muted property is not a boolean

[ZKillou]

Describe the bug
When using the property muted returned by useGlobalAudioPlayer, the value of muted is not a boolean but an object (see below)

Condensed version of my component code:

const { load, mute, muted } = useGlobalAudioPlayer();
useEffect(() => {
  load(music.path, { html5: true, autoplay: true, onend: () => {/* function */} });
}, [music, load]);
const onMute = () => {
  console.log("onMute", muted);
  mute(!muted);
};
return (<VolumeIcon onClick={onMute} className="cursor-pointer" size={34} />);

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Call useGlobalAudioPlayer
2. Log the value of muted

Expected behavior
muted should be a boolean.

Environment (please complete the following information):

• Browser/ browser version: Edge 126.0.2592.113
• Library version: 2.2.0
• React version: 18.3.1 (Next 14.2.3)
• Node version: 20.13.1

[E-Kuerschner]

@ZKillou interesting it looks like this muted variable is referencing the Howl instance - would you be interested in taking a stab at the fix? I may not be able to get to this for some time due to other priorities but I can certainly review a PR or two and get the changes published for you!

[uncvrd]

@E-Kuerschner @ZKillou hey guys, I hit this as well so I checked it out. it looks like this is because the howler.js mute function returns the howler instance (i.e. this/self) instead of the value of the mute

https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/blob/a2a47933f1ffcee659e4939a65e075fa7f25706c/src/howler.core.js#L1165

and you're calling this method to get the value

useAudioPlayer/src/audioPlayerState.ts

Line 84 in 5268fc0

muted: howl.mute(),

Some of the other methods return the value or the instance of Howler depending on how many args you pass to the function (like volume or rate) which is why those work, but looks like mute does not return the value and only the instance and is only tracked as a private property as _muted.

So maybe the muted property should just be removed since that's not something that's publicly exposed from Howler anyways?

[E-Kuerschner]

@uncvrd great observation! That always puzzled me about the Howler methods 🤔 I wonder if we remove it if we should bump a major version since it will be a breaking change. If that's the case I might consider a few other API changes and a React upgrade when I have some time over the holidays

[uncvrd]

@E-Kuerschner yea it def took me a while staring at the howler code to figure that one out! It probably would be best to make it a major version change...that being said, since the property never worked in the first place, I can't imagine it would break any existing applications anyways 😅

[E-Kuerschner]

@uncvrd I have some time set aside to work on this project in a couple of weeks. It will likely lead to a major version bump and I can cut this method out then