Add Support for Multiple ItemViews in MediaElement #2807

ne0rrmatrix · 2025-07-09T15:52:52Z

Description of Change

Add Mac/iOS support for multiple Item Views when used in CollectionView or CarouselView when using MediaElement. This also adds support for Multi-Window on iOS.

Fixes [BUG] MediaElement not supported in a DataTemplate on a Page with multiple ItemView controls #2247
Fixes [BUG] MediaElement not supported in a DataTemplate on MacCatalyst in an application using multiple windows #2249

PR Checklist

Has a linked Issue, and the Issue has been approved(bug) or Championed (feature/proposal)
Has tests (if omitted, state reason in description)
Has samples (if omitted, state reason in description)
Rebased on top of main at time of PR
Changes adhere to coding standard
Documentation created or updated: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/CommunityToolkit/pulls

Additional information

This will add feature parity when using CollectionView and CarouselView with iOS and MacOS to match current support in Android and Windows when using Media Element. This adds support for multiple items views and supports multiple windows. This PR is focused on MacOS and iOS only. The required support is already available on other platforms.

- Replace platform-specific directives with runtime checks in MediaElementMultipleWindowsPage.cs - Change LaunchMode to Multiple in MainActivity.cs - Update Info.plist to support multiple scenes - Simplify UIViewController logic in MauiMediaElement.macios.cs - Update methods to handle multi-window applications in MauiMediaElement.macios.cs - Add SceneDelegate classes for iOS and Mac Catalyst

Added a using directive for CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample.Constants. Removed the preprocessor directive for the secondWindow variable, replacing it with a nullable Window? type to allow for more flexible handling across platforms.

Copilot

Pull Request Overview

This PR adds support for multiple ItemsView instances and multi-window scenarios on iOS and MacCatalyst for the MediaElement control in .NET MAUI. Key changes include updating the internal view‐controller resolution logic, adding scene‐delegate classes and Info.plist entries for multi‐scene support, and updating the sample app to demonstrate multiple windows.

Refactored MauiMediaElement.macios.cs to use handlers instead of reflection for ItemsView resolution
Added SceneDelegate classes and Info.plist configuration entries for iOS and MacCatalyst multi‐scene support
Updated sample pages and Android LaunchMode to demonstrate multiple windows

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 7 out of 7 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
src/CommunityToolkit.Maui.MediaElement/Views/MauiMediaElement.macios.cs	New handler-based logic for finding host view controllers; removed reflection code
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Platforms/iOS/SceneDelegate.cs	Added empty `SceneDelegate` class to support multiple scenes
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Platforms/iOS/Info.plist	Added `UIApplicationSceneManifest` for multi-window support
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Platforms/MacCatalyst/SceneDelegate.cs	Added `SceneDelegate` class for MacCatalyst
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Platforms/MacCatalyst/Info.plist	Added multi-scene manifest entries
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Platforms/Android/MainActivity.cs	Changed `LaunchMode` to `Multiple` for Android multi-window
samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Pages/Views/MediaElement/MediaElementMultipleWindowsPage.cs	Removed preprocessor guards to always define `secondWindow`; missing initialization

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (2)

src/CommunityToolkit.Maui.MediaElement/Views/MauiMediaElement.macios.cs:97

The method is named with a Try prefix but returns void. Consider renaming it to GetItemsViewOnPage or changing it to return a bool to match the Try convention.

	static void TryGetItemsViewOnPage(List<Page> currentPage, out List<ItemsView> itemsView)

samples/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Pages/Views/MediaElement/MediaElementMultipleWindowsPage.cs:11

[nitpick] Constant names should use PascalCase by convention. Consider renaming to BuckBunnyMp4Url and ElephantsDreamMp4Url.

	const string buckBunnyMp4Url = "https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4";

Copilot · 2025-07-09T15:55:20Z

src/CommunityToolkit.Maui.MediaElement/Views/MauiMediaElement.macios.cs

+		// We may be using Multi-window support, so we need to traverse all Windows to find the current page in a multi-window application.
+		// We then check if the VisualElement is an ItemsView (e.g. CarouselView or CollectionView) and add it to the itemsView list/
+
+		itemsView = [];


The out parameter itemsView is initialized but never populated with the discovered items. You should assign the local itemsViewsOnPage list to itemsView (e.g. itemsView = itemsViewsOnPage;).

