Android service update

[ne0rrmatrix]

Description of Change

Switch from using default service implementation to using the recommended by Google. Player and MediaSession in MediaSessionService with MediaController in Activity. The deprecated API's for notifications have been completely removed and are no longer needed.

No change in features with respect to media notifications. The rich media notifications have been significantly overhauled and following best principles. The issue with notification getting stuck and not being removed when leaving page are fixed. When you stop the player the notifications will be removed automatically. If you navigate away from page the notifications will also be removed. It you force close the app by swiping up it will close the notifications and end playback.

The new changes include using a MediaController as an interface to the MediaSessionService which lives in the Activity and fully replaces the player functionality as far as MediaManager is concerned.

Deprecated API's like PlayerNotifications and custom http handlers to make web requests to get artwork have been removed and replaced with native methods that do the same thing. The Media Notifications are now unified under a single class and none of the API's are deprecated. This has backwards support and is tested from API 26 to 35.

Breaking Changes:

• Applies to Android Version!
• Should apply to all devices

The downside to this is possible a deal breaker and is a breaking change. Currently MediaElement supports as many concurrent players as you the developers chooses to use. With this change it will not longer support this. It will only support a single instance per app. With how the service model and integration between the player, player view and mediaSession works it is not really possible to have more than one Rich Media Session at the same time. Imagine your notification tray having a new item for every video in your collection?

This is a big issue. It is an ongoing issue for Windows, MacOS and iOS. All 3 of those devices have current and ongoing issues with CollectionViews, Grids, and Carousel Views. I do not believe it should ever have been intended to have this functionality and we should work towards creating sample pages where developers can effectively use those views and have a media element. But we need to keep to a single, reusable instance. Having multiple simultaneous players should not be supported and is not needed if the pages are designed correctly.

• Fixes #

PR Checklist

• Has a linked Issue, and the Issue has been approved(bug) or Championed (feature/proposal)
• Has tests (if omitted, state reason in description)
• Has samples (if omitted, state reason in description)
• Rebased on top of main at time of PR
• Changes adhere to coding standard
• Documentation created or updated: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/CommunityToolkit/pulls

Additional information

[ne0rrmatrix]

The issue with transparent or white background has been fixed! So this is now ready for review :)

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR modernizes the Android MediaElement implementation by replacing the deprecated service architecture with Google's recommended MediaSessionService approach. The changes migrate from using ExoPlayer directly to using MediaController with MediaSessionService, implementing proper lifecycle management and unified media notifications.

Key changes include:

• Replaced ExoPlayer with MediaController as the platform media element
• Implemented MediaSessionService pattern for background media playback
• Unified media notifications using native Android methods instead of custom implementations

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 9 out of 9 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
MediaManager.shared.cs	Updated global using alias from IExoPlayer to MediaController
MediaManager.android.cs	Complete overhaul replacing ExoPlayer with MediaController, removed service binding logic
MauiMediaElement.android.cs	Refactored layout from RelativeLayout to FrameLayout, added MediaController integration
MediaControlsService.android.cs	Converted from Service to MediaSessionService with proper notification handling
BoundServiceConnection.android.cs	File deleted - service binding no longer needed
BoundServiceBinder.android.cs	File deleted - service binding no longer needed
textureview.xml	Changed background colors from white/transparent to black
MediaElementHandler.android.cs	Added async MediaController creation and connection logic
AppBuilderExtensions.shared.cs	Removed MediaControlsService dependency injection

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 10 out of 10 changed files in this pull request and generated 5 comments.

[TheCodeTraveler]

Hey James! It looks like this PR is causing a breaking change when multiple MediaElements are on screen at the same time.

Here's the problems I found using the MediaElement in CarouselView Page:

• Wrong video plays, e.g. BuckBunny is shown instead of Elephants Dream
• Pausing/Playing one video pauses/plays all other videos

[ne0rrmatrix]

Hey James! It looks like this PR is causing a breaking change when multiple MediaElements are on screen at the same time.

Here's the problems I found using the MediaElement in CarouselView Page:

* Wrong video plays, e.g. BuckBunny is shown instead of Elephants Dream

* Pausing/Playing one video pauses/plays all other videos

That is an issue that will be difficult to resolve. The MediaSessionService is not intended to be run as anything but a singleton and explicitly states in documentation that it works that way by design. I have looked at stack overflow, github discussions, and at github bug reports. They all have one thing in common. All the response from google employees agree that multiple players playing different streams is not something they will comment on or provide support for. They recommend strongly that you do not do that.

Having multiple video players takes up limited resources and I have noticed that all major streaming platforms tend to use essentially the same flow for how video's are shown. The actual player is almost always on its own page. Twitch, youtube, netflix, prime, etc all use a separate page to playback content.

I do not believe we should support multiple instances of the player going further. I am happy to try and implement this but it looks like it will take a long time for me to figure this out. It has taken me almost 2 years go get this far. It is unlikely I can do this in a reasonable period of time. This will require me to create a solution that is not supported by the library and was never intended. I will keep trying this weekend but if I do not have any luck I will most likely wait for feedback from the community with suggestions on how me might do this.

The current recommendation from https://developer.android.com/media/media3/session/control-playback is to not use a MediaSession Service if you want to use more than a single player. So we can leave the player as is and continue to support multiple sessions and close this PR. I will be looking for input as to what we should do from other members of the community and if anyone has any ideas on how we might implement this I would appreciate the input.

Do we want to consider leaving it as is if I can't figure it out? Try to figure out some workarounds for bugs and issues that crop up from unsupported use of media3? Or do we want to consider removing MediaSession and remove support for Bluetooth devices, Rich Media notifications, and stuff like metadata? I would like to move forward and deprecate the use of multiple media players across MediaElement in general because this is one thing that is consistent among all the supported players. None of them should really be in a CollectionView directly. It does work, sort of, but it was never intended and there is almost no one actually doing this that I am aware of. If anyone knows of use cases in production where people do use multiple players on a device I would love to see if so I can try and figure out how they did it.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 10 out of 10 changed files in this pull request and generated 13 comments.

[ne0rrmatrix]

The only current issue I am working on is Rich Media Notifications are currently only working correctly with a single player. If you have more than one it just does not work. I have never had that working at all ever. I am not sure what I will need to do to get that working. But the issue with many MediaElement's is now fixed! You can have as many as you want working at the same time. With only one Caveat. You can only play one video at a time.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 12 out of 12 changed files in this pull request and generated 21 comments.

[ne0rrmatrix]

The project has been updated to add support for multiple media players. The only thing it does not support is more than one item when using rich media notifications. If a user has say a collection of hundreds of videos having 100's of notifications is going to be an issue. So we need to decide how we are going to handle that? Also figuring out how to do that? I know that you can have multiple separate apps that all use rich media notifications does work. But a single app with multiple I am not sure about? That is the last thing to add if we choose to do so. In all previous versions of supporting rich media notifications we have only ever supported one and I have yet to get a single bug report about not supporting it. Mainly because that idea has never worked in the past and no one either noticed or cared.

[ne0rrmatrix]

If we choose to continue supporting many video's being able to play simultaneously this PR will be closed as incompatible. I do not see any way to implement that. It is neither intended or recommended that anyone ever have more than one player.

[KeithBoynton]

What is the state of play with this guys? Parts of this PR fixes an issue I have with the Android implemention of my app. Right now I'm having to build from the PR when releasing the Android verison of my app and the Nuget version for all other platforms.

What is the hold up to getting this merged in and released?