Hi,
After updating to iOS 26, our app is facing playback failures with AVPlayer. The same code and streams work fine on iOS 18 and earlier.
Error - Domain[CoreMediaErrorDomain]:Code[-15628]:Desc[The operation couldn’t be completed.]:Underlying Error Domain[(null)]:Code[0]:Desc[(null)]
Environment:
iOS version: ios 26
React Native: 0.69
Video library: react-native-video (AVPlayer under the hood)
Stream type: HLS (m3u8) with segment (.ts) files
Observed behaviour:
Playback works initially on iOS 26.
On iOS 26, the stream fails at runtime after a few seconds/minutes (not on first load).
Network logs show 307 redirects on some segment requests. After this, AVPlayer throws the above error.
Playback fails intermittently on slow/unstable networks.
FairPlay Streaming
RSS for tagSecurely deliver streaming media to devices through the HTTP Live Streaming protocol using FairPlay Streaming (FPS).
Posts under FairPlay Streaming tag
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I’m implementing FairPlay offline streaming on iOS and ran into a question about DRM expiration handling.
As far as I understand, when issuing a FairPlay offline license, there are typically two time windows:
1. The period during which the user can start offline playback (the longer “rental window”).
2. Once playback starts, the duration allowed to complete playback (the shorter “playback window”).
I’d like to display this information (the remaining validity or expiration time) in the app’s UI next to each downloaded asset.
My question is:
👉 Is there a way to programmatically check or retrieve the expiration time for a FairPlay offline asset on the client side (via AVFoundation or AVContentKeySession)?
Any guidance or best practices for surfacing DRM expiration info in the UI would be greatly appreciated.
Hello, We have Video Stream app. It has HLS VOD Content. We supply 1080p, 4K Contents to users. Users were watching 1080p content before tvOS 26. Users can not watch 1080p content anymore when they update to tvOS 26. We have not changed anything at HLS playlist side and application version. This problem only occurs on Apple TV 4th Gen (A1625) tvOS 26 version. There is no problem with newer Apple TV devices. Would you help to resolve problem? Thanks in advance
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Streaming
Tags:
FairPlay Streaming
Apple TV
tvOS
HTTP Live Streaming
Hi, I submitted the FairPlay Streaming Credentials Approval request, but it's been 15 days and I haven't received a response yet. Do you happen to know how long they usually take to reply to these requests?
Hi,
While I don't normally use FairPlay,
I got this email that is so strangely worded I am wondering if it makes sense to people who do know it or if it has some typo or what.
You can only generate certificates for SDK 4, also SDK 4 is no longer supported?
(Also "will not expire" is imprecise phrasing, certificates presumably will expire, I think it meant to say are still valid / are not invalidated.)
Hi,
I’m an iOS developer building an app with an use case that needs advanced playback on Apple Music subscription streams, specifically:
• Real-time tempo change (BPM) during playback — i.e., time-stretch with key-lock, not just crossfade.
• Beat-matched transitions between tracks.
From what I can tell, this capability seems to exist only for approved partners and isn’t available through public MusicKit.
Question: What’s the official request path to be evaluated for that restricted partner entitlement (application form, questionnaire, NDA, or internal team/BD contact)? If the entitlement identifier is internal, how can I get my account routed to the right Apple Music team?
For reference, publicly announced partners include Algoriddim djay, Serato DJ Pro, rekordbox (AlphaTheta), and Engine DJ—all of which appear to implement mixing features that imply advanced playback (tempo/beat-matching) on Apple Music content. I’d prefer not to share product details publicly for the moment and can provide specifics privately if needed.
Thanks in advance!
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Audio
Tags:
Apple Music API
FairPlay Streaming
MusicKit
AVFoundation
Since iOS and tvOS 18, CMCD can now be automatically sent by AVPlayer (https://developer.apple.com/streaming/Whats-new-HLS.pdf).
However, after enabling CMCD, our streams occasionally fail with the following error: CoreMediaErrorDomain Error -17383
This issue appears to affect only DRM-protected (FairPlay) streams so far.
We activate CMCD via the resource loader of an AVURLAsset, before assigning the item to an AVPlayer.
Unfortunately, we haven’t found a reliable way to reproduce the issue, and we’ve been unable to gather any useful diagnostic information.
Has anyone else observed this behavior when enabling CMCD on FairPlay streams?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Streaming
Tags:
FairPlay Streaming
iOS
HTTP Live Streaming
AVFoundation
Hello All,
I am looking for assistance with our FairPlay Streaming (FPS) certificates. We are in the process of migrating to a new video streaming vendor and need to create a new FPS certificate using SDK 4. However, we have reached the limit of allowed FPS certificates in our account and cannot create a new one.
Issue Details:
• We currently have two FPS certificates active in our developer account.
• One of these was created using SDK 5, but our new vendor (Mux) requires an FPS certificate based on SDK 4.
• Since Apple does not allow deleting FPS certificates from the developer portal, we are unable to create a new SDK 4 certificate.
• We kindly request Apple to revoke one of our existing FPS certificates to allow us to generate a new SDK 4 certificate.
Request:
We would greatly appreciate it if you could assist us on how to delete one of our existing FPS certificates so that we can proceed with creating a new SDK 4 certificate for our vendor integration.
Thank you for your support.
