Crashes & Audio Playback Limitations

This page concerns a specific, ongoing issue for users running iOS 13.4 or later and iPadOS 13.4 or later. For questions concerning this content or other support inquiries, please visit our support page.

Background

In March 2020, Apple released iOS and iPadOS 13.4 which severely impacted forScore and other apps that use the system’s shared music playback framework. It can cause forScore to freeze for long periods of time until the system declares it unresponsive and closes it—this can happen at launch or at any point while using the app. We have used (and continue to use) every tool at our disposal to help Apple identify and fix this bug and have taken a series of steps to mitigate the impact of this bug for our customers:

Workaround

forScore 11.2.5 (June 2020)

With forScore 11.2.5 we included an opt-in setting which avoids this issue by stopping all communication with the system’s music playback functions. It results in the loss of the ability to view or control playback for songs currently being played by other apps (like the Music app), and prevents playback of songs that forScore can’t directly access (e.g. DRMed purchases and items that are available to stream but have not been downloaded to your device).

Related post › iOS & iPadOS 13 Crashes

forScore 12.0.2 (September 2020)

Since this setting is opt-in, many users suffering from this issue were not aware of it and continued to experience problems. As such, with the release of forScore 12.0.2 in September 2020, if this bug causes a crash the workaround is automatically enabled for the next launch as a temporary safety measure to ensure that musicians can continue to access their music no matter what.

Related post › Update: iOS Crashes

forScore 12.1 (March 2021)

Based on Apple’s inability to fix this bug in a timely manner and ongoing frustration of users not aware of the cause of the problem, forScore 12.1 enables this workaround for all users by default rather than requiring them to find it and enable it manually.

What to Know

This bug affects forScore and other apps on devices running iOS 13.4 or later and iPadOS 13.4 or later, including at least 14.4 (the current version at the time this page was last updated).

Our workaround can be found in the system Settings app under “forScore” and is called “iOS & iPadOS 13.4 workaround.” If enabled (the default beginning with forScore 12.1), it limits some audio playback features in order to avoid the issues described above. When attempting to play audio that uses this framework with the workaround turned on, you will see a “Playback Limited” error message.

If the workaround is not enabled (the default with all previous versions of forScore) or if you choose to disable this workaround in order to access full audio playback, you may experience intermittent freezing and crashing issues. Note that changing this workaround does not take effect until the next time you relaunch forScore.

Going Forward

Simply put, we are gravely disappointed in Apple’s failure to resolve this critical issue and their near-total lack of communication regarding it. We’ve spent hundreds of hours trying to diagnose the issue, reproduce it, and mitigate its impact while supporting and reaching out to affected users. We’ve worked very hard (and continue to work very hard) to do right by our customers while pleading with Apple to direct their attention and resources to resolving this massive bug. Until then, we’ll continue taking steps to protect our users and ensure that they have the best possible experience while using forScore.