videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest doesn't work in Safari iOS

[Raino]

Hello everyone!
I searched for information on this issue and found only old discussions of this problem (#1280, #1384).
It all came down to the fact that Safari on iOS does not support custom JS handlers and uses only its own, which is why the videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest function cannot work. After that, I read that Apple has introduced support for the FullScreen API in Safari since iOS 12.
I tried to play around with

videojs.options.hls.overrideNative = true;
videojs.options.html5.nativeAudioTracks = false;
videojs.options.html5.nativeVideoTracks = false;

but it did not bring any result.
Maybe I messed up something and the FullScreen API doesn't affect how HLS works?
Perhaps there are some solutions to this problem with the operation of videojs.Hls.xhr. beforeRequest in Safari on iOS in 2021, or there are some workarounds for using videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest?

[gkatsev]

Unfortunately, iPhones do not support the fullscreen API nor Media Source Extensions, the API behind our playback engine. MSE not being supported means our playback engine cannot run and thus beforeRequest isn't available.
The Fullscreen API also doesn't work, but that's unrelated to beforeRequest.

[gkatsev]

To add, the fullscreen API is available on iPads but not iPhones.

[Raino]

@gkatsev Why isn't the Fullscreen API supported by iOS? The Internet says that it is supported. Is there any other way to update SRC videojs without beforeRequest and without restarting the player? A kind of "on the fly"

[gkatsev]

To be clear, it's supported but only on iPads, not on iPhones. Why? Weird decisions from Apple.

What do you mean update src without restarting the player? You can pass a new source to the player via player.src() or player.loadMedia()

[Raino]

@gkatsev To replace the src player on the go, I used

videojs.Hls.xhr.beforeRequest = function(options){
	options.uri = ...

Is there a cross-browser solution with the same meaning?

[gkatsev]

I would highly recommend against using that method to change the source of the player. Instead, you should be setting a new source via the player.src() method.

player.src({
  src: 'http://example.com/video.m3u8',
  type: 'application/x-mpegurl'
});

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[Raino]

@gkatsev I tried it. This method constantly stops the player and interrupts it. This is hardly a "substitution" of src. I need this to update the stream keys

[gkatsev]

So your stream is token signed or something, and you need to update it every so often for it to be able to continue playing?
Unfortunately, that isn't something you can do on iPhones. Basically your only bet there is a proxy.

[Raino]

@gkatsev Which proxy are you talking about? Is it possible to do something by means of video.js?

[gkatsev]

There isn't anything you can do client-side for iPhones due to platform limitations.