Customize iOS Sender UI

You can customize Cast widgets by setting the colors, styling the buttons, text, and thumbnail appearance, and by choosing the types of buttons to display.

Customize widget theme

The Cast framework widgets supports the Apple UIAppearance Protocol in UIKit to change the appearance of the widgets across your app, such as the position or border of a button. Use this protocol to style the Cast framework widgets to match an existing apps styling.

Cast button example

GCKUICastButton.appearance().tintColor = UIColor.gray

[GCKUICastButton appearance].tintColor = [UIColor grayColor];

Customize widget directly

Customize a widget directly using the properties of its superclass. For example, it's common to customize the GCKUICastButton color using the tintColor: property.

Cast button example

castButton.tintColor = UIColor.gray

castButton.tintColor = [UIColor grayColor];

Choose controller buttons

Both the expanded controller class (GCKUIExpandedMediaControlsViewController) and the mini controller class (GCKUIMiniMediaControlsViewController) contain a button bar, and clients can configure which buttons are presented on those bars. This is achieved by both classes conforming to GCKUIMediaButtonBarProtocol.

The mini controller bar has 3 configurable slots for buttons:

SLOT  SLOT  SLOT
  1     2     3

The expanded controller bar has a permanent play/pause toggle button in the middle of the bar plus 4 configurable slots:

SLOT  SLOT  PLAY/PAUSE  SLOT  SLOT
  1     2     BUTTON      3     4

Your app can get a reference to the expanded controller with the -[defaultExpandedMediaControlsViewController] property of GCKCastContext and can create a mini controller using -[createMiniMediaControlsViewController].

Each slot can contain either a framework button, a custom button, or be empty. The list of framework control buttons are defined as:

Detailed descriptions of what each button does can be found in GCKUIMediaButtonBarProtocol.h

Add a button as follows using methods on the GCKUIMediaButtonBarProtocol:

• To add a framework button to a bar requires only a call to -[setButtonType:atIndex:].

• To add a custom button to a bar, your app must call -[setButtonType:atIndex:] with buttonType set to GCKUIMediaButtonTypeCustom, and then call -[setCustomButton:atIndex:] passing the UIButton with the same index.

Apply custom styles to your iOS app

The Cast iOS SDK enables you to style the font, color, and images of UI elements of the default widgets in your iOS sender, giving the views a look and feel that matches the rest of your app.

The following section shows you how to apply custom styles to any of the Cast widgets or group of widgets.

Applying a style to a UI element of a widget

This procedure uses the example of setting the body text color of your app's mini controller to red.

1. Look in the table of views and styles to find the view name of the widget or group of widgets that you want to style. Group names are marked with ▼.

   Example: miniController widget view

2. Find the names of the attributes you want to change from the list of properties in the corresponding style class listed in this table.

   Example: bodyTextColor is a property of the GCKUIStyleAttributesMiniController class.

3. Write the code.

   Example:

// Get the shared instance of GCKUIStyle
let castStyle = GCKUIStyle.sharedInstance()
// Set the property of the desired cast widget.
castStyle.castViews.mediaControl.miniController.bodyTextColor = UIColor.red
// Refresh all currently visible views with the assigned styles.
castStyle.apply()

// Get the shared instance of GCKUIStyle.
GCKUIStyle *castStyle = [GCKUIStyle sharedInstance];
// Set the property of the desired cast widget.
castStyle.castViews.mediaControl.miniController.bodyTextColor = [UIColor redColor];
// Refresh all currently visible views with the assigned styles.
[castStyle applyStyle];

Use this pattern for applying any style to any UI element of any widget.

Table of views and styles

This table shows the seven widget views and three groups (marked with ▼) that you can apply styles to.

Style hierarchy

The GCKUIStyle singleton is the API entry point for all of the style settings. It has the property castViews, which is the root of the style hierarchy, as illustrated below; this diagram is a different way of looking at the same views and groups shown in the previous table.

You can apply a style to an individual widget or to a group of widgets. The style hierarchy has three widget groups: castViews, deviceControl, and mediaControl. Each group's rectangle encloses its widgets. Applying a style to a group applies it to all widgets in that group.

For example, the castViews group lets you apply a style to all widgets and the deviceControl group lets you apply a style to just its three device control widgets. The instructions widget does not belong to any group.

castViews
			deviceControl				mediaControl
	instructions		device Chooser	noDevicesAvailable screen	connection Controller		mini Controller	expanded Controller	track Selector
				navigation / toolbar

Footnote: Widget names in this diagram that are shown on two lines should be written in code as one word, on one line, no spaces. For example, device Chooser should be written deviceChooser. Roll over images to enlarge them.