Handling Errors & Exceptions While Playing Audio & Video in SwiftUI

Written by Team Kodeco

Playing audio or video content is a common feature in many apps. However, dealing with the associated errors and exceptions can be a bit daunting. Fear not! In this cookbook entry, you will discover how to elegantly handle such issues in SwiftUI, thereby ensuring a smooth and user-friendly playback experience.

Audio and video playback errors could stem from a range of issues including network connectivity problems, missing or misplaced files, and unsupported file formats, among others. It’s crucial to manage these errors gracefully, providing users with clear and helpful feedback whenever an issue arises.

Here’s a simplified example of how this error handling could be done in SwiftUI:

import AVKit

struct ContentView: View {
  let player = AVPlayer(url: URL(string: "https://archive.org/download/lunchroom_manners/lunchroom_manners_512kb.mp4")!)
  let timer = Timer.publish(every: 1, on: .main, in: .common).autoconnect()
  @State private var isPlaybackLikelyToKeepUp = true

  var body: some View {
    VStack {
      VideoPlayer(player: player)
      if !isPlaybackLikelyToKeepUp {
        Text("Playback Error: Network load is likely to prevent playback from keeping up.")
      }
    }
    .onReceive(timer, perform: { _ in
      isPlaybackLikelyToKeepUp = player.currentItem?.isPlaybackLikelyToKeepUp ?? true
    })
  }
}

Your preview should look like this:

To test this locally, try playing the video with your network connection disabled. You should then see the error message displayed.

In this example, the VideoPlayer view from the AVKit framework is used to play a video. The isPlaybackLikelyToKeepUp property of AVPlayerItem is employed to determine if the network load is hampering video playback. If it’s likely to impede the playback, a user-friendly error message is displayed.

This method is a simplified way to handle playback errors, particularly for scenarios involving network issues. Depending on your specific needs, other actions may be necessary to handle various error types.

While handling errors is important, it’s equally crucial to address exceptions that could be thrown during media playback. For instance, exceptions might be thrown when a user attempts to play a DRM-protected video without the requisite permissions. Normally, such exceptions can be caught and handled using a try-catch block.

Wrapping up, handling errors and exceptions while playing audio or video in SwiftUI is a key aspect of ensuring a robust and user-friendly media playback experience. Always aim to provide meaningful feedback to users when errors arise, and handle exceptions efficiently to enhance the overall playback experience.