AudioContext: suspend() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2021.

The suspend() method of the AudioContext Interface suspends the progression of time in the audio context, temporarily halting audio hardware access and reducing CPU/battery usage in the process — this is useful if you want an application to power down the audio hardware when it will not be using an audio context for a while.

This method will cause an INVALID_STATE_ERR exception to be thrown if called on an OfflineAudioContext.

Syntax

js
suspend()

Parameters

None.

Return value

A Promise that resolves with undefined. The promise is rejected if the context has already been closed.

Examples

The following snippet is taken from our AudioContext states demo (see it running live.) When the suspend/resume button is clicked, the AudioContext.state is queried — if it is running, suspend() is called; if it is suspended, resume() is called. In each case, the text label of the button is updated as appropriate once the promise resolves.

js
susResBtn.onclick = () => {
  if (audioCtx.state === "running") {
    audioCtx.suspend().then(() => {
      susResBtn.textContent = "Resume context";
    });
  } else if (audioCtx.state === "suspended") {
    audioCtx.resume().then(() => {
      susResBtn.textContent = "Suspend context";
    });
  }
};

Specifications

Specification
Web Audio API
# dom-audiocontext-suspend

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also