iPadOS safari video play, progress bar does not auto-hide after using slide over.

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Level 1

5 points

iPadOS safari video play, progress bar does not auto-hide after using slide over.

Hi,

I like to watch YouTube video using safari instead of using the app on my iPad, because Safari in iPadOS supports keyboard control. However, there is an annoying bug that makes it awful to use. And this bug is easily reproducible, I tested on two of my iPad Pros: iPad Pro 10.5 and my new iPad Pro 12.9 4th gen. Both devices are updated to the latest version of iOS 13.

Here is the detailed procedures to reproduce it:

Open safari on iPadOS, open YouTube.com, play a video.
Now when video starts to play, the progress bar disappear after a few seconds. If it doesn’t disappear, I will use Apple Pencil to touch the empty space right below the progress bar, and there is an feedback on the graphics that feels like the entire progress bar is selected. Then after a few seconds the progress bar will hide.
Then use the slide over. It could be email, file, whatever. When you use the slide over, the progress bar of the video will show up immediately.
Now you pull the slide over floating window back to the drawer and use Safari in full screen. From now on, the progress bar will never hide, no matter what you do, until you refresh the page.

I hope this problem can draw some attention from the dev team and can be fixed in the upcoming update. Or please let me know if there are any work around.

Thanks in advance!

iPad Pro 12.9-inch, 3rd Gen, Wi-Fi

Posted on Jul 16, 2020 11:44 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

SilkySteel

Level 4

1,112 points

Jul 17, 2020 2:50 AM in response to xinran17

I was able to reproduce this easily following your steps on iPadOS 14 beta 2. The progress bar and buttons on the bottom got indeed stuck forever after sliding something over the Safari app. I tried workarounds, but even awkward ones, like going to PiP mode and back, didn't fix it.

This is likely an issue of the complex YouTube web player mishandling the slide over and slide out events, so this bug should be reported to Google.

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Answer 2

xinran17 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 21, 2020 9:27 PM in response to xinran17

Hey guys, I think I found a workaround by chance, at least a workaround for me. I found the auto-hide function dies only when the slide over window is floating over the video player, which happens in the full screen mode and the theater mode. So now to avoid that, before I use slide over, I just turn off the theater mode or full screen mode, so that the video player is only at the upper left corner, and the slide over window does not occupy the space of the video player. This can be a workaround though, it is still annoying, and hope Apple developers can fix this bug quickly.

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Answer 3

Roote

Level 4

1,631 points

Jul 18, 2020 1:00 AM in response to xinran17

xinran17 wrote:

Or please let me know if there are any work around.

One workaround is to use the following JavaScript code in a bookmarklet run from Safari's Favorites bar:

javascript:document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].webkitEnterFullscreen();

Add a bookmark to your Favorites folder and edit it, or edit an existing bookmark. Paste the JavaScript into the website address field. A name, such as FS Video, goes in the name field. To make it easier, you can visit this website and drag the bookmarklet into your Favorites folder. To do this, turn your iPad horizontally, open Safari's sidebar, select the Bookmarks tab, select the Favorites folder and drag the bookmarklet in.

The fullscreen presentation of a video initiated from the bookmarklet will allow the video controls to auto-hide when using Slide Over. However, you may be substituting one issue for another as many of the keyboard shortcuts won't be available when in fullscreen mode. You'll need to exit fullscreen mode to use them. Also note that the bookmarklet won't work on embedded videos in an iFrame.

You can watch this YouTube video to see the bookmark installed, YouTube's fullscreen controller in use and the bookmarklet in use. Note in the video that the controls in fullscreen initiated from the bookmarklet appear when the iPad's screen is tapped.

Another option is to install a shortcut such as Viticci's Full Screen Video and run it from the share sheet while viewing a video in Safari.

iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (3rd generation), iPadOS 13.5.1

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Answer 4

xinran17 Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 18, 2020 1:32 AM in response to Roote

Thank you so much. I actually like this method, it worked well. The only downside I found about the full screen player from the shortcut is that I cannot turn on captions. Is there any player that supports captions?

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