avkit

Guidance for building media-playback experiences on Apple platforms with AVKit, the high-level UI layer over AVFoundation, targeting Swift 6.3 and iOS 26+. It covers the system-standard video players, Picture-in-Picture, AirPlay routing, transport controls, playback-speed control, and subtitle and closed-caption display, and it is useful whenever an app needs to present video with system-provided chrome instead of a hand-built player.

Setup guidance covers configuring the audio session with the .playback category, enabling the Audio, AirPlay, and Picture in Picture background modes, and deferring setActive(true) until playback begins so other audio is not interrupted prematurely. For UIKit, AVPlayerViewController is the standard player, presented full screen or embedded inline as a child view controller, and the skill documents its key properties, a delegate for full-screen and PiP lifecycle events, and observing isReadyForDisplay to avoid a black flash. For SwiftUI, the VideoPlayer view wraps the same playback UI and supports an overlay above the video; because it does not expose every AVPlayerViewController property, the guide shows wrapping the controller in a UIViewControllerRepresentable for advanced control such as PiP configuration or playback speed.

Picture-in-Picture is enabled automatically once the app is configured, the device supports it, and the current AVPlayerItem is playable video, since audio-only or unsupported items can make it unavailable. The material lists PiP prerequisites, shows how to restore the UI when PiP stops by calling the delegate completion handler, and points to AVPictureInPictureController for fully custom player UIs. Common-mistakes and review-checklist sections, plus a patterns reference file, round out the guidance.