UI on Android
Choose the approach that fits your requirements:
- Use Open Video UI when you want a custom experience without building common player components yourself.
- Use the chromeless player when you want to start with no UI and build every control and interaction from scratch.
- Use the basic default UI when its ready-made controls meet your needs and one is available.
| Approach | Starting point | Flexibility | Development effort |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Video UI | Ready-made, modular components | High | Moderate |
| Chromeless | Player API without a UI | Complete | Highest |
| Default UI | Complete basic player UI | Basic | Lowest |
Building a chromeless UI means using the OptiView Player API and your own application code without a ready-made UI.
You are responsible for adding every control, such as a play button, and connecting it to the player API, such as player.play().
This approach gives you total control over the UI and UX, but requires an understanding of video playback and the OptiView Player API.
Open Video UI
Use Open Video UI for Android to customize the player with ready-made, open-source components that you can use as is or compose and style to match your application.
If you're building a React Native application, use Open Video UI for React Native instead.
Chromeless
For complete control, you can start without a UI and build every control and interaction with the native technologies and programming languages of the platform. The THEOplayer API exposes all the events and properties that you need to implement a custom design from scratch.
Refer to our article on how to build a chromeless UI for more information.
Default UI
As of THEOplayer 5, the Android SDK no longer ships a default UI.