Knowing when AVPlayer object is ready to play

You are playing a remote file. It may take some time for the AVPlayer to buffer enough data and be ready to play the file (see AV Foundation Programming Guide)

But you don’t seem to wait for the player to be ready before tapping the play button. What I would to is disable this button and enable it only when the player is ready.

Using KVO, it’s possible to be notified for changes of the player status:

playButton.enabled = NO;
player = [AVPlayer playerWithURL:fileURL];
[player addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"status" options:0 context:nil];   

This method will be called when the status changes:

- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object
                        change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context {
    if (object == player && [keyPath isEqualToString:@"status"]) {
        if (player.status == AVPlayerStatusReadyToPlay) {
            playButton.enabled = YES;
        } else if (player.status == AVPlayerStatusFailed) {
            // something went wrong. player.error should contain some information
        }
    }
}