Disable AirPlay with MPMoviePlayerController

Question

I have an instance of a MPMoviePlayerController which is being used to display some live streaming video on an iPhone app. This is working fine, however I wish to remove all AirPlay functionality.

To be sure, I specifically disable AirPlay like so:

if([self.moviePlayerController respondsToSelector:@selector(setAllowsAirPlay:)]) {
    self.moviePlayerController.allowsAirPlay = NO;
}

However, even with this code, I still see the AirPlay icon on the video controls. If I select this, and select my AppleTV, only the audio is sent over AirPlay - the video continues to play within the app. If I set allowsAirPlay to YES, both the video & audio are sent over AirPlay.

Does anyone know why this happens? Is this a feature of the OS, to allows allow the audio to be sent over AirPlay?

Did you set allowsAirPlay before setting the player's content URL? — jbat100, Oct 25 '11 at 08:17
This is a related question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5665336/airplay-playing-a-movie-from-mpmovieplayercontroller-results-in-only-audio-bein — jbat100, Oct 25 '11 at 08:20
No, as I'm using the initWithContentURL method to initialise the MPMoviePlayerController. I guess I could try it? — Ben Williams, Oct 25 '11 at 08:40

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 15 '11 at 06:28

4

It turns out that the AirPlay icon is still visible (and should remain visible) so that audio can be routed to any suitable device, eg. a Bluetooth headset. Attempting to hide the icon is considered bad practice.

answered Dec 15 '11 at 06:28

Ben Williams

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Pretty old question; but any chance you have a link to Apple documentation supporting this? – Craig Dec 03 '12 at 11:48
1

Sorry, no - I actually got the answer from an Apple engineer at one of their Tech Talks. If you think about it logically it makes sense. Those who want to use a Bluetooth headset or speakers should always be able to use them, as they may be hard of hearing etc. – Ben Williams Dec 03 '12 at 22:33
Thanks. I think that makes sense, there is just concern about content licensing. – Craig Dec 04 '12 at 13:09
@Craig - Sorry really old question etc.. Did you manage to track down any documentation for this? Im about to embark on the same challenge, even a WWDC reference would be good :) – Robert May 02 '13 at 11:39

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 06 '14 at 11:51

2

I known its an old question but still maybe this will help someone else.
Apple has the following api to hide the route button (AirPlay)

@property (nonatomic) BOOL showsRouteButton NS_AVAILABLE_IOS(4_2);  // Default is YES.

Hope this helps anyone.

answered Aug 06 '14 at 11:51

Philip Kramer

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JDA3 · Answer 3 · 2015-03-18T23:41:07.793

@Philip K, your hint almost solved this for me, debugging some four year old code. showsRouteButton isn't a property on the MPMoviePlayerController, and I tried setting:

myMPMoviePlayer.allowsAirPlay = NO;

But this did nothing...

And we are using custom controls for our video player, and found that the route button is a part of the MPVolumeView, and your trick applies there:

MPVolumeView * vView = [[MPVolumeView alloc] initWithFrame: bounds];
vView.showsRouteButton = NO;

Bingo! Thanks.

Disable AirPlay with MPMoviePlayerController

3 Answers3

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