The operation couldn’t be completed. (CoreMediaErrorDomain error -19156 - The operation couldn’t be completed. (CoreMediaErrorDomain error -19156.
For devices that are still on ios17, playing Fairplay encrypted content still works fine. For devices that I've upgraded to ios26 playing the same content in the same app no longer works. I can advance and see the stream frames by tapping +10 scrubbing so I know that the content is being decrypted but tapping the play button of AVPlayer for an AVPlayerItem now does nothing in ios26. Is this a breaking change or is there a stricter requirement that I now have to implement?
The same H265 encrypted Fairplay content can be played in all Apple devices except A1625.
The clear H265 content is played in A1625.
The question is: will this model (A1625) support H265 Fairplay encrypted content?
A ticket was created here:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255658006?sortBy=best
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Streaming
Tags:
FairPlay Streaming
Media
Video
HTTP Live Streaming
We're sending the spcData payload to our fairplay key server (version 5.1) with the base64 encoded string of our fairPlay.cer that was downloaded from our developer portal and we're getting a spcVersionErr (-42580) for the spc version. The value that is being received by the key server seems to be 813827283 when it should be either 1 (base_constants.SPCVersion.v1.rawValue) or 2 (base_constant.SPCVersion.v2.rawValue). We're assuming we're encoding the fairplay.cer incorrectly. Any insight from anybody would be appreciated.
Hi there,
We're working on offline playback of DRM tracks. The persistent keys (also known as track licenses) for offline playback are stored locally on the device and are served from cache when a user initiates playback of a downloaded track.
Our persistent keys have a limited validity time and need to be refreshed when they expire. To prevent a situation where a persistent key expires while the user is offline, we've decided to eagerly refresh these keys one week before their expiration date. To make that happen we need to be able to obtain the expiration date of the given track license.
We've been attempting to use the makeSecureTokenForExpirationDateOfPersistableContentKey API to facilitate this process. The documentation states that this API returns a secret token representing the persistent key, which we can then exchange with our license server for the expiration date: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avcontentkeysession/makesecuretokenforexpirationdate(ofpersistablecontentkey:completionhandler:)?language=objc
However, every time we call makeSecureTokenForExpirationDateOfPersistableContentKey, we receive an error with code -46250. We haven't been able to find any public references or documentation for this specific error code, which is preventing us from troubleshooting the issue. We are conducting our tests on a physical device, as the simulator does not support FairPlay playback. We don't use dual expiry approach.
Is our understanding of how to obtain the expiration timestamp correct? Are we using the makeSecureTokenForExpirationDateOfPersistableContentKey API as it was intended? What does the -46250 error code mean, and what steps should we take to fix our FairPlay implementation to make this work?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
Hello,
My company has an in-store app with FPS SDK 4.x (1024) keys. We've handed those keys over to a trusted third-party and we do not have them. We've been in-store for several years.
The person that created the keys in our organization mistakenly stored them encrypted to our third-party's PGP keys, so we cannot decrypt them, and the third party also has no mechanism to provide us with the keys even though it is in their runtime environment. They only have secure mechanisms for us to upload keys onto their servers.
We are trying to migrate to a different third-party DRM provider, and would like to obtain new keys. Unfortunately, the developer portal won't let me create new keys, saying that we have exceeded the number of keys allowed, which I assume is one.
Additionally, the new DRM provider can only support SDK 4.x keys, and it appears that we can only request SDK 5.x keys on the Apple Developer portal, as the SDK 4.0 option is grayed out. Regardless, it seems that we are not able to request any keys.
We've submitted a request to the support e-mail address and received an automated e-mail that the response should take a few days, but may take longer on occasion. It's now been a month. The e-mail says that the reply address is not monitored. Is there any way we can accelerate this?
Thank you,
Carlos
After Picture-in-Picture is opened on the camera interface, the custom UI cannot be displayed. Is there any way to make the custom UI visible? If custom UI cannot be displayed, how do teleprompter-type apps in the store manage to show custom teleprompter text within the camera?
Hi Apple Music API / MusicKit / MediaPlayer Team,
Similar to the currentPlaybackRate keeps the same pitch, it would be great to have a currentPlaybackPitch parameter as well. Alternatively, adding a preservesPitch parameter would also work.
I see that iOS 26 AutoMix on Apple Music currently does pitch shifting during music transitions, so maybe this is something that could be exposed on the later betas of iOS 26?
Main feature request we get is to have simple pitch changes to Apple Music we play through our app. Is this being considered?
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
General
Tags:
Apple Music API
FairPlay Streaming
Media Player
MusicKit
Hello, our application is unable to HDMI output FairPlay protected content to TV via official Lightning HDMI AV Adapter, by checking the console log on mediaplayerd it is found that a CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19156 is raised, but we are unable to know what this error code means.
default 11:18:15.121584+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_customURLReadCallback: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 customURLReqID 4 isComplete 1 err -19156 error <private> (0) dokeyCallbacksExist 0
default 11:18:15.121670+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_processErrorForRequest: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 handler 4 err 0
default 11:18:15.121752+0800 mediaplaybackd <<<< FigCustomURLHandling >>>> curll_cancelRequestOnQueue: 0x7fa031360: requestID: 4
default 11:18:15.121932+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_transitionRequestToTerminalState: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 reqFin err