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Installation

Add the NuGet package to all the projects you want to use it in.

• In Visual Studio - Tools > NuGet Package Manager > Manage Packages for Solution
• Select the Browse tab, search for MediaManager
• Select Plugin.MediaManager
• Install into each project within your solution

Platform Support

Usage

Call MediaManager.Current from any .Net library or Xamarin project to gain access to APIs.

IMPORTANT: Initialize plugin

Make sure to call Init() in all the native platforms on startup of your app.

Optionally provide the Activity on Android. This will also be used to bind the Android Service and will be used as Intent to launch from a notification.

When tapping the notification, it will launch your activity with an intent. In most cases, you probably want to set LaunchMode on your Activity to SingleTop. That should bring your app back into focus when tapped. You can read more about it here

If you want to handle when the app is opened via a notification tap, you can override OnNewIntent on your activity:

Disposing

The player can be disposed via CrossMediaManager.Current.Dispose(). Make sure to call CrossMediaManager.Current.Init() if you used dispose before playing another media file.

Play a single media item

Play multiple media items

Other play possibilities

• Playing from a File can be done for example by using the File and Directory api's. You download a file from the internet and save it somewhere using these .NET api's.
• When playing from Assembly you need to add a media file to a assembly and set the build action to Embedded resource.
• When playing from a Resource you should add your media file for example to the Assets or raw folder on Android, and the Resources folder on iOS.

For example:

Control the player

Control the Queue

Extensions:

Retrieve and set information

Extensions:

Properties available on CrossMediaManager.Current.MediaPlayer.*

Hook into events

Retrieve metadata for media

Depending on the platform and the media item metadata will be extracted from ID3 data in the file.

Since the metadata might not be available immediately you can subscribe for updates like this:

Alternatively you could also use the PropertyChanged event to see updates to the metadata.

You can also get a single frame from a video:

Add Video Player to the UI

The video view will automatically be attached to the player. If you have multiple video views and you want to hook it up yourself do:

After that you can manually add the video view like this:

For android we need a VideoView in the axml layout.

Then find the view in code:

For iOS, MacOS or tvOS we need to add a VideoView either in code, or in a Xib or Storyboard.

Then for all platforms we have to add the player view to the MediaPlayer

Play a non standard format like HLS, Dash or SS

MediaManager will try to make a guess which media type or format is used. Sometimes this will not be picked up or be wrong, but you can enforce it by setting it yourself like this:

By enforcing it there is still no guarantee that the native system actually is able to play the item.

Platform specific features

You can also directly access the native platform implementation if you need it!

Xamarin.Forms

Adding a VideoView to a Page in Forms is easy as this:

Your Xamarin.Forms page could look like this:

You can even use the normal Play(object) method and not set source. When you navigate to the view that contains the VideoView, the player will automatically attach to the view.

If you want a Page that contains a player you can open the VideoPage.

Reactive extensions

Add the Reactive NuGet package to all the projects you want to use it in.

Usage:

FFmpegMediaMetadataRetriever on Android

If you want to use FFmpegMediaMetadataRetriever on Android to extract the metadata you can set to use this extension like this:

Intercept share requests from the native platform or other apps

Android:

IMPORTANT

Android:

• This library will automatically request the following permissions: AccessWifiState, AccessNetworkState, Internet, ForegroundService and WakeLock. You do not need to add them to your AndroidManifest.
• Your app must target Android SDK v28 or higher
• This library uses ExoPlayer for video playback. This requires that you enable the following
• Dex tool to D8: <AndroidDexTool>d8</AndroidDexTool>
• Optional enable R8 Linker to make code smaller: <AndroidLinkTool>r8</AndroidLinkTool>
• Aapt2 build tools: <AndroidUseAapt2>true</AndroidUseAapt2>
• Disable multi-dex when using D8 and R8 with AAPT2. Your code should be small enough with those.

iOS:

• In order for the audio to contiunue to play in the background you have to add the 'Audio, Airplay and Picture in Picture Background mode' and 'Background fetch' to your Info.plist

• If you are playing audio from a http resource you have to take care of ATS. Optionally you can disable this for playing media. Add the following to your info.plist:

If you want to disable more you could add: NSAllowsLocalNetworking or even NSAllowsArbitraryLoads to disable all checks.

• If you want to display a artwork/cover that is embedded into an MP3 file, make sure that you use ID3 v2.3 (not v2.4).

UWP:

• In the Package.appxmanifest under capabilities you need to select: "Background Media Playback", "Internet"
• Optionally add "Music Library" and "Videos Library" as well if you use that

Tizen:

• You must request http://tizen.org/privilege/internet, http://tizen.org/privilege/mediastorage, and http://tizen.org/privilege/externalstorage privileges

Building the source code

• On Windows you need Visual Studio 2019 with the latest Xamarin, .NET Core, UWP and Windows 10 SDK installed.
• On Visual Studio for Mac 2019 multi-target is not supported. Therefor you need to compile from command line on a Mac. Simple go to the folder where the source code is and run: msbuild MediaManager.sln /t:rebuild to make a release build run: msbuild MediaManager.sln /t:rebuild /p:Configuration=Release. To restore your nuget packages run: msbuild MediaManager.sln /t:restore.