bevy-audio

Bevy 0.19 — audio

When to use this skill

• Spawn or control clips/loops through AudioPlayer and sink components.
• Build music/ambience transitions, mix categories, ducking, or pause policy.
• Add spatial sources/listeners or define the built-in HRTF/effects boundary.
• Ship audio on browsers or evaluate bevy_seedling 0.8 for a graph backend.

Use Bevy's built-in entity-based audio for straightforward clips, loops, playback control, and simple spatial stereo. Add an application mixer policy for categories and transitions. Move to an audio-graph library only when the measured/design requirement exceeds that boundary.

Canonical pattern

use bevy::{audio::Volume, prelude::*};

#[derive(Component)]
struct Music;

fn start_music(mut commands: Commands, assets: Res<AssetServer>) {
    commands.spawn((
        Name::new("Exploration music"),
        Music,
        AudioPlayer::new(assets.load("audio/exploration.ogg")),
        PlaybackSettings::LOOP.with_volume(Volume::Decibels(-9.0)),
    ));
}

fn mute_music(mut sinks: Query<&mut AudioSink, With<Music>>) {
    for mut sink in &mut sinks {
        sink.mute();
    }
}

Bevy inserts AudioSink after non-spatial playback begins and SpatialAudioSink for spatial playback. Query the sink for live volume, mute, pause, speed, position, seek, and stop. Changing PlaybackSettings or GlobalVolume does not update audio that is already playing.

PlaybackSettings::{ONCE, LOOP, DESPAWN, REMOVE} define completion ownership. An ONCE player cannot simply replay after its sink drains; remove/reinsert the audio components or spawn a new player. Removing a sink while AudioPlayer remains causes the unchanged source to start again.

Gotchas

• PlaybackSettings and GlobalVolume affect initial playback, not existing sinks.
• A sink appears only after playback starts; query it optionally.
• Drained ONCE playback is not replayable without replacing audio components.
• Removing a sink while its unchanged player remains restarts the source.
• Built-in spatial audio is stereo panning, not HRTF or a general effects graph.