Detecting iPhone/iPod Touch Accessories

Josh Buhler picture Josh Buhler · Mar 20, 2009 · Viewed 7.2k times · Source

Is it possible to detect if the iPod Touch/iPhone has any headphones or other accessories connected to it?

I'm building an app that requires a microphone, and need to know if the "iSomething" has one connected or not, either via the dock connection, or using the headphone port, such as with the inline headphone/microphone accessory from Apple.

Answer

Josh Buhler picture Josh Buhler · Mar 20, 2009

Finally found it - After initializing the Audio Session object, - AudioSessionInitialize() - you can make a call to AudioSessionGetProperty, and get the value of kAudioSessionProperty_AudioInputAvailable.

AudioSessionInitialize(NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL);    
UInt32 propertySize, micConnected;
    AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_AudioInputAvailable, &propertySize, &micConnected);
    [self updateMicStatus:micConnected]; // user-created method

According to the docs for Audio Session Services, this should be used rather than using the device model (iPhone vs. iPod Touch) to determine if an audio input is available to use. You can also set up a callback function to monitor changes to this property via AudioSessionAddPropertyListener().

Not sure yet if this property also applies to devices connected via the Dock connector, but it appears to work for the headphone jack.