanks,

John.

Answer 1

iOS 8.3 fixes the bug. Videos are now playable from homescreen webapp, including from appcache.

Answer 2

On iOS 8 I have noticed that sometimes media will not play audio in the foreground app. The problem appears to be another app has not released the system audio and hence the foreground app is not able to play audio.

To work around this I:

• Force close other media apps (double tap then swipe up to close).
• Close Safari tabs that are open to media items (Vimeo, YouTube, web page based media players).

Then I retry the app with the media I want to play and it will usually work.