Android WebView with an embedded youtube video, full screen button freezes video

This is something I’ve spent the last day or so tearing my hair out over. Based on various bits of code from around the web I’ve managed to get it working.

First, you need to create a custom WebChromeClient class, which implements the onShowCustomView and onHideCustomView methods.

private class MyWebChromeClient extends WebChromeClient {
    FrameLayout.LayoutParams LayoutParameters = new FrameLayout.LayoutParams(FrameLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
            FrameLayout.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT);

    @Override
    public void onShowCustomView(View view, CustomViewCallback callback) {
        // if a view already exists then immediately terminate the new one
        if (mCustomView != null) {
            callback.onCustomViewHidden();
            return;
        }
        mContentView = (RelativeLayout) findViewById(R.id.activity_main);
        mContentView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
        mCustomViewContainer = new FrameLayout(MainActivity.this);
        mCustomViewContainer.setLayoutParams(LayoutParameters);
        mCustomViewContainer.setBackgroundResource(android.R.color.black);
        view.setLayoutParams(LayoutParameters);
        mCustomViewContainer.addView(view);
        mCustomView = view;
        mCustomViewCallback = callback;
        mCustomViewContainer.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
        setContentView(mCustomViewContainer);
    }

    @Override
    public void onHideCustomView() {
        if (mCustomView == null) {
            return;
        } else {
            // Hide the custom view.  
            mCustomView.setVisibility(View.GONE);
            // Remove the custom view from its container.  
            mCustomViewContainer.removeView(mCustomView);
            mCustomView = null;
            mCustomViewContainer.setVisibility(View.GONE);
            mCustomViewCallback.onCustomViewHidden();
            // Show the content view.  
            mContentView.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
            setContentView(mContentView);
        }
    }
}

Basically, what is happening here is when the full screen button gets pressed, we’re creating a new view to hold the video and hiding the main view. And then when full screen is closed, we do the opposite – get rid of the new view and display the original view.

You’ll need to also add all those properties to your activity class:

private MyWebChromeClient mWebChromeClient = null;
private View mCustomView;
private RelativeLayout mContentView;
private FrameLayout mCustomViewContainer;
private WebChromeClient.CustomViewCallback mCustomViewCallback;

And you probably want to make it close the fullscreen video when the back button is pressed:

@Override
public void onBackPressed() {
    if (mCustomViewContainer != null)
        mWebChromeClient.onHideCustomView();
    else if (myWebView.canGoBack())
        myWebView.goBack();
    else
        super.onBackPressed();
}

Then it’s just a matter of using your new class when you create your webview:

myWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webView1);
mWebChromeClient = new WMWebChromeClient();
myWebView.setWebChromeClient(mWebChromeClient);

This works for me on Android 4.x. Not sure about earlier versions as my app isn’t targeting them.

I found these links particularly useful: WebView and HTML5 <video> and http://code.google.com/p/html5webview/source/browse/trunk/HTML5WebView/src/org/itri/html5webview/HTML5WebView.java