HTML5 Audio can't play through Javascript unless triggered manually once
Well, for my purposes, here's what I did:
Luckily, before the user can trigger the behavior to start audio, they have to click a button. I set the volume of the element to 0.0, and have it "play" when they click this button.
After the sound is played silently, I simply set the volume property back to 1.0, and it plays without user intervention just fine.
In my case this was an easy solution:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/28011906/4622767
Copy & paste this in your chrome:
chrome://flags/#autoplay-policyMy web app has many page reload so I can't force the user to press a button every time; but it is for internal usage, so I can force the users to use chrome and configure that option.
I know that in mobile safari any javascript call to play() must be in the same call stack as a user initialted click event. Spoofing the the click with a javascript trigger won't work either.
On my nexus 7 I can confirm that unless the javascript was triggered by a user click, it does not play.