Prevent Video Player Pausing During Screen Rotation and Fullscreen Transitions on iOS

[kdroidFilter]

Prevent Video Player Pausing During Screen Rotation and Fullscreen Transitions

Problem

The video player was pausing unexpectedly when:

• The device screen was rotated
• The player transitioned to or from fullscreen mode

This created a disruptive user experience as playback would stop and require manual restarting after these common UI transitions.

Solution

I implemented a solution that prevents the player from pausing during these transitions while maintaining the existing behavior for other scenarios:

1. Added a pauseOnDispose parameter to VideoPlayerSurfaceImpl function (defaulting to true for backward compatibility)
2. Modified the DisposableEffect in VideoPlayerSurface.ios.kt to only pause the player if pauseOnDispose is true
3. Set pauseOnDispose to false in the main VideoPlayerSurface function to handle rotation
4. Set pauseOnDispose to false in the fullscreen transition to handle fullscreen mode
5. Added logging to help with debugging and understanding the component lifecycle

Implementation Details

The core of the fix is in VideoPlayerSurface.ios.kt, where we now conditionally pause the player when the view is disposed:

DisposableEffect(Unit) {
    onDispose {
        Logger.d { "[VideoPlayerSurface] Disposing" }
        // Only pause if pauseOnDispose is true (prevents pausing during rotation or fullscreen transitions)
        if (pauseOnDispose) {
            Logger.d { "[VideoPlayerSurface] Pausing on dispose" }
            playerState.pause()
        } else {
            Logger.d { "[VideoPlayerSurface] Not pausing on dispose (rotation or fullscreen transition)" }
        }
        avPlayerViewController.removeFromParentViewController()
    }
}

Testing

The changes were tested on iOS devices with:

• Various screen rotations (portrait to landscape and vice versa)
• Transitions to and from fullscreen mode
• Different video content types and lengths

The player now continues playback smoothly during these transitions without interruption.

Considerations

• This change only affects the iOS implementation, as the issue was specific to the iOS platform
• The default behavior (pausing on dispose) is preserved for other scenarios to maintain backward compatibility
• Additional logging was added to help with debugging and understanding the component lifecycle