Bug 295518 – REGRESSION (iOS 26): Audio Element Fails to Play on Reopen in PWA (Add to Home Screen)

• Status: NEW
• Component: Media

[Mariano Goni]

Issue:

On iOS 26, when using a PWA added to the home screen:

Open the PWA.

Play an audio file using an <audio> element.

Close the app (swipe away or press Home).

Reopen the PWA and attempt to play the audio again.

Result:
The audio does not play. No error is thrown, audio.play() resolves, but no sound is produced. The <audio> element appears stuck or unreleased by the system.

Expected Behavior:
Audio should play normally each time the app is opened.

Additional Info:

Works correctly in Safari (not in standalone mode).

Issue is consistent across audio sources.

Reproducible on iOS 26 only after "Add to Home Screen".

Test Case:
Try with a known source like soundcloud.com

Steps to Reproduce the Audio Bug on iOS 26 PWA:

Open Safari on iOS 26.

Navigate to: https://soundcloud.com

Tap the Share icon and choose “Add to Home Screen.”

Open the newly added PWA from the home screen.

Tap any playable song — (✅ working).

Close the app (swipe it away or press the Home button).

Reopen the app from the home screen.

Tap the play song button again.

Observed Result:
Nothing happens. The button disables, the status changes, but no audio is played. The audio.play() call resolves silently, with no errors, and no sound.

Expected Result:
The song should play again on each launch.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Thank you for the report! Could you please clarify whether this issue is new in iOS 26, or also affects iOS 18.x, or if that's not known?

[Mariano Goni]

This bug only affects iOS 26 (beta 1 and 2) . Since official release will be in September, we rush to have a solution for this.

[Alex Suzuki]

For the linked Web Audio bug (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=291892) I created a PWA to reproduce: https://suzukieng.github.io/wa-pwa/

The button 'HTML5 Fallback Beep' plays a beep sound via an <audio> element, see source link:
https://github.com/suzukieng/wa-pwa/blob/554d924a6c64aeb4f6e22ff44c7b9ab066bc21cf/src/main.ts#L114

I can not reproduce the behavior you mention?

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

I cannot test this right now, as adding to home screen is broken in Seed 3. Let's treat this as a regression for soundcloud.com until proven otherwise, even though this appears similar to preexisting issue in bug 291892.

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/155336513>

[Mariano Goni]

You don't need complicated webkit audio code to test this. Even with two demo mp3 fails. When you can add to home screen in iOS 26 : 00z.es/gen/playt.html  let me know if you can reproduce the issue.

[Alex Suzuki]

@Mariano: I can confirm that I can reproduce the issue with 00z.es/gen/playt.html. Yes the issue I reported was for WebAudio, but it's probably related, and my reproducer has a <audio> element option for comparison. I'm currently using an <audio> element as fallback for the WebAudio issue in PWAs on iOS because. I sincerely hope that <audio> stays operational on PWA...

One difference I can see is that in my (still working) reproducer, I set the .src on the audio element immediately before requesting playback (and also set it again when attempting to play again).

[Mariano Goni]

You could have warned us that installing iOS 26 Beta 3 makes the add to home screen not working at all. 

Now I erased some app to reinstall it, and I can't reinstall at all. The presentation of the new app I have to do is ruined by Apple. 

I hope assistants believe me. 

This situation only keeps getting worse.

[Mariano Goni]

Bug continues in production release iOS 26 and in iOS 26.1 beta 2

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

Thank you for the update! We'll take another look.

[Alexey Proskuryakov]

*** Bug 300990 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***