I've built a course in 360 utilizing mostly video. The first interactive slide that has audio on the timeline does not play on Mac, Safari version 12.0.3. There are a few more audio clips that play just fine in the layers, it's only the main timeline audio that will not play. Furthermore, the timeline continues without the audio. Is this possibly a security feature of Safari that the user has to interact with the slide for the audio to play?
Apple no longer allows media to autoplay in Safari 11+. As a result, an audio clip might not work on the first slide of a Storyline course. This article explains how to update your courses so learners have the best experience in Safari.
Thanks for the reply and I understand the Safari security changes as well as Chrome. My problem is that the first 3 slides are video, then the fourth has audio on the timeline. I'm trying a work around to have the user click another play button when they reach this slide which is kind of wonky. I'm also concerned for other slides that have audio on the timeline.
We are also going to test if we put an audio clip on the first slide along with the video, that the play button will cover both throughout the training.
If there are videos on the first few slides that are automatically playing, that should allow your audio to play as well, unless your slides are set to advance automatically without user interaction. Do you see the play button prior to the start of the videos and do they have audio as well?
Are your slide audio files set to play based on the timeline starting or are there any user-initiated triggers?
I have the Play button when course starts, slide 1 being video that has audio embedded. The audio on slide 4 is based on the slide starting. No triggers. No auto-advance.
I've had similar issues reported with Safari not playing audio for my students, for courses published with the March 5 update to Storyline 3. My courses are all auto-play, so if I'm reading all the information correctly, all of the auto-play content with audio will not play correctly on Safari?
The security update sounds like it is meant to address an issue where content (audio) plays unsolicited in a browser. However, with Storyline courses in use, the user is clicking to open the presentation, so there is a click. However what it sounds like Storyline reps are saying is that each slide in the presentation is treated as a new interaction, therefore if the slide auto advances, the browser will prevent audio from playing on each of the slides.
I feel like this is a poor user experience to have to click advance on every slide. Many of our slides are very short, 5-10 seconds, while others may last several minutes. On the back-end, it's really a decision of how to organize the presentation so that the course designer can keep everything straight. We don't want the back-end to be a limitation on the front-end. We want the user experience to be as seamless as possible, and as intuitive as possible. Adding required "click-to-advance" functionality, at irregular intervals (10 seconds, or several minutes) that don't actually require any feedback or real interaction from the student is a negative for the student experience. We feel a better experience is to reserve student interactions for those times in the course when they actually need to provide feedback, such as completing an activity or answering a quiz.
So am I understanding correctly that there is currently no solution for Safari for auto-play content with audio? The "solution" is either to disable auto-play, or to use a browser other than Safari?
The autoplay changes were implemented by Safari to deal with any media playing unsolicited in a browser - and that would include when a learner clicks to open a course or new window. Once that window is open the browser is looking for a click in that window from the user to initiate the media.
Learners using Safari 11+ will see a play button when they launch or resume a course with audio or video on the first slide. Clicking the play button starts the course and allows the media to play. Audio and video on other slides should play as expected (unless your slides are set to advance automatically without user interaction).
Since your course isn't playing the media once initiated, I'd want to have our Support Team take a look and do some additional testing. If you're able to share it with us, you can upload using our case submission form and the team will delete all files when done testing. Let me know and I'll follow along too!
I'm wondering if this is the same issue i'm having, although it sounds slightly different. I am not experiencing it in Safari 11.1 but I just screenshared with a coworker who showed me that in safari 12.1, if he immediately clicks the "next" button to go to the next slide, the audio plays fine, so long as he didn't wait.
On any slide of the course, if he waited, say, 30 seconds to click the next button to advance to the next slide, after the slide he was on had reached the end.... the slide played, but no audio. If he clicked "prev" and then "next" again in succession, the audio was there.
But any time that he waited a minute before clicking next to go to the next slide... the next slide plays with no audio.
Thanks for reaching out, Eric. Happy to help you sort what's happening here!
To make sure I understand the behavior you and your teammate are encountering in Safari 12.1:
The audio does not automatically play even though the slide is set to advance automatically.
The audio plays after revisiting a previous slide and clicking back to the slide with the audio.
