iOS 18 Adds Camera Setting to Allow iPhone Audio Playback When Shooting Video

In iOS 18, Apple has added a control in the Camera app's Settings menu that lets you choose whether audio playing on your iPhone should pause or continue when you start recording in Video mode.

allow audio playback camera setting
In previous versions of iOS, shooting in Video mode in the Camera app automatically pauses any playing audio including music and podcasts. This behavior is based on the assumption that you don't want any sound coming out of your iPhone's speakers to be picked up on the video recording, but it's no good if you want to play a soundtrack to accompany whatever you're shooting.

One way to get around this is to use the QuickTake method of recording video in Photo mode, introduced in iOS 13, which allows any audio playback to continue during shooting. The only issue is that QuickTake records in lower quality than Video mode is capable of.

But that won't matter soon, because iOS 18 lets you control what happens to audio playback in dedicated Video mode, thanks to a new Allow Audio Playback toggle. "Audio playback will not pause automatically when recording video," notes Apple under the setting. "When playing audio using the iPhone speaker, audio will be recorded in mono."

iPhone users can look forward to several new features when iOS 18 arrives in the fall, around mid-September, with new customization options, generative AI features, Siri improvements, and more. For details on everything that's new, be sure to check out our dedicated iOS 18 roundup.

Related Roundups: iOS 18, iPadOS 18
Related Forums: iOS 18, iPadOS 18

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Top Rated Comments

0-0 Avatar
9 months ago
Now we need iOS 18 to allow for multiple audio simultaneous playback.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ghostface147 Avatar
9 months ago

Can someone explain this is kindergarten language. LOL.

If i'm recording a video, it's going to pick up sound. Unless i'm missing something
Put a song on, then put your camera in video mode. Song is paused. This overrides that.
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ItchyRat2160 Avatar
9 months ago
Now can we block apps from pausing my music? Sick of Instagram, AliExpress, Tumblr, and the like turning my music off cos I scrolled past a video thumbnail when the video wasn't even playing.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
maruyama Avatar
9 months ago

Why would you need this out of curiosity. I'm glad it doesn't let you do this. Hurts my brain on my Mac
In my experience, the biggest use case is where you have music playing in the background and you’re scrolling in Safari. Just scrolling a muted video into view will take over the audio, stopping your music. If you’re scrolling on X Twitter, where there’s a lot of videos you’re scrolling past, it’s maddening! It basically makes it impossible to listen to music while using certain sites in Mobile Safari.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mannyvel Avatar
9 months ago
I always thought this was some kind of copy protection/analog hole thing.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
TheGhostWalker Avatar
9 months ago

Now we need iOS 18 to allow for multiple audio simultaneous playback.
Why would you need this out of curiosity. I'm glad it doesn't let you do this. Hurts my brain on my Mac
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)