React Native tvOS title/description player UI

Product

Player

Question

So I am using the very latest, as of today, React Native SDK, and when using the player in tvOS via React Native, and using the system ui for the player. The title and description are not shown anywhere.

Hi @sune!

You can define the title and the description via the SourceConfig.
See the relevant API for title and for description

Please make sure you have the title and description set already at the time when calling player.load(sourceConfig) as changing it is not supported after the load() call.

The title shows up right above the transport bar (or seek bar) and the description along with the title again, shows up if you swipe down or hit the down button, then go to the Info panel.

See screenshots:


I hope this answers your question!

Yeah, that makes sense, and that is what we are doing

But when using the system ui in tvOS, nothing shows up, title and description is blank. In android TV and other platforms that are using the web UI, the title and description shows up. It seems like some of the native code is throwing away the title and description

Interesting!

Could you provide code snippet that I can use to try to reproduce?
I wonder if there is something in the actual string that might cause this.

e.g. a player.load() call with raw string values.
You don’t have to share your asset URL, you can redact that as I can test with any asset.

Hi,

Sorry for taking so long to reply

This issue also exists at your GitHub - bitmovin/bitmovin-player-react-native: Official React Native bindings for Bitmovin's Mobile Player SDKs. repository.

I cloned, ran yarn bootstrap, and build the tvOS target on an Apple TV 18.2 simulator, and opened up the Basic Playback, and no title is shown in the UI. Even though the title was provided in the player.load call



Hi @sune !

I’m having hard time reproducing your issue.
I have tried with a fresh checkout of our example application with only changes to the license key and I still see the title on the system UI, using the same Apple TV tvOS 18.2 simulator and still I can see the title on every try.

I’m wondering if you have any other changes in your project that might affect this.

If you could create a new React Native project with only our Player SDK added and integrated on a single screen, reproducing the issue that would be great to share here. In that case we could ensure we are looking at the same integration code and I could help you better!

Thats weird, because i just pulled your repository, ran yarn bootstrap and followed your steps.

I will try to make a minimal example based on your own code

@roland.kakonyi i pushed into GitHub - madethis/bitmovin-tv which uses expo. Player works here, but title still missing

Hi @sune!
I managed to look at your example project, changed only the license and ran it and the title shows up. I have no explanation how this could be different for you and me.

See this screenshot from your example app:

That is really crazy! We are building the apps via EAS and have the same issues, what Xcode version are you using?

Xcode Version 16.2 (16C5032a). Previously tried with 16.1 when you reported this issue originally.

Hi, any updates on how to fix this :smiley: ? I am having the same issue, no title or any other type of UI is showing on Apple TV.

The lack of title and description display is expected behavior if you’re using the newest React Native SDK and integrating Bitmovin Player along with the native system UI on tvOS. The native tvOS system player UI only shows information such as a title or description if it is explicitly given and is okay to display with the correct configuration - the native UI does not automatically render any custom metadata like title or description. The Bitmovin SDK on tvOS does not map these metadata fields, including title and description, to the system UI of the player in its default layout (to the best of my knowledge) so it is likely you will need to create your own overlay or UI layer on top of the player view in your React Native wrapper/component that renders in a way that makes it look like they are part of the Bitmovin player view, then manually pass the title and description metadata. Also, you should check that you are passing the correct metadata fields in the player config, but with the native player, if you are not controlling the rendering visually, it may not consume it visually anyways.