Let me know if I'm off-base. And if you're able to share a sample file with me for testing, that would be gold! You can send it privately to me here. I'll let you know what I find, and will delete it after troubleshooting!
We just launched the newest version Storyline 360, v3.30.19518.0 this morning which fixed the issue where audio played inconsistently in versions of Safari 12 on macOS Mojave.
The next step is to update Storyline 360 by heading to your Articulate 360 desktop app and clicking "Update" next to Storyline 360.
As always, we are happy to answer any questions you have by posting in this discussion or you can contact our Support Engineers directly.
Hey Folks. I'm pulling my hair out on this one. I am using the latest version of Storyline 360 3.49.24347.0
my QA person is on a Mac Mohave with Safari 12.0.2
She will be working along fine on a course and out of the blue, a slide's audio won't play. she'll hit the rewind button and it will play. we have about 6 courses on the go and she keeps reporting this problem in review. I finally resurrected my mac with the same setup and sure enough. certain slides won't play audio the first time through. I'll go to the previous slide and then back and it plays perfectly. Normally I would say don't use Safari but because of Covid and people working from home, we can't control what people are using. I have spent probably 2 days trying to troubleshoot this and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why one slide won't work. then another one doesn't. I moved the audio file a smidge to the right on the offending slide and it seemed to work, then the next slide which worked before now doesn't work. It almost feels like a buffering issue. HELP!
Good call on opening a case with our Support Engineers!
We’ve sent you a confirmation email letting you know that we’ve received your case. Your case has been assigned to my teammate, Georvy — You’re in great hands! You’ll hear from Georvy shortly.
Rob by chance do you know if there is any delay in the movement between slides? In other words, does this occur even if the individual immediately moves from one slide to the next, or could this perhaps be occurring only when the individual may have a pause of a certain amount of time in between slide transitions? Also, are you publishing with LMS settings, and if so, which LMS reporting type are you using?
Hey Eric, all good questions! I'm only experiencing this on the Articulate Review site so no LMS publishing issues at this point. There doesn't seem to be any correlation between the length of the previous slide. some are long and some are short. what I THINK might be the problem is the position of the layer on the timeline. on the offending slides, I moved the audio file down to the bottom layer republished and it seems to work now. This is of course a royal PITA as we often need to move the audio file up or down to sync with objects on the screen. it also is not a problem with ANY OTHER BROWSER!!!! I'll report back on what Georvy says. </rant>
We're running into a similar issue when testing in Safari (Version 14.0.3 (16610.4.3.1.4)) which we're not experiencing in other browsers. Course published using current build of SL360 (3.49.24347.0)
We get the play button on launch, and the course plays as expected. Then randomly on some slides, the audio file on the base layer just doesn't play on initial viewing. The audio will start playing if you click anywhere on screen and plays as expected on revisit. Other slides that are set-up exactly the same are working without an issue and I can't spot a difference in how the affected slides are set up compared to any of the other that work. I should also note that the affected slides are not the first slide to contain media in the course (previous slides that work also contain audio clips).
Slides are not set to auto-advance, so the user is required to click the next button. Also, as we test the course, we're trying to replicate a typical user experience (linearly through in one sitting), so we're not pausing the content or jumping around using the menu.
Any thoughts on what might be causing this or a work-around would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
We have had issues in the past with audio not autoplaying on slide load when there have been multiple audio files on the base layer. If that's the case in your content, try merging the audio files to see if that fixes the issue you're experiencing.
Also, had a reply to Rob that was instantly reported that might be helpful in his instance. My guess is I responded too quickly after my previous post.
Sorry, you're still running into this issue! Are you both using the latest version of Safari? (Safari 15.2)
Also, are you using Safari on a Mac or iPhone? Lastly, is the course hosted on a web server or LMS? Can you try uploading your course to Tempshare and then view it in Safari?
I'm unsure about the version of Safari. I am not experiencing the problem, but two people on my staff are and telling me about it/sending me videos of it. I can ask though. Both are viewing on a Mac. The course is in an LMS, though it is happening consistently in both the LMS and Review 360.
27 Replies
Hi James!
