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How to use VideoKit to add video to your SwiftUI app

Jun 19, 2025  ·  swiftuiopen-source

I just created a new open-source Swift Package called VideoKit, which makes it easy to add video to your SwiftUI apps. It has a configurable VideoPlayer and a video-based splash screen.

Unlike AVKit’s VideoPlayer, VideoKit’s VideoPlayer can be configured to great extent. It also lets you observe the current player time and can trigger an action when the player reaches the end.

VideoKit can also add customizable, video-based splash screens to your app. This makes it easy to add powerful launch effects, like we see in many video streaming apps.

Video Player

To add video content to your app, just add a VideoPlayer with a URL to the video you want to play:

struct ContentView: View {

    var body: some View {
        VideoPlayer(videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL)
            .aspectRatio(16/9, contentMode: .fit)
    }
}

You can injecting a time binding, and trigger an action when the video stops playing:

struct ContentView: View {

    @State var isVideoPresented = false
    @State var videoTime = TimeInterval.zero

    var body: some View {
        Button("Play video") {
            isVideoPresented = true
        }
        .fullScreenCover(isPresented: $isVideoPresented) {
            VideoPlayer(
                videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL,
                time: $videoTime,
                didPlayToEndAction: { isVideoPresented = false }
            )
            .ignoresSafeArea()
        }
    }
}

You can inject a VideoPlayerConfiguration and a controller configuration to customize a player and its underlying controller:

struct ContentView: View {

    var body: some View {
        VideoPlayer(
            videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL,
            configuration: .init(autoPlay: false),
            controllerConfiguration: { controller in
                controller.showsPlaybackControls = false
            }
        )
    }
}

These options make it easy to add powerful video-based features to your app.

Video Splash Screen

VideoKit makes it easy to add a video-based splash screen that is automatically presented when an app launches, and dismissed when the embedded video stops playing.

To add a video splash screen to your app, just apply a .videoSplashScreen(videoURL:configuration:) view modifier to your app’s root view:

struct ContentView: View {

    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, world")
            .videoSplashScreen(
                videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL
            )
    }
}

You can pass in a VideoSplashScreenConfiguration to customize the splash screen:

struct ContentView: View {

    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, world")
            .videoSplashScreen(
                videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL,
                configuration: .init(
                    dismissAnimation: .linear(duration: 2),
                    maxDisplayDuration: 2
                )
            )
    }
}

You can also customize the video player view, for instance to add a custom background view to it:

struct ContentView: View {

    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, world")
            .videoSplashScreen(
                videoURL: VideoPlayer.sampleVideoURL,
                videoPlayerView: { videoPlayer in
                    Color.red
                    videoPlayer.aspectRatio(contentMode: .fit)
                }
            )
    }
}

This makes it easy to add customizable video splash screens to your app with a few lines of code.

Sample Videos

VideoKit also has a SampleVideo type that can be used to test the player, and a list of sample videos that are parsed from a JSON file in the library.

Conclusion

VideoKit is a new, open-source Swift package that aims to make it easy to add powerful video-based features to your SwiftUI apps. I hope that you’ll like it.

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