Rotate AVPlayer to Full Screen in Swift iOS

July 16, 2023 No Comments Development,iOS Development Pushpendra Kumar

By enabling the ability to rotate AVPlayer to full screen, you empower users to customize their viewing experience, whether they prefer landscape or portrait orientation. This feature enhances user satisfaction and ensures a more immersive video playback experience.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, providing a seamless and immersive video playback experience is crucial for app developers. One key aspect of achieving this is allowing users to rotate the video player to full screen with a simple button click. In this blog, we will explore how to implement this feature using AVPlayer in Swift iOS, creating a more engaging and flexible video viewing experience for your app users.

Throughout this blog, we will delve into the step-by-step implementation process, including handling the button click event, detecting the device’s current orientation, adjusting the player’s layer frame, and updating the player layer’s gravity property to maintain video aspect ratio.

Additionally, we will cover best practices for testing and ensuring a smooth user experience across different devices and orientations. By following these guidelines, you can deliver a polished and user-friendly app that caters to your audience’s diverse preferences.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to elevate your app’s video playback capabilities and provide your users with a seamless and enjoyable viewing experience. Let’s dive into the implementation details and create a truly immersive video playback experience by rotating AVPlayer to full screen in Swift iOS.

Why Rotate AVPlayer to Full Screen Matters

Enabling users to watch videos in full screen mode offers several benefits. It provides a more immersive experience, eliminates distractions, and allows users to focus solely on the content. Additionally, with devices featuring various screen sizes and orientations, this feature ensures your app caters to diverse user preferences, enhancing overall user satisfaction.

Rotate AVPlayer | Step-by-Step Implementation

Set Up AVPlayer: To get started, create an instance of AVPlayer and load your video content.
Create a Full-Screen Button: Design a custom button with a full-screen icon or label. Place this button on the video player interface, making it easily accessible to users.
Implement Full-Screen Functionality: Add an action handler to the full-screen button. In the handler function, perform the following steps:
- Disable auto-rotation: Temporarily disable auto-rotation during the transition to full screen to ensure a smooth experience.
- Get the device orientation: Determine the current device orientation (portrait or landscape).
- Rotate AVPlayer Layer: Adjust the player’s layer frame to fill the screen in the desired orientation.
- Set Player Layer Gravity: Update the gravity property of the player layer to maintain video aspect ratio and prevent distortion.
- Lastly, Enable auto-rotation: Re-enable auto-rotation after the player is in full screen mode.
Handle Exit Full-Screen: To allow users to exit full screen, implement a similar process for the full-screen button when it is clicked again.

Potential Code for Rotating the AVPlayer

    @objc private func onTapToggleScreen() {
        if #available(iOS 16.0, *) {
            guard let windowSceen = self.view.window?.windowScene else { return }
            if windowSceen.interfaceOrientation == .portrait {
                windowSceen.requestGeometryUpdate(.iOS(interfaceOrientations: .landscape)) { error in
                    print(error.localizedDescription)
                }
            } else {
                windowSceen.requestGeometryUpdate(.iOS(interfaceOrientations: .portrait)) { error in
                    print(error.localizedDescription)
                }
            }
        } else {
            if UIDevice.current.orientation == .portrait {
                let orientation = UIInterfaceOrientation.landscapeRight.rawValue
                UIDevice.current.setValue(orientation, forKey: "orientation")
            } else {
                let orientation = UIInterfaceOrientation.portrait.rawValue
                UIDevice.current.setValue(orientation, forKey: "orientation")
            }
        }
    }

Resources

Lastly, Discover more about the AVPlayer and its functionalities by watching my detailed video. In Addition, I highly recommend subscribing to my YouTube channel as it will enable me to create more valuable content for your benefit. Watch the video to gain deeper insights into the AVPlayer.

In Conclusion

In Conclusion, by implementing the ability to rotate AVPlayer to full screen with a button click, you provide your app users with a more enjoyable video playback experience. Moreover, users can now watch videos without any distractions, focusing solely on the content they love. Additionally, remember to test your implementation across various devices and orientations to ensure a consistent and smooth user experience.

Embrace this enhancement in your iOS app to stay ahead in the competitive app market, and deliver a delightful video viewing experience to your users. In summary, incorporating AVPlayer rotation will undoubtedly elevate your app’s appeal and keep your users engaged with seamless video playback.