iOS check if application has access to microphone

Question

With the introduction of iOS 7, applications have to request microphone access when they want to record audio.

How do I check if the application has access to the microphone?
In the iOS 8 SDK I can use the AVAudioSessionRecordPermission enum, but how do I check this in iOS 7?

Info:
I don't want to request permission, I just want to check if the app has access to the microphone. (Like Location access):

if ([CLLocationManager authorizationStatus] == kCLAuthorizationStatusDenied) {
    // Do something
}

Answer 1

You can check the with recordPermission(), which has been available since iOS 8.

Keep in mind that starting with iOS 10, you must set the NSMicrophoneUsageDescription property in your info.plist for microphone permissions and include a message for the user. This message is shown to the user at time of the request. Finally, if localizing your app, be sure to include your plist strings for translation.

Failure to do so will result in a crash when attempting to access the microphone.

This answer has been cleaned up again for Swift 4.x

import AVFoundation

switch AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().recordPermission {
case AVAudioSessionRecordPermission.granted:
    print("Permission granted")
case AVAudioSessionRecordPermission.denied:
    print("Pemission denied")
case AVAudioSessionRecordPermission.undetermined:
    print("Request permission here")
    AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().requestRecordPermission({ (granted) in
        // Handle granted
    })
}

Objective-C

I have tested this code with iOS 8 for the purpose of checking for microphone permission and obtaining the current state.

switch ([[AVAudioSession sharedInstance] recordPermission]) {
    case AVAudioSessionRecordPermissionGranted:

        break;
    case AVAudioSessionRecordPermissionDenied:

        break;
    case AVAudioSessionRecordPermissionUndetermined:
        // This is the initial state before a user has made any choice
        // You can use this spot to request permission here if you want
        break;
    default:
        break;
}

As always, make sure to import AVFoundation.