How to play YouTube in Background with Android Webview?

Question

I want to "minimize" the application, leaving it in background doing exactly the same that when the ghostbutton mode is pressed when the user clicks a button (but don't finish it) How can I do that?

So far I'm able to create a Activity. I've initialize my members and load the WebView with "https://www.youtube.com". I'm also able to create a Service that lets me minimize the Activity, but what I want is to minimize the Activity that I've my WebView loaded. Problem When the Activity paused, WebView is also paused.

What I want now.

1. A ghost mode -> basically minimizing this current activity with system overlay and showing notification for media controls that can play/resume and exit from the ghost mode.
2. A MainActivity that is visible to me and only becomes the sevice and show me Notification control after pressing ghostmode btn

What I've handled so far

Screen orientation, meaning Activity doesn't recreate the WebView. If I'm watching some video,it just pause the video on screen orientation.

What answers I want

3. Can I make my current Activity to become a service?
4. If no, can I just create a SplashActivity that opens this make MainActivity and make this Service on button click.

AndroidManifest.xml

<service android:enabled="true" android:name=".Services.GhostModeService" />

 android:hardwareAccelerated="true"

<activity android:name=".MainActivity"
            android:configChanges="orientation|screenSize|keyboardHidden"
            android:label="@string/app_name"
            android:launchMode="singleInstance">

            <intent-filter>
                <action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />

                <category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
            </intent-filter>
        </activity>

MainActivity

@Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
    Log.d(TAG,"classmain-> onCreate");
    initializeM();
    settingWebview();
    initializeNavigationTab();
    myoutube.loadUrl(URL);
    ghostModeServiceIntent=new Intent(MainActivity.this,GhostModeService.class);
}

These are my settings.

private void settingWebview() {
        myoutube.setWebViewClient(new Myyoutube());
        myoutube.getSettings().setLoadsImagesAutomatically(true);
        myoutube.setScrollBarStyle(View.SCROLLBARS_INSIDE_OVERLAY);
        myoutube.getSettings().setBuiltInZoomControls(false);
        myoutube.getSettings().setLoadsImagesAutomatically(true);
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.JELLY_BEAN_MR1)
            myoutube.getSettings().setMediaPlaybackRequiresUserGesture(true);
        myoutube.getSettings().setJavaScriptEnabled(true);
        myoutube.getSettings().setPluginState(WebSettings.PluginState.ON);
    }

GhostmodeService

 private WindowManager mWindowManager;
 private View mGhostmode;

@Override
    public void onCreate() {
    super.onCreate();

    Log.d(TAG,"classghostservice-> onCreate()");
    LayoutInflater inflater = (LayoutInflater) getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
    mGhostmode = inflater.inflate(R.layout.layout_ghostmode,null,false);

    //setting the layout parameters
    WindowManager.LayoutParams params = new WindowManager.LayoutParams(
            500,
            500,
            WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_PHONE,
            WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_FOCUSABLE,
            PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT);

    params.x=0;
    params.y=0;
    params.gravity=Gravity.END | Gravity.BOTTOM;


    //getting windows services and adding the floating view to it
    mWindowManager = (WindowManager) getSystemService(WINDOW_SERVICE);
    mWindowManager.addView(mGhostmode, params);

}

Method that create my notification. This notification resumes the MainActivity.

@Override
    public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
        Log.d(TAG,"classghostservice-> onstartCommand()");
        foregroundNotification(1);
        return START_NOT_STICKY;

    }

Answer 1

[SOLVED] After a week I'm able to answer this long awaited question of How to Run Youtube In background using Webview. Yes, webview requires UI to run we can't run it in background using service, even if you do find a you way, you will still get in issues.

The clever tricks are as following:

1. Yes, you need to add android.permission.SYSTEM_ALERT_WINDOW because you want to make a floating window that stays on top of other apps.

2. Let's say you have asked for permission and ready to start MainActivity, at this point forget about setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); instead you need to add your layout in WindowManager using windowManager.addView(yourLayout, yourWindowParams);

activity_main.xml

In my layout my parent layout was DrawerLayout

<android.support.v4.widget.DrawerLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
xmlns:app="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto"
xmlns:tools="http://schemas.android.com/tools"
android:id="@+id/drawer"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent".....

So, I had to define my member variable as follows

private static DrawerLayout windowMain;

MainActivity

 windowManager = (WindowManager) getSystemService(WINDOW_SERVICE);
 inflater = (LayoutInflater) getSystemService(LAYOUT_INFLATER_SERVICE);
 windowMain = (DrawerLayout) inflater.inflate(R.layout.activity_main, null);

1. Now the main part is by using this windowMain, you have to call

    findViewById()
   

eg

windowMain.findViewById(R.id.btn);
windowMain.findViewById(R.id.webview);

3. You also need to define its WindowManager.LayoutParams. Initializing params.

   WindowManager.LayoutParams=expandParams
   expandParams = new WindowManager.LayoutParams(
           WindowManager.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
           WindowManager.LayoutParams.MATCH_PARENT,
           WindowManager.LayoutParams.TYPE_APPLICATION_OVERLAY,
           WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_ALLOW_LOCK_WHILE_SCREEN_ON|
                   WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_NOT_TOUCH_MODAL,
           PixelFormat.TRANSLUCENT);
   expandParams.gravity = Gravity.START | Gravity.TOP;
   expandParams.x = 0;
   expandParams.y = 0;
   

4. Finally, you need to add windowMain and its params into windowManager by

     windowManager.addView(windowMain, expandParams);
   

Everything is done to make a window that floats around and take whole of your screen, then do what you need to do like loading URL in webview using wv.loadURL(url). This ensures that we have loaded our webview inside a window and we just need to update the params of our windowMain so that it minimize it or even completely disappear by setting w:0 and h:0 instead of MATCH_PARENT

You can have a btn_ghost that updatesthe window like:

windowManager.updateViewLayout(windowMain, ghostParams);

5. Lastly, when we've created this created we can call moveTaskToBack(true); this will stop out activity move it to task, becuase we don't need it. When finishing this activity that was created but stopped we must remove our windowMain .

     windowManager.removeView(windowMain);
     finish()