Problem with embedded YouTube videos: When I ...

[H1_Unlimited]

Problem with embedded YouTube videos: When I embed a video in the app and preview it in the browser, the video plays fine and gives me an option to enter full-screen mode by mousing over the video and clicking the full screen control.

However, when I view the same video on any device, the video plays fine (pic1), but there is no full-screen mode available because as soon as you touch the video window (pic 2), a white bar comes up on the bottom with the pause/play control, progress bar and mute functions, and the clock/share icons on top. If you tap the “Share” icon, you get the share options (pic 3) there is still no full-screen option.

Is there ANY way to access the full-screen option for embedded YouTube videos? It will be super clunky to have to generate a “View full-screen” link for every video…

[tony1]

@H1_Unlimited Does this happen in your mobile web browser, too? Or just in the native appsheet app?

[tony1]

@H1_Unlimited No, I’m not sure. I don’t know the details, but maybe it has something to do with the large number of videos in your app?

[H1_Unlimited]

@tony OK, here’s what I got back today from Google:

“For example, your app is violating our policy because it enables the user to play YouTube content in the background while the app is not active (meaning all playback should stop, once the user closes the app, including pressing phone’s “power” button).”

I responded that I could NEVER make the video stay playing any time the app wasn’t in focus. Hit the power button: video stops. Minimize it? Video stops. Close it? Video stops. Everything makes it stop!

Have you ever heard of this issue on other apps or do you have any idea why they would have flagged this type of behavior?

[H1_Unlimited]

@tony Never thought to try it in a mobile browser, but now that I do, it works properly! It gives the play icon,progress bar, volume, full-screen and even the Cast icon, which would be HUGE for us to be able to use!

So, it looks like the problem is isolated to playback in the app itself. Any prayer we can get it to operate like it does in the mobile browser version?

[tony1]

@H1_Unlimited Thanks for checking. @Brian_Sabino or @Gil_Littman_AppSheet any ideas on why this difference would occur?

[H1_Unlimited]

@tony Did you ever get any feedback on why the different behaviors in the app vs. the browser? In the app we’re developing, there are over 7,000 YouTube videos embedded, so it’s pretty important that this functions as well as possible. Any help here would definitely be appreciated.

[tony1]

@H1_Unlimited Right now I would plan on making a URL link to the video directly, using LaunchExternal set to true (so it opens in a new window or the youtube app). We’re not sure if it’s possible to make this work in the app and will take some investigating.

[H1_Unlimited]

@tony So, doing a bit more testing, we found that iPhone 7 will launch into full-screen mode by default when playing the embedded video, with no drama whatsoever (see image), but the iPad (16GB iPad2) won’t. On the iPad, we get the option of AirPlay (good), but no full-screen (bad). Launching YouTube externally works great.

By my testing, it looks like the full-screen playback issue is only with Android and iPad, and setting the video to “LaunchExternal” does nothing - at least it makes no difference whatsoever on my Google Pixel XL or iPad - it just plays in the small window as usual. I have now made links for every clip to YouTube (A BIG PITA!), and these work perfectly when set to “IsHyperLink” and “LaunchExternal” - they open in YouTube perfectly and go back to the app perfectly.

A little reading about this lead me to the YouTube Android Player API: https://developers.google.com/youtube/android/player/.

I couldn’t program my way out of a wet paper bag, so I may be talking out of my a** here, but after reading up on the API, it looks for all the world like the player module you are using is set up with the plain vanilla settings, and

the things we’d like to have in place are just a few switches away. Could it be as simple as their docs make it seem?

If there is any way the API options could be set for control over the playback functionality in the individual apps, that would be awesome. If not, would it maybe be possible to read up on the API and try some of the different switches they call out to make the player more functional for all apps?

Thanks for taking the time to read this…

[tony1]

@H1_Unlimited Sorry about the PITA, I understand that it’s annoying. It looks like in order to make the fullscreen control work in AppSheet, we’d need to do more work than configuring API parameters. This is a significant change and probably will not be fixed in the near future. So unfortunately for right now, you’ll need to stick with links to youtube videos instead of playing them in the app (or using the app in a web browser).

[H1_Unlimited]

@tony Here’s another update: I submitted the app to the Google Play store last night and got rejected for YouTube terms of service violation. The rejection was not specific enough to know exactly what triggered it.

Is there anything you know of that I may be missing concerning the way we present YouTube videos that would cause the app to be rejected?

[Jake_Tunney]

Did you ever get this resolved? I have the same issue. Mostly with the no full screen button, haven’t submitted to the app store yet.

[MrChArLeS_LatTe]

Got the same problem here, did you guys find the way to fix it, please.