Play a Video from Youtube in a Avplayerviewcontroller in Swift

Play a video from Youtube in a AVPlayerViewController in Swift

AVPlayer only plays movie files, and YouTube videos aren't directly exposed as movie files at their URL. It looks like the preferred way to handle YouTube videos is to embed a web view into your app. See this page for information from Google on how to do that.

How to play video with AVPlayerViewController (AVKit) in Swift

Swift 3.x - 5.x

Necessary: import AVKit, import AVFoundation

AVFoundation framework is needed even if you use AVPlayer

If you want to use AVPlayerViewController:

let videoURL = URL(string: "https://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.mp4")
let player = AVPlayer(url: videoURL!)
let playerViewController = AVPlayerViewController()
playerViewController.player = player
self.present(playerViewController, animated: true) {
    playerViewController.player!.play()
}

or just AVPlayer:

let videoURL = URL(string: "https://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.mp4")
let player = AVPlayer(url: videoURL!)
let playerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: player)
playerLayer.frame = self.view.bounds
self.view.layer.addSublayer(playerLayer)
player.play()

It's better to put this code into the method: override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) or somewhere after.

---

Objective-C

AVPlayerViewController:

NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.mp4"];
AVPlayer *player = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:videoURL];
AVPlayerViewController *playerViewController = [AVPlayerViewController new];
playerViewController.player = player;
[self presentViewController:playerViewController animated:YES completion:^{
  [playerViewController.player play];
}];

or just AVPlayer:

NSURL *videoURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://clips.vorwaerts-gmbh.de/big_buck_bunny.mp4"];
AVPlayer *player = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:videoURL];
AVPlayerLayer *playerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer:player];
playerLayer.frame = self.view.bounds;
[self.view.layer addSublayer:playerLayer];
[player play];

How to embed a Youtube video into my app?

Xcode 8.2 • Swift 3.0.2

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    @IBOutlet weak var wv: UIWebView!
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        loadYoutube(videoID: "oCm_lnoVf08")
    }
    func loadYoutube(videoID:String) {
        guard
            let youtubeURL = URL(string: "https://www.youtube.com/embed/\(videoID)")
            else { return }
        wv.loadRequest( URLRequest(url: youtubeURL) )
    }
}

---

Xcode 7.3.1 • Swift 2.x

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    // create an outlet for your webview 
    @IBOutlet weak var wv: UIWebView!
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        // load your you tube video ID
        loadYoutube(videoID: "oCm_lnoVf08")
    }
    func loadYoutube(videoID videoID:String) {
        // create a custom youtubeURL with the video ID
        guard
            let youtubeURL = NSURL(string: "https://www.youtube.com/embed/\(videoID)")
            else { return }
        // load your web request
        wv.loadRequest( NSURLRequest(URL: youtubeURL) )
    }
}

---

Related Topics