YouTube iframe is too slow in iOS app

Question

I am using YouTube API in my iOS application and the problem is that it loads really slow on my iPhone, but on iOS simulator it works perfectly.

I tried it on different networks and on different iPhones and its always the same. On every network simulator works a lot better.

I'm using YTPlayerView-iframe-player.html and YTPlayerView.

So, the question is can I do anything to load it faster or can I start playing song after it loads?

Answer 1

There is no way to speed up your network. You can do two things to improve the user experience: hide the player until the video loads, and start playing the video as soon as possible (autoplay).

Add the autoplay key to your playervars dictionary:

NSDictionary *playerVars = @{
                             @"playsinline" : @1,
                             @"autoplay" : @1, // <- here
                             @"showinfo" : @0,
                             @"rel" : @0,
                             @"modestbranding" : @1,
                             };

[self.playerView loadWithVideoId:videoId playerVars:playerVars];

// hide the player view until it is ready
self.playerView.hidden = YES;

Unhide the player when ready:

// unhide and play
- (void)playerViewDidBecomeReady:(YTPlayerView *)playerView { 
    self.playerView.hidden = NO;
}

or

- (void)playerView:(YTPlayerView *)playerView didChangeToState:(YTPlayerState)state {
    if (state == kYTPlayerStatePlaying) {
        self.playerView.hidden = NO;
    }
}