UI components

An app playing media requires user interface components for displaying media and controlling playback. The ExoPlayer library includes a UI module that contains a number of UI components. To depend on the UI module add the following dependency:

implementation "androidx.media3:media3-ui:1.0.0"

The most important component is PlayerView, a view for media playbacks. PlayerView displays video, subtitles, and album art during playback, as well as playback controls.

PlayerView has a setPlayer method for attaching and detaching (by passing null) player instances.

PlayerView

PlayerView can be used for both video and audio playbacks. It renders video and subtitles in the case of video playback, and can display artwork included as metadata in audio files. You can include it in your layout files like any other UI component. For example, a PlayerView can be included with the following XML:

<androidx.media3.ui.PlayerView
    android:id="@+id/player_view"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="match_parent"
    app:show_buffering="when_playing"
    app:show_shuffle_button="true"/>

The snippet above illustrates that PlayerView provides several attributes. These attributes can be used to customize the view's behavior, as well as its look and feel. Most of these attributes have corresponding setter methods, which can be used to customize the view at runtime. The PlayerView Javadoc lists these attributes and setter methods in more detail.

Once the view is declared in the layout file, it can be looked up in the onCreate method of the activity:

Kotlin

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
  // ...
  playerView = findViewById(R.id.player_view)
}

Java

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
  super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
  // ...
  playerView = findViewById(R.id.player_view);
}

When a player has been initialized, it can be attached to the view by calling setPlayer:

Kotlin

// Instantiate the player.
val player = ExoPlayer.Builder(context).build()
// Attach player to the view.
playerView.player = player
// Set the media item to be played.
player.setMediaItem(mediaItem)
// Prepare the player.
player.prepare()

Java

// Instantiate the player.
player = new ExoPlayer.Builder(context).build();
// Attach player to the view.
playerView.setPlayer(player);
// Set the media item to be played.
player.setMediaItem(mediaItem);
// Prepare the player.
player.prepare();

Choosing a surface type

The surface_type attribute of PlayerView lets you set the type of surface used for video playback. Besides the values spherical_gl_surface_view (which is a special value for spherical video playback) and video_decoder_gl_surface_view (which is for video rendering using extension renderers), the allowed values are surface_view, texture_view and none. If the view is for audio playback only, none should be used to avoid having to create a surface because doing so can be expensive.

If the view is for regular video playback then surface_view or texture_view should be used. SurfaceView has a number of benefits over TextureView for video playback:

• Significantly lower power consumption on many devices.
• More accurate frame timing, resulting in smoother video playback.
• Support for secure output when playing DRM protected content.
• The ability to render video content at the full resolution of the display on Android TV devices that upscale the UI layer.

SurfaceView should therefore be preferred over TextureView where possible. TextureView should be used only if SurfaceView does not meet your needs. One example is where smooth animations or scrolling of the video surface is required prior to Android 7.0 (API level 24), as described in the following notes. For this case, it's preferable to use TextureView only when SDK_INT is less than 24 (Android 7.0) and SurfaceView otherwise.

Note: SurfaceView rendering wasn't properly synchronized with view animations until Android 7.0 (API level 24). On earlier releases, this could result in unwanted effects when a SurfaceView was placed into scrolling container, or when it was subjected to animation. Such effects included the view's contents appearing to lag slightly behind where it should be displayed, and the view turning black when subjected to animation. To achieve smooth animation or scrolling of video prior to Android 7.0, it's therefore necessary to use TextureView rather than SurfaceView.

Note: Some Android TV devices run their UI layer at a resolution that's lower than the full resolution of the display, upscaling it for presentation to the user. For example, the UI layer may be run at 1080p on an Android TV that has a 4K display. On such devices, SurfaceView must be used to render content at the full resolution of the display. The full resolution of the display (in its current display mode) can be queried using Util.getCurrentDisplayModeSize. The UI layer resolution can be queried using Android's Display.getSize API.

Overriding drawables

Caution: We don't guarantee that the customizations described in the following section will continue to work in future versions of the library. The resource IDs may change name, or some may be deleted entirely. This is indicated by the resource IDs being marked 'private'.

PlayerView uses PlayerControlView to display the playback controls and progress bar. The drawables used by PlayerControlView can be overridden by drawables with the same names defined in your application. See the PlayerControlView Javadoc for a list of control drawables that can be overridden.

Further customization

Where customization beyond that described above is required, we expect that app developers will implement their own UI components rather than use those provided by ExoPlayer's UI module.