title: Detecting the iPhone's Ring / Silent / Mute switch using AVAudioPlayer not working?
body: <p>I've tried using these methods in an attempt to detect that the Ring/Silent switch is active or not:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/287543/how-to-programatically-sense-the-iphone-mute-switch">How to programmatically sense the iPhone mute switch?</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5560555/avaudiosession-category-not-working-as-documentation-dictates">AVAudioSession category not working as documentation dictates</a></p>
  
  <p>But on my iPhone 4, the "state" value is always "Speaker" (and the length value returned by CFStringGetLength(state) is always 7). Has anyone used this method successfully? If so, on what kind of device and SDK version?</p>
  
  <p>I'm calling it like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>
  - (BOOL)deviceIsSilenced {
      CFStringRef state;
      UInt32 propertySize = sizeof(CFStringRef);
      OSStatus audioStatus = AudioSessionGetProperty(kAudioSessionProperty_AudioRoute, &propertySize, &state);
      if (audioStatus == kAudioSessionNoError) {
          NSLog(@"audio route: %@", state) // "Speaker" regardless of silent switch setting, but "Headphone" when my headphones are plugged in
          return (CFStringGetLength(state) &lt;= 0);
      }
      return NO;
  }
  
  -(BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {
  
      AVAudioSession *audioSession = [AVAudioSession sharedInstance];
      audioSession.delegate = self;
      [audioSession setCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient error:nil];
      [audioSession setActive:YES error:nil];
      NSLog(@"muted? %i", [self deviceIsSilenced]);
      ...
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I was thinking maybe some other (more accurate) kAudioSessionProperty event is fired when the physical switch on the phone is ... switched. Anyone have any ideas?</p>
  
  <p>By the way, I'm using the AVAudioSessionCategoryAmbient category with my [AVAudioSession sharedInstance].</p>
  
  <p><strong>Update:</strong> I've also tried using different audio categories, and a handful of other audio session properties, none seem to fire when muting/unmuting the switch. :(</p>
  
  <p><strong>Jan. 1, 2014 Update:</strong> It's a bit of a hack, and I encountered a crash while multitasking w/ it on my iPhone 5S, but the <a href="http://sharkfood.com/content/Developers/content/Sound%20Switch/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SoundSwitch</a> library linked in the new accepted answer is the way to go if you want to detect the silent switch. It even works in iOS 7.</p>