Quickstart with Exoplayer

Overview

ExoPlayer is Google's open-source, application-level media player for Android. It supports more streaming formats (DASH, SmoothStreaming, HLS) and is far more customizable than the framework MediaPlayer / VideoView.

ExoPlayer now ships as part of AndroidX Media3 under the androidx.media3 artifact group. The legacy com.google.android.exoplayer:exoplayer 2.x artifact (and its com.google.android.exoplayer2.* packages) is no longer maintained — new code should use Media3. See AndroidX Media3 migration guide.

Adding it to a project

In your project-level settings.gradle (or root build.gradle), make sure Google's Maven repository is available:

repositories {
    google()
    mavenCentral()
}

In your app-level build.gradle, add the Media3 dependencies you need:

dependencies {
    def media3Version = "1.10.1"
    implementation "androidx.media3:media3-exoplayer:$media3Version"
    implementation "androidx.media3:media3-ui:$media3Version"
    // Optional: adaptive-streaming format modules
    // implementation "androidx.media3:media3-exoplayer-dash:$media3Version"
    // implementation "androidx.media3:media3-exoplayer-hls:$media3Version"
}

See the Media3 release notes for the current stable version.

Streaming a video via ExoPlayer

The basic steps for playing a remote video with ExoPlayer are:

1. Add a PlayerView to your layout — this is the view on which the video will be rendered.
2. Build an ExoPlayer instance — this drives streaming, decoding, and rendering.
3. Wrap the content URL in a MediaItem and hand it to the player.
4. Attach the PlayerView to the player.
5. Call prepare() and play() on the player.

In your activity or fragment layout XML, add the player view:

<androidx.media3.ui.PlayerView
    android:id="@+id/pv_main"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="300dp" />
<!-- Customization attributes like app:auto_show or app:show_buffering are available
     via androidx.media3.ui; see the PlayerView reference. -->

In your activity, build and attach the player:

import androidx.media3.common.MediaItem;
import androidx.media3.exoplayer.ExoPlayer;
import androidx.media3.ui.PlayerView;

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private static final String CONTENT_URL =
            "https://www.radiantmediaplayer.com/media/bbb-360p.mp4";

    private ExoPlayer player;
    private PlayerView pvMain;

    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);

        pvMain = findViewById(R.id.pv_main);

        player = new ExoPlayer.Builder(this).build();
        pvMain.setPlayer(player);

        MediaItem mediaItem = MediaItem.fromUri(CONTENT_URL);
        player.setMediaItem(mediaItem);
        player.prepare();
        player.play();
    }

    @Override
    protected void onDestroy() {
        super.onDestroy();
        if (player != null) {
            player.release();
            player = null;
        }
    }
}

ExoPlayer instances must be accessed from a single application thread (typically the main thread), and releasing the player when the surrounding component is destroyed is required to free decoders. See the Media3 hello world guide.

Pausing, resuming, and seeking

private void pausePlayer() {
    if (player != null) {
        player.pause();
    }
}

private void playPlayer() {
    if (player != null) {
        player.play();
    }
}

private void seekTo(long positionMs) {
    if (player != null) {
        player.seekTo(positionMs);
    }
}

Releasing the player

Always release the player when you are done with it, otherwise video decoders remain held and other apps may be unable to play media:

private void releasePlayer() {
    if (player != null) {
        pvMain.setPlayer(null);
        player.release();
        player = null;
    }
}

Extras

• To silence the video, call player.setVolume(0f).
• PlayerView has a built-in controller that you can toggle with pvMain.setUseController(true/false). You can also embed a standalone androidx.media3.ui.PlayerControlView if you need more layout flexibility.
• Media3 ships additional modules — DASH, HLS, SmoothStreaming, IMA ads, Cast, exoplayer-rtsp, and more. Browse the full list under androidx.media3.