Use Youtube API in Android TV

Question

I want to play youtube videos in my Android TV APP. I am also working on a Android phone/tablet APP and I was able to use Youtube Android API to play videos. But when I try to use the same API on Android TV it gives me an error ("This app won't work unless you update the YouTube"), but my youtube is updated.

I found this issue in the YouTube Android Player API issue tracker, it is the same problem that I am facing here, so I want to know if someone have a solution, or know another version of the API that may work. I am using YouTube Player Android API v1.2.2.

I know that I can open youtube via Intent, but I need to use the YouTube API to show videos.

Answer 1

The YouTube playback API may not work on Android TV, but you can always implement your own playing mechanism in-app. Take a look at YouTube's web player API: https://developers.google.com/youtube/iframe_api_reference

You can load a WebView in your app and from there add an iframe and JS logic to integrate with your controller.

To interface between your JS and Java code, take a look at a project like this: https://github.com/Fleker/WebGameBridge.js for how to use the WebView APIs.

In terms of getting data, there are also web APIs for this that you can access through your WebView.

Answer 2

I've created YoutubeTV library, a wrapper for YouTube Player API Reference for iframe Embeds

It provides a YoutubeTvView that embeds a Webview with Youtube iframe with all Javascript API available from this view.

Also, YoutubeTvFragment holds a YoutubeTvView with a media control bar (PlaybackOverlayFragment)