Copilot · 2025-07-09T15:55:21Z

src/CommunityToolkit.Maui.MediaElement/Views/MauiMediaElement.macios.cs

+			viewController = itemsView?.Where(item => item.Handler is not null)
+					 .Select(item => GetUIViewController(item.Handler))
+					 .FirstOrDefault(viewController => viewController is not null); 


Unconditionally overriding viewController here can set it to null if no matching item is found, losing the fallback to the root view controller. Wrap this assignment in a check (e.g. only override if the query returns a non-null controller).

Suggested change

viewController = itemsView?.Where(item => item.Handler is not null)

.Select(item => GetUIViewController(item.Handler))

.FirstOrDefault(viewController => viewController is not null);

var potentialViewController = itemsView?.Where(item => item.Handler is not null)

.Select(item => GetUIViewController(item.Handler))

.FirstOrDefault(viewController => viewController is not null);

if (potentialViewController is not null)

{

viewController = potentialViewController;

}

Copilot · 2025-07-09T15:55:21Z

...les/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample/Pages/Views/MediaElement/MediaElementMultipleWindowsPage.cs

-#endif
+	const string buckBunnyMp4Url = "https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4";
+	const string elephantsDreamMp4Url = "https://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/ElephantsDream.mp4";
+	readonly Window? secondWindow;


secondWindow is declared but never initialized in the constructor, so OnAppearing will always return early. Reintroduce its assignment using your new URL constants.

ne0rrmatrix · 2025-07-09T17:41:23Z

Sorry I just realized this does not actually work! It does not crash. But it does not provide the correct order of collection view items on page. I still have to work that out. I will continue working on this.

dainius-r · 2025-07-09T18:32:53Z

@ne0rrmatrix I have an issue when using MediaElement on iOS and wondering if this PR could solve it.

My issue is this: on MAUI ContentPage I have this hierarchy CollectionView -> CollectionView.Header -> DataTemplate -> MediaElement and when I try to play video I get this error:
Name: UIViewControllerHierarchyInconsistency Reason: child view controller:<AVPlayerViewController: 0x11abef000> should have parent view controller:<Microsoft_Maui_Controls_Handlers_Items_ReorderableItemsViewController_1: 0x11bdba800> but actual parent is:<Microsoft_Maui_Platform_PageViewController: 0x118bd9fd0> at UIKit.UIView.AddSubview(UIView view) ...

I think code that searcher for iOS media player parent it's written in a way, that if on a ContentPage there is a CollectionView take this as parent, but in may case because player is in Header I need to take Page as a parent.
What do you think, can this PR also solve this issue?

orlandommb · 2025-07-11T12:53:27Z

I've just seen this 😅

ne0rrmatrix added 9 commits January 26, 2025 18:01

Merge branch 'CommunityToolkit:main' into FixDataTemplatesMediaElement

61ea60e

Merge branch 'CommunityToolkit:main' into FixDataTemplatesMediaElement

e3293f4

Merge branch 'CommunityToolkit:main' into FixDataTemplatesMediaElement

9dead1c

Merge branch 'CommunityToolkit:main' into FixDataTemplatesMediaElement

f67c3e6

Fix merge conflict

9c47153

Merge branch 'CommunityToolkit:main' into FixDataTemplatesMediaElement

e76acda

Refactor MediaElementMultipleWindowsPage for flexibility

0313e75

Added a using directive for CommunityToolkit.Maui.Sample.Constants. Removed the preprocessor directive for the secondWindow variable, replacing it with a nullable Window? type to allow for more flexible handling across platforms.

Remove Device check from MediaElement Multiple Window Page

500c53b

Copilot AI review requested due to automatic review settings July 9, 2025 15:52

Copilot AI reviewed Jul 9, 2025

View reviewed changes

ne0rrmatrix marked this pull request as draft July 9, 2025 17:42

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Add Support for Multiple ItemViews in MediaElement #2807

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ne0rrmatrix commented Jul 9, 2025

Description of Change

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