I am building a desktop notification tool and I need to play an alert sound using the playsound library. However, whenever the audio starts, my entire script pauses until the file finishes playing. How can I run the audio in the background so my loops and logic continue to execute simultaneously? Should I be looking into the threading module, or is there a specific argument within a library that handles asynchronous playback natively in Python 3?
3 answers
The playsound library is inherently synchronous, meaning it will always block your main thread. To get around this, the most common "Pythonic" approach is using the threading module. You can wrap your play command in a function and start it as a separate thread: threading.Thread(target=playsound, args=('file.mp3',), daemon=True).start(). Setting daemon=True ensures the audio stops if your main program exits. Alternatively, consider using the pygame.mixer or simpleaudio libraries, as they often provide more granular control over playback states and handle background execution much more elegantly than the basic playsound package does for complex automation tasks.
Are you specifically tied to using the playsound library, or are you open to using a more robust framework like pygame which has built-in non-blocking playback features?
You just need to import threading and run the sound function in its own thread. This prevents the .play() call from hijacking your main loop's execution time.
Exactly, Larry. I tried this on a recent project for iCertGlobal and it worked perfectly. It’s the easiest way to keep the UI responsive while adding audio cues to a Python application.
Steven, I’ve found that while pygame is powerful, it’s a bit heavy just for playing a notification sound. If Karen wants to stay lightweight, the threading approach with playsound is usually the path of least resistance. However, she should be aware that playsound can be finicky with different OS versions. If she's on Windows, using the winsound module is another zero-dependency way to play sounds asynchronously using the SND_ASYNC flag.