iOS does not fully support the Fullscreen API in ANY browser

[Raino]

Description

Hello everyone!
Earlier I wrote problem #7226.
In it we are with @gkatsev we found out that the Fullscreen API does not work in iOS Safari, but now, starting with iOS 15, the Fullscreen API does not work in any browser on iOS as a whole, and not just in Safari as before.
Is there a solution to this problem today, or does it mean that iOS devices now completely do not support the Fullscreen videojs API?

Reduced test case

No response

Steps to reproduce

1. Using functions in the player that use the Fullscreen API

Errors

The functions interacting with the Fullscreen API do not work in any browser used on iOS. Even using forced installation of custom parameters:
videojs.options.hls.overrideNative = true;
videojs.options.html5.nativeAudioTracks = false;
videojs.options.html5.nativeVideoTracks = false;

What version of Video.js are you using?

7.10.2

Video.js plugins used.

No response

What browser(s) including version(s) does this occur with?

Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Yandex

What OS(es) and version(s) does this occur with?

iOS 15.5

[gkatsev]

iPhones never supported the fullscreen API. iPads supported the fullscreen API as of iPadOS 12. Though, I don't think it's supported on non-safari browsers on iPad.
There's really three options, really:

• disable fullscreen
• use full window mode (which stretches the player to fit the screen, but stuff like the time and potentially the address bar are still visible)
• accept native fullscreen and work around it.

[Raino]

@gkatsev The problem is the same as in #7226. videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest does not work,
but if in #7226 the problem was only in Safari, and there were no problems with Chrome and Firefox on iOS, now videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest does not work at all in any browser.

This causes me a little alarm, since I don't understand how the changes were made by Apple, that now it doesn't work at all in any browser.

For an experiment, I used the playsinline parameter in the player and launched the video "without expanding to full screen". As a result, videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest still didn't work.
Although emphasizing, on earlier versions of iOS, there was no such problem in ANY browser other than Safari.

What should I do and how can I fix it?
Or is it a new quirk of Apple that we cannot overcome?

[gkatsev]

videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest has never worked on any browsers on iPhones. On iPads it only worked in Safari and not other browsers.
These are all platform limitations.

[Raino]

@gkatsev But it definitely used to work in Chrome at least. I couldn't go crazy, I checked, it definitely worked. Due to the parameters:

videojs.options.hls.overrideNative = true;
videojs.options.html5.nativeAudioTracks = false;
videojs.options.html5.nativeVideoTracks = false;

[gkatsev]

Seems like on iPad Chrome does have Media Source Extensions, but as far as I know this was never supported on iPhones.

[Raino]

@gkatsev Well, that's exactly what it used to be on the iPhone. The question is, what to do now? Is it possible to somehow still make videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest work?

[gkatsev]

iPhones never supported MSE, so, not sure how Chrome would have it since it's a more limited Safari behind the scenes.
Unfortunately, there is no way to make it work as that is a platform limitation.

[Raino]

@gkatsev I understand there is still such a limitation in Safari iOS, but Chrome iOS is really strange. Previously, it was possible to enable Fullscreen API support in the "Experimental functions" section in the iOS settings, but now I have not found such an item. However, what happened to Chrome is not clear to me.

Maybe you can enable some kind of setting,
maybe some browsers still support videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest,
maybe there is a complete alternative to videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest?

Is there really no solution at all? :(

[gkatsev]

I do see an "enable fullscreen api" on my chrome on ipad, but enabling doesn't do anything for me. Unfortunately, even if it worked, this isn't a reasonable solution because we can't request viewers to enable such features.
I'm not aware of any such flags for MSE on iPhone. Unfortunately, MSE isn't available on iPhone and there isn't any way to enable this. This means that on iPhones videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest cannot work, and you should investigate alternatives.

[Raino]

@gkatsev There are no alternative functions of videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest within the videojs player and its related libraries?