Html5 video on webview missing fullscreen button on lollipop

Question

I'm developing an android app that plays html5 videos on a webview, I've tested the videos on firefox, chrome, opera and IE and the video controls show the fullscreen button but on android lollipop webview there's no fullscreen button and consequently no way to play the video fullscreen.

I've tried several javascript approaches to maximize the video but none worked. Is this a bug on chromium or is there a way to activate the button ?

PS: it seems that I'm not alone on this https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=470666

Answer 1

Android docs says

you need to set a WebChromeClient and implement both onShowCustomView(View, WebChromeClient.CustomViewCallback) and onHideCustomView(). If the implementation of either of these two methods is missing then the web contents will not be allowed to enter full screen.

If you just toss the code in where you setup your webview, the button will show up. You don't have to do anything with the code, you just need it implemented or else stock android will hide the button.

webView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient() {

        public void onShowCustomView (View view, WebChromeClient.CustomViewCallback callback) {
            //do stuff
        }

        public void onHideCustomView () {
            //do stuff
        }

    });

Answer 2

I've managed to solve my problem by creating a link on the html page below the video containing the word fullscreen,

Link example:

<a href="http://example.com/video.mp4?fullscreen">fullscreen</a>

Then used the webview method shouldOverrideUrlLoading to Override any Url containing the word fullscreen, redirecting it to the Android Video Player.

mWebView.setWebViewClient(new WebViewClient(){
    public boolean shouldOverrideUrlLoading(WebView wView, String url)
        {

                if (url.contains("fullscreen") ) {
                    Log.i("LOB", "FULLSCREEN " + url);

                 try {
                   url = url.replaceAll("(?im)fullscreen", "");
                     } catch (PatternSyntaxException ex) {
                     } catch (IllegalArgumentException ex) {
                     } catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException ex) {
                   }


                    Intent intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(url));
                    intent.setDataAndType(Uri.parse(url), "video/mp4");
                    startActivity(intent);

                       return true;
                   }

}
}

This is far from being an elegant solution, but while Google doesn't provide a fix for Lollipop, it does the job.