Apple no longer allows media to autoplay in Safari 11+. As a result, an audio clip might not work on the first slide of a Storyline course. This article explains how to update your courses so learners have the best experience in Safari.
Let me know if that helps you!
Thanks for the reply and I understand the Safari security changes as well as Chrome. My problem is that the first 3 slides are video, then the fourth has audio on the timeline. I'm trying a work around to have the user click another play button when they reach this slide which is kind of wonky. I'm also concerned for other slides that have audio on the timeline.
We are also going to test if we put an audio clip on the first slide along with the video, that the play button will cover both throughout the training.
Hi James,
If there are videos on the first few slides that are automatically playing, that should allow your audio to play as well, unless your slides are set to advance automatically without user interaction. Do you see the play button prior to the start of the videos and do they have audio as well?
Are your slide audio files set to play based on the timeline starting or are there any user-initiated triggers?
I have the Play button when course starts, slide 1 being video that has audio embedded. The audio on slide 4 is based on the slide starting. No triggers. No auto-advance.
This post was removed by the author
Hi James,
Would you be willing to share your file with us so we can take a closer look? We'd like to do some testing in Safari on our end.
If that works for you, you can upload your file privately to our support team here. We'll give it a test and let you know what we find!
I've had similar issues reported with Safari not playing audio for my students, for courses published with the March 5 update to Storyline 3. My courses are all auto-play, so if I'm reading all the information correctly, all of the auto-play content with audio will not play correctly on Safari?
The security update sounds like it is meant to address an issue where content (audio) plays unsolicited in a browser. However, with Storyline courses in use, the user is clicking to open the presentation, so there is a click. However what it sounds like Storyline reps are saying is that each slide in the presentation is treated as a new interaction, therefore if the slide auto advances, the browser will prevent audio from playing on each of the slides.
I feel like this is a poor user experience to have to click advance on every slide. Many of our slides are very short, 5-10 seconds, while others may last several minutes. On the back-end, it's really a decision of how to organize the presentation so that the course designer can keep everything straight. We don't want the back-end to be a limitation on the front-end. We want the user experience to be as seamless as possible, and as intuitive as possible. Adding required "click-to-advance" functionality, at irregular intervals (10 seconds, or several minutes) that don't actually require any feedback or real interaction from the student is a negative for the student experience. We feel a better experience is to reserve student interactions for those times in the course when they actually need to provide feedback, such as completing an activity or answering a quiz.
So am I understanding correctly that there is currently no solution for Safari for auto-play content with audio? The "solution" is either to disable auto-play, or to use a browser other than Safari?
Hi Dan,
A few notes on what you've shared:
Learners using Safari 11+ will see a play button when they launch or resume a course with audio or video on the first slide. Clicking the play button starts the course and allows the media to play. Audio and video on other slides should play as expected (unless your slides are set to advance automatically without user interaction).
Since your course isn't playing the media once initiated, I'd want to have our Support Team take a look and do some additional testing. If you're able to share it with us, you can upload using our case submission form and the team will delete all files when done testing. Let me know and I'll follow along too!
I'm wondering if this is the same issue i'm having, although it sounds slightly different. I am not experiencing it in Safari 11.1 but I just screenshared with a coworker who showed me that in safari 12.1, if he immediately clicks the "next" button to go to the next slide, the audio plays fine, so long as he didn't wait.
On any slide of the course, if he waited, say, 30 seconds to click the next button to advance to the next slide, after the slide he was on had reached the end.... the slide played, but no audio. If he clicked "prev" and then "next" again in succession, the audio was there.
But any time that he waited a minute before clicking next to go to the next slide... the next slide plays with no audio.
I use Storyline 3 Update 6 3.6.18...
Thanks for reaching out, Eric. Happy to help you sort what's happening here!
To make sure I understand the behavior you and your teammate are encountering in Safari 12.1:
Let me know if I'm off-base. And if you're able to share a sample file with me for testing, that would be gold! You can send it privately to me here. I'll let you know what I find, and will delete it after troubleshooting!
Hello James, Dan, and Eric!
I have good news!
We just launched the newest version Storyline 360, v3.30.19518.0 this morning which fixed the issue where audio played inconsistently in versions of Safari 12 on macOS Mojave.
The next step is to update Storyline 360 by heading to your Articulate 360 desktop app and clicking "Update" next to Storyline 360.
As always, we are happy to answer any questions you have by posting in this discussion or you can contact our Support Engineers directly.
Hey Folks. I'm pulling my hair out on this one. I am using the latest version of Storyline 360 3.49.24347.0
my QA person is on a Mac Mohave with Safari 12.0.2
She will be working along fine on a course and out of the blue, a slide's audio won't play. she'll hit the rewind button and it will play. we have about 6 courses on the go and she keeps reporting this problem in review. I finally resurrected my mac with the same setup and sure enough. certain slides won't play audio the first time through. I'll go to the previous slide and then back and it plays perfectly. Normally I would say don't use Safari but because of Covid and people working from home, we can't control what people are using. I have spent probably 2 days trying to troubleshoot this and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason why one slide won't work. then another one doesn't. I moved the audio file a smidge to the right on the offending slide and it seemed to work, then the next slide which worked before now doesn't work. It almost feels like a buffering issue. HELP!
I also just submitted a case for this as well.
Hi Rob!
Good call on opening a case with our Support Engineers!
We’ve sent you a confirmation email letting you know that we’ve received your case. Your case has been assigned to my teammate, Georvy — You’re in great hands! You’ll hear from Georvy shortly.
Rob by chance do you know if there is any delay in the movement between slides? In other words, does this occur even if the individual immediately moves from one slide to the next, or could this perhaps be occurring only when the individual may have a pause of a certain amount of time in between slide transitions? Also, are you publishing with LMS settings, and if so, which LMS reporting type are you using?
I would extend this to ask if the slide before this slide is particularly lengthy?
Hey Eric, all good questions! I'm only experiencing this on the Articulate Review site so no LMS publishing issues at this point.
There doesn't seem to be any correlation between the length of the previous slide. some are long and some are short. what I THINK might be the problem is the position of the layer on the timeline. on the offending slides, I moved the audio file down to the bottom layer republished and it seems to work now. This is of course a royal PITA as we often need to move the audio file up or down to sync with objects on the screen. it also is not a problem with ANY OTHER BROWSER!!!! I'll report back on what Georvy says. </rant>
We're running into a similar issue when testing in Safari (Version 14.0.3 (16610.4.3.1.4)) which we're not experiencing in other browsers. Course published using current build of SL360 (3.49.24347.0)
We get the play button on launch, and the course plays as expected. Then randomly on some slides, the audio file on the base layer just doesn't play on initial viewing. The audio will start playing if you click anywhere on screen and plays as expected on revisit. Other slides that are set-up exactly the same are working without an issue and I can't spot a difference in how the affected slides are set up compared to any of the other that work. I should also note that the affected slides are not the first slide to contain media in the course (previous slides that work also contain audio clips).
Slides are not set to auto-advance, so the user is required to click the next button. Also, as we test the course, we're trying to replicate a typical user experience (linearly through in one sitting), so we're not pausing the content or jumping around using the menu.
Any thoughts on what might be causing this or a work-around would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
We have had issues in the past with audio not autoplaying on slide load when there have been multiple audio files on the base layer. If that's the case in your content, try merging the audio files to see if that fixes the issue you're experiencing.
Also, had a reply to Rob that was instantly reported that might be helpful in his instance. My guess is I responded too quickly after my previous post.
You nailed it, Pete. Looks like they are all displaying as expected now.
Has anyone come up with a fix for this problem? I'm having the same exact issue described here by Pete.
We have also seen this issue resurface. We haven't found a solution yet.
Hello Sarah and Dan!
Sorry, you're still running into this issue! Are you both using the latest version of Safari? (Safari 15.2)
Also, are you using Safari on a Mac or iPhone? Lastly, is the course hosted on a web server or LMS? Can you try uploading your course to Tempshare and then view it in Safari?
I'm unsure about the version of Safari. I am not experiencing the problem, but two people on my staff are and telling me about it/sending me videos of it. I can ask though. Both are viewing on a Mac. The course is in an LMS, though it is happening consistently in both the LMS and Review 360.