Hello,
I’m new here. I'm developing an iOS app and I’d like to know whether it is possible to detect if a phone call is being recorded by another app running in the background.
I’ve already reviewed the documentation for CallKit and AVAudioSession, but I couldn’t find anything related. My expectation was that iOS might provide some callback or API to indicate if a call is being recorded (third-party apps), but so far I haven’t found a way.
My questions are:
Does iOS expose any API to detect if a call is being recorded?
If not, is there any indirect, Apple's policy compliant method (e.g., microphone usage events) that can be relied upon?
Or is this something that iOS explicitly prevents for privacyreasons?
Expecting solutions that align with Apple’s policies and would be accepted under the App Store Review Guidelines.
Thanks in advance for any guidance.
Does iOS expose any API to detect if a call is being recorded?
No.
If not, is there any indirect, … method … that can be relied upon?
No.
The key thing here is “relied upon”. You run into problems when you try to infer high-level semantics from low-level operations. See this post, where I discuss that problem in very general terms.
Or is this something that iOS explicitly prevents for privacy reasons?
This is getting into why question territory, a term I explain in Quinn’s Top Ten DevForums Tips. Unless Apple has explicitly documented why we did something, I can’t speculate here on the forums.
However, there’s a flip side to that. If you’d like to see an API for this, you should absolutely file an enhancement request that explains your requirement. And if that comes back as ‘not to be fixed’, you have your answer.
If you do file an ER, post the bug number, just for the record.
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Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
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