dartnative_video_player

A high-performance video player for DartNative — backed by the platform's own engines (AVPlayer on iOS, ExoPlayer on Android) with byte-limited pre-caching. iOS and Android.

Why you'll like it

• Native playback engines — AVPlayer and ExoPlayer do the decoding, so playback is smooth and battery-friendly, with the formats each platform supports out of the box.
• Smart pre-caching — start buffering the next clip ahead of time, with a byte budget so you control how much it pulls.
• Bring your own controls — ship the built-in controls, or overlay your own Dart UI on top of a clean video surface.

Highlights

• VideoPlayerController(dataSource: …) — drive play / pause / seekTo / setVolume / setSpeed / setLooping.
• VideoDataSource.network(url, {headers, cacheConfig}) / .file(path) — stream or play local files; pass a VideoCacheConfig to pre-cache.
• VideoPlayer(controller: …) — the player widget; set aspectRatio, fit, and showControls.
• Ready-made controls — VideoPlayerWithControls (player + controls), or VideoOverlayControls / VideoBottomBarControls, themed via VideoControlsTheme.

Install

dependencies:
  dartnative_video_player: ^1.0.0   # from dartpub.dev

dn pub get

Register the plugin once, in main():

void main() {
  DartNativePluginRegistrant.registerAll();
  runApp(const MyApp());
}

Quick look

Play a network video

import 'package:dartnative_video_player/dartnative_video_player.dart';

final controller = VideoPlayerController(
  dataSource: VideoDataSource.network('https://example.com/clip.mp4'),
  autoPlay: true,
);

// In your build():
VideoPlayer(
  controller: controller,
  aspectRatio: 16 / 9,
);

Control playback

controller.play();
controller.pause();
controller.seekTo(const Duration(seconds: 30));
controller.setSpeed(1.5);
controller.setVolume(0.8);
controller.setLooping(true);

Play a local file

final controller = VideoPlayerController(
  dataSource: VideoDataSource.file('/path/to/video.mp4'),
);

Pre-cache ahead of time

VideoDataSource.network(
  url,
  cacheConfig: const VideoCacheConfig(useCache: true, preCacheSize: 5 * 1024 * 1024),
);

The player is a native view rendered through DartNative's view bridge (ViewType 1000), so it sits naturally inside your Dart layout.

Platform setup

iOS

HTTPS URLs play out of the box. To play an HTTP (non-TLS) URL, add an App Transport Security exception for that host in your app's Info.plist.

Android

Requires minSdk 26 — set it in android/app/build.gradle.kts:

android { defaultConfig { minSdk = 26 } }

The plugin's manifest already declares INTERNET, ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE, WAKE_LOCK and FOREGROUND_SERVICE — nothing to add. To play an HTTP (cleartext) URL on Android 9+, enable cleartext traffic for that host (via usesCleartextTraffic or a network-security config).

Example

The example/ app plays a network clip with custom controls and seeking — borrow from it freely.

Credits & license

Evolved from BetterPlayer (Apache-2.0) on Android, substantially reworked for DartNative; native AVPlayer on iOS.

Commercial plugin distributed via dartpub.dev — file issues on the plugin's page.