How to play a sound in your Swift iOS app using Chirp

I wrote Chirp because, frankly, although using AVFoundation is incredibly easy, it’s not easy enough — especially for new developers.

Chirp turns the following code:

if let soundURL = NSBundle.mainBundle().URLForResource("boop", withExtension: "wav") {
    var mySound: SystemSoundID = 0
    AudioServicesCreateSystemSoundID(soundURL, &mySound)
    AudioServicesPlaySystemSound(mySound);
}

Into:

Chirp.sharedManager.playSound("boop")

With Chirp, you do not need to keep track of SystemSoundIDs yourself. This is a huge bonus!

Chirp has 3 main functions

prepareSound(…)
playSound(…)
removeSound(…)

And these are the only functions you should need to prepare (load into memory), play, and remove (cleanup from memory) sounds in your app!

Example

prepareSound(…)

/* MyViewController.swift */override func viewDidLoad() {
    super.viewDidLoad()
    // Load sounds into memory
    Chirp.sharedManager.prepareSound("boop") // default extension is .wav
    Chirp.sharedManager.prepareSound("ding.mp3") // so other extensions you must name explicitly
}

playSound(…)

func submitButtonTouched(button: UIButton) {
    // Since the sound is already loaded into memory, this will play immediately
    Chirp.sharedManager.playSound("boop")     // example function that might get called when you touch a button
    submitForm() 
}

playSound(…)

func submissionDidFinish(success: Bool) {
    if success {
        // This will also play immediately because you loaded the sound into memory in ViewDidLoad()
        Chirp.sharedManager.playSound("ding.mp3")  
    } else {
        // This sound was not preloaded into memory, and therefore will not play.  Remember to prepare sounds first!
        Chirp.sharedManager.playSound("oops.mp3")
    }
}

removeSound(…)

deinit {
    // Cleanup is really simple!
    Chirp.sharedManager.removeSound("boop")
    Chirp.sharedManager.removeSound("ding.mp3")
    Chirp.sharedManager.removeSound("oops.mp3")    // If you never loaded the sounds, e.g. viewDidLoad wasn't called, or submission never failed or succeeded,
    // that's ok, because these will function as no-ops
}

I hope you find this library helpful. Please feel free to leave me feedback here, and report any issues you may find on the Github repo

Enjoy!