Disable swipe to close on AVPlayerController - swift

Question

iOS 11 has introduced a swipe to close AVPlayerController. I have app that is aimed at toddlers so the screen is easily swiped causing the video to close. Is there anyway to remove the gesture to close the player?
I have tried adding a gesture override to the AVPlayerController's view but it doesn't work. There is a possible solution on How can I add Swipe Gesture to AVPlayer in swift 3 but there must be a cleaner way

Answer 1

If AVPlayerController is embedded (not presenting) the Close button is not presented in the controls view.
My solution is to find the subview with gesture recognizers and remove pan gesture recognizer
for v in playerViewController.view.subviews {
if v.gestureRecognizers != nil {
for gr in v.gestureRecognizers! {
if gr is UIPanGestureRecognizer {
// remove pan gesture to prevent closing on pan
v.removeGestureRecognizer(gr)
}
}
}
}

Answer 2

I managed to solve issue. As #Vakas commented, the AVPlayerController shouldn't be subclassed. I had originally subclassed it and presented using a modal segue. This was causing the problem.
To solve it, I created another view controller that embeds the AVPlayerController in it.
import UIKit
import AVKit
class PlayerViewController: UIViewController, AVPlayerViewControllerDelegate {
var videoRecord: Video!
var presentingController = ""
var videos = [Video]()
var presentingPlaylist: Playlist?
let playerViewController = TFLPlayerController()
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
playerViewController.delegate = self
playerViewController.videoRecord = videoRecord
playerViewController.videos = self.videos
playerViewController.allowsPictureInPicturePlayback = false
// Add the original AVPlayerController in here
self.addChildViewController(playerViewController)
let playerView = playerViewController.view
playerView?.frame = self.view.bounds
self.view.addSubview(playerView!)
playerViewController.didMove(toParentViewController: self)
}
}
I basically use this View Controller to pass through the properties such as videos, etc, to the originally subclassed AVPlayerController.

Answer 3

None of the comments above solved the issue (iOS 13+). Solution:
let panGestureRecognizer = UIPanGestureRecognizer(target: self, action: #selector(handlePanGesture(_:)))
avPlayerViewController.view.addGestureRecognizer(panGestureRecognizer)
where handlePanGesture(_:) is the method that will be called if a pan happen on the screen (and the video won't move - that was the problem in the question that it was dragged), and avPlayerViewController is the AVPlayerViewController instance.
Note: if you want to prevent the pinch / rotation and any other gesture, you can add for every gesture a new UI...GestureRecognizer. Just make sure, that all UI...GestureRecognizers' delegate is set, and this function is implemented:
public func gestureRecognizer(_ gestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer, shouldRecognizeSimultaneouslyWith otherGestureRecognizer: UIGestureRecognizer) -> Bool {
return true
}