HTML5 Audio Looping

Question

I've been playing with HTML5 audio recently, and though I can get it to play the sound it only ever will play once. No matter what I try (setting the properties, event handlers, etc) I can't seem to get it to loop.

Here's the basic code I'm using:

//myAudio is declared at a global scope, so it doesn't get garbage collected.
myAudio = new Audio('someSound.ogg');
myAudio.loop = true;
myAudio.play();

I'm testing using Chrome (6.0.466.0 dev) and Firefox (4 beta 1), both of which seem happy to ignore my requests for looping. Any ideas?

UPDATE: The loop property is now supported in all major browsers.

Answer 1

While loop is specified, it is not implemented in any browser I am aware of Firefox [thanks Anurag for pointing this out]. Here is an alternate way of looping that should work in HTML5 capable browsers:

var myAudio = new Audio('someSound.ogg'); 
myAudio.addEventListener('ended', function() {
    this.currentTime = 0;
    this.play();
}, false);
myAudio.play();

Answer 2

To add some more advice combining the suggestions of @kingjeffrey and @CMS: You can use loop where it is available and fall back on kingjeffrey's event handler when it isn't. There's a good reason why you want to use loop and not write your own event handler: As discussed in the Mozilla bug report, while loop currently doesn't loop seamlessly (without a gap) in any browser I know of, it's certainly possible and likely to become standard in the future. Your own event handler will never be seamless in any browser (since it has to pump around through the JavaScript event loop). Therefore, it's best to use loop where possible instead of writing your own event. As CMS pointed out in a comment on Anurag's answer, you can detect support for loop by querying the loop variable -- if it is supported it will be a boolean (false), otherwise it will be undefined, as it currently is in Firefox.

Putting these together:

myAudio = new Audio('someSound.ogg'); 
if (typeof myAudio.loop == 'boolean')
{
    myAudio.loop = true;
}
else
{
    myAudio.addEventListener('ended', function() {
        this.currentTime = 0;
        this.play();
    }, false);
}
myAudio.play();

Answer 3

Your code works for me on Chrome (5.0.375), and Safari (5.0). Doesn't loop on Firefox (3.6).

See example.

var song = new Audio("file");
song.loop = true;
document.body.appendChild(song);​

Answer 4

Simplest way is:

bgSound = new Audio("sounds/background.mp3");
bgSound.loop = true;
bgSound.play();

Answer 5

var audio = new Audio("http://rho.nu/pub/Game%20Of%20Thrones%20-%20Main%20Theme%20-%20Soundtrack.mp3");

audio.addEventListener('canplaythrough', function() {
    this.currentTime = this.duration - 10;
    this.loop = true;
    this.play();
});

Just set loop = true in the canplaythrough eventlistener.

http://jsbin.com/ciforiwano/1/edit?html,css,js,output

Answer 6

Try using jQuery for the event listener, it will then work in Firefox.

myAudio = new Audio('someSound.ogg');

$(myAudio).bind('ended', function()  {
    myAudio.currentTime = 0;
    myAudio.play();
});

myAudio.play();

Something like that.

Answer 7

I did it this way,

<audio controls="controls" loop="loop">
<source src="someSound.ogg" type="audio/ogg" />
</audio>

and it looks like this

Answer 8

This works and it is a lot easier to toggle that the methods above:

use inline: onended="if($(this).attr('data-loop')){ this.currentTime = 0; this.play(); }"

Turn the looping on by $(audio_element).attr('data-loop','1'); Turn the looping off by $(audio_element).removeAttr('data-loop');

Answer 9

You could try a setInterval, if you know the exact length of the sound. You could have the setInterval play the sound every x seconds. X would be the length of your sound.