What this does

You give it an audio file and a few settings. It gives you back a web link. When a student opens that link and presses Start, the recording plays from beginning to end. They cannot pause it, rewind it, skip ahead or speed it up, and they only get the number of plays you allow — even if they reload the page.

You paste that link into DigiExam. Every exam you make gets its own link. You do not need a new tool or a new account each time.

Before you start

• Your recording saved as an MP3. Most programs do this with File → Export → MP3. A WAV will work but is many times larger and slower to load.
• Your DigiExam exam, ready to add a question to.

Step 1 — Get your recording ready in Google Drive

The player reads recordings straight out of Google Drive. Nothing is uploaded anywhere else and nothing is copied — your file stays in your own Drive, where you can replace or delete it whenever you like.

1. Save your recording as an MP3. In most programs that is File → Export → MP3. Mono at 96–128 kbps is plenty for speech.
2. Put it anywhere in your Google Drive — or, if your school uses one, in the shared recordings folder linked under How do I add a new recording? on Step 2, which makes it appear in the list automatically.
3. Share it. Right-click the file → Share. Under General access, change Restricted to Anyone with the link, leave the role as Viewer, press Done.
4. Press Copy link and paste it into Step 2 of the tool.

Step 2 — Build the link

1. Open the Locked Listening Player page (the address your IT team gave you — bookmark it).
2. Name the recording. Type what students should see at the top, such as Level 2 French — Listening, Track 1. Press Next.
3. Click your recording in the list. The page checks it and tells you how long it is. If it is not there yet, do Step 1 above first.
4. Set the rules. Choose how many times students may hear it, how much quiet reading time they get first, and how long the gap between plays should be. Press Create my link.

Step 3 — Test it yourself

1. Press Try it out first. This opens the page exactly as students will see it, but nothing you do counts against the play limit.
2. Press Start and listen right through. Check the sound is clear and loud enough — there is no volume control beyond the device's own.
3. Check the reading time and gap feel right. If not, close the tab, press Back and change something, and create the link again.

The lock, and what it can honestly do

With Lock the page down switched on, the player goes full screen when the student presses Start. If they then leave the page, it covers itself and stops being usable until a supervisor types the code.

The recording keeps playing behind the lock screen. That is deliberate. If it paused, switching tabs would become a pause button — exactly the thing this tool exists to prevent. A student who leaves loses the audio they miss.

What a web page cannot do. No web page can stop Cmd-Tab, Spotlight, a second monitor, or a phone on the desk. Nothing in a browser can, whatever a product claims. Real blocking comes from the software students sit the exam in — DigiExam, a kiosk-mode browser, or a managed school device. Treat this lock as what it is: the thing that stops ordinary fiddling and makes every student's sitting identical, plus a record of anyone who wandered.

The code. Give it to invigilators only, use six characters or more, and change it each exam season. It is not stored in plain text in the link, but the link is public and a short code could be worked out by someone determined. Leave the box empty and the player falls back to the school-wide code your administrator set.

At the end, if the player locked at any point, the finished screen lists every lock with its time and reason. Nothing is sent anywhere — it is there so a supervisor walking past can see whether the sitting was clean before the page is closed.

Step 4 — Put it into DigiExam

1. Press Copy link.
2. Open your exam in DigiExam and go to the listening question.
3. Paste the link into the question so students can click it.
4. Add a sentence telling students what to expect, for example:
   Click the link and press Start when you are ready. The recording cannot be paused, rewound or replayed beyond the plays allowed.
5. The one-off bit: DigiExam only lets students open approved websites. The first time anyone at school uses this, ask IT or your exams administrator to allow two addresses: this player's, and www.googleapis.com, which is where the recordings are streamed from. Step 4 of the tool lists both for you. Once done it covers every exam, so you never have to ask again.

Step 5 — On the day

• Tell students beforehand that it cannot be paused, and to have pen and paper ready.
• Have students test their headphones before the exam starts.
• Warn them about the lock — that leaving the page locks it, that the recording carries on without them, and that they must raise a hand rather than try to fix it.
• Have the supervisor code on you, on paper. Do not read it aloud.
• Keep a backup: a copy of the audio you can play over a speaker if a device misbehaves.

If something goes wrong

"This recording is not shared yet." The commonest one by far. In Drive, right-click the file → Share → under General access change Restricted to Anyone with the link → Done. Then press Check again. It works for you either way because you own the file, which is exactly why this is easy to miss.

Your recording is not in the list. The list only shows the shared recordings folder, so a file in your own My Drive will not appear — paste its share link instead, which works just as well. If it should be in the folder: check it is actually an audio file (.mp3, .m4a, .wav and similar), then press Refresh the list. There is no waiting — nothing is copied or synced, so a file that is in the folder shows up immediately.

A student sees "This recording has not been shared for students to hear." The sharing was changed back to Restricted, or the file was moved into a folder with tighter access. Fix the sharing in Drive; the existing link will start working again with no need to rebuild it.

A student sees "This player has not been set up correctly with Google." Not your fault and not fixable by you — the tool's Google key is missing, expired, or not allowed on this web address. Tell whoever looks after the tool.

A student sees "Link problem". The link was cut short when it was pasted — these links are long. Copy it again and re-paste the whole thing.

A student says they have no plays left before starting. Someone else used the same device for the same exam within the last six hours. Clear the browser's site data on that device, or move the student to another one.

A student's audio stopped partway. Almost always their network. The page loads the whole recording before enabling Start where it can, so this is rare — but this is what your speaker backup is for.

A student is stuck on the red "Test locked" screen. Go to them and type the supervisor code yourself. Check the reason printed on the screen — if it says the window is not full screen, the student most likely pressed Escape.

"Full screen was refused by this browser." The player could not go full screen, so the two checks that depend on it are off; tab-switching is still caught. Usually the page was opened inside a frame or a window that is already full screen. If you see this in a real exam, have the student reload and press Start again.

You have forgotten the supervisor code. It cannot be recovered from the link — that is the point of it. Build a replacement link with a new code and give students that instead.

You need to change an exam you have already built. Open the tool, press Editing an existing link? Paste it here on the first screen, paste your old link, and all the settings come back. Change what you need, create a new link, and swap it in DigiExam.