Prebuilt libraries support

react-native-audio-api can link a number of prebuilt third-party libraries that are downloaded at build time. They enable additional decoding and streaming features, but also add several megabytes to the resulting application binary, so each one can be toggled with a build flag.

Library set	Default	Flag	What it adds
FFmpeg (libavcodec, libavformat, libavutil, libswresample)	off	enableFFmpeg	Remote URL streaming (HTTP byte ranges), HLS (.m3u8), remote URL metadata — see Runtime flags.
Static libs (libopus, libopusfile, libogg, libvorbis, libvorbisenc, libvorbisfile)	on	disableStaticExternalLibs	Decoding ogg, opus, oga files

The flags are independent and can be combined.

FFmpeg is opt-in

Apps that would like to decode HLS or make use of URL streaming have to enable it explicitly (see below). Use isFfmpegEnabled to branch at runtime.

Enabling FFmpeg

Expo

Add an entry in the Audio API Expo plugin configuration:

"enableFFmpeg": true

iOS

Add an entry to the Podfile (before the targets), then run pod install:

ENV['ENABLE_AUDIOAPI_FFMPEG'] = '1'

Android

In gradle.properties:

enableAudioapiFFmpeg=true

With FFmpeg enabled, the FFmpeg binaries are downloaded during pod install / the first Gradle build and linked into the app. FFmpeg is distributed under the LGPL — see THIRD_PARTY.md in the repository for the notice that applies to FFmpeg-enabled builds.

Disabling other external libraries

This removes the bundled Opus / Ogg / Vorbis static libraries. With this flag enabled, attempts to decode .ogg, .opus, or .oga files through AudioContext.decodeAudioData (or any other decoding path) will return an error — those formats are handled inside miniaudio via the now-disabled custom backends.

Expo

Add an entry in the Audio API Expo plugin configuration:

"disableStaticExternalLibs": true

iOS

Add an entry to the Podfile:

ENV['DISABLE_AUDIOAPI_STATIC_EXTERNAL_LIBS'] = '1'

Android

In gradle.properties:

disableAudioapiStaticExternalLibs=true