PowerApp No Longer Plays Sound When Minmized

[AMH10]

I have an app that keeps track of requests entered. The people who are responsible for the requests want a sound to play when a record is created. The users are loading this PowerApp on their PC either by using the web browser or using the Windows Power App application from the Microsoft Store.

I have the sound notification accomplished by using a 3 second auto looping timer:

On App Start: Count Items In Datasource and store in CountVariableA

On Start: Refresh Datasource

On End: Count Items In DataSource and store in CountVariableB. If CountVariableB is greater than CountVariableA then play an audio control and set CountVariableA to CountVariableB's value.

The issue I am running into is that the sound doesn't seem to run when the app is minimized. I'm not sure if the app is being suspended while in the background of it it is something else. Is there a way to force all the timers and data refreshes to keep running in Windows even if the app is minimized?

[GarethPrisk]

Try setting the AutoPause property to false. This keeps the Timer paused if you changed screens in the app, but MAY work for focus behavior on the app window.

[AMH10]

Thank you for the suggestion. I'll give that a try and test. I'll update how it goes.

[GarethPrisk · Accepted solution]

Got this to work.

• Add your Timer control
  • Repeat: true
  • AutoStart: true
  • AutoPause: false
  • Duration: {Your Value}
  • OnTimerStart: UpdateContext({locStartAudio: false})
  • OnTimerEnd: UpdateContext({locStartAudio: true})
• Add your Audio control, Select your file
  • AutoStart:locStartAudio

This will cause the Timer to start automatically, and loop automatically. It will also trigger the Audio to start when the Timer ends. You can tweak this as needed, for your given refresh/trigger mechanics.

The main thing is that you will need to augment the User's browsers to give the impression the tab is the 'active' tab. Here is someone else's description of how to do this. I tested this in Firefox and it works! 😎

There are likely similar solutions for other browsers. Happy coding!

[AMH10]

Thank you so much for taking the time to test this. It looks like this will work.

[GarethPrisk]

Great to hear! Hopefully this can help others who will want their apps to 'run' in a background window.