How to disable seeking on iOS AVPlayerViewController?

Question

On tvOS if I want to allow play / pause but disable seeking, I can set avPlayerViewController.requiresLinearPlayback = YES . However this property doesn't exist in iOS. How would I accomplish the same on iOS? I don't want to use avPlayerViewController.showsPlaybackControls = NO because this would prevent play / pause. I only want to disable seeking. Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure that avPlayerViewController.showsPlaybackControls = NO would even fully prevent seeking, as someone could plug in a headset with control buttons on it and press the physical "skip forward" button

Answer 1

I solved this problem by extending AVPlayer. Despite the Apple documentation saying that you should not extend AVPlayer and doing so has undefined behavior, in test everything worked fine on iOS 9 through 13

@interface CustomAVPlayer : AVPlayer

@property BOOL seekingEnabled;

@end

@implementation CustomAVPlayer

- (instancetype)initWithPlayerItem:(AVPlayerItem *)item
{
    self = [super initWithPlayerItem:item];
    if (self) {
        _seekingEnabled = YES;
    }
    return self;
}

- (void)seekToTime:(CMTime)time toleranceBefore:(CMTime)toleranceBefore toleranceAfter:(CMTime)toleranceAfter completionHandler:(void (^)(BOOL))completionHandler
{
    // This prevents seeking at the lowest level, regardless of whatever shenanigans the view may be doing
    if (_seekingEnabled)
        [super seekToTime:time toleranceBefore:toleranceBefore toleranceAfter:toleranceAfter completionHandler:completionHandler];
    else
        [super seekToTime:self.currentTime toleranceBefore:toleranceBefore toleranceAfter:toleranceAfter completionHandler:completionHandler];
}

@end

Now I can enable/disable seeking with just: player.seekingEnabled = (YES/NO);