Android: unable to play/pause html5 video programatically until manually started

Question

I have an Android KitKat application with an embedded WebView. The page contains an html5 video element. The video loads fine, but play() has no effect until I tap the play button on the screen, and then play() and pause() work fine. I have also tried myWebView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient());, but this makes no difference. Also, this same page works fine in Chrome browsers on Mac and Linux.

Answer 1

Well, I found the problem. Android 4+ will not allow autoplay of video or programmatic start of play without first having the user tap the play button on the screen. This is so the user will implicitly acknowledge the use of bandwidth by manually activating playback. While I understand why this would be reasonable for a phone user with a cell connection, my application is a television with an Android HDMI stick. This is a very unfortunate restriction. See more here: Autostart html5 video using android 4 browser

EDIT: There is a workaround - while the stock browser cannot achieve this, using an embedded WebView gives you a little more control:

    WebView myWebView = (WebView) findViewById(R.id.webview);
    myWebView.setWebChromeClient(new WebChromeClient());
    myWebView.getSettings().setMediaPlaybackRequiresUserGesture(false);

This solved the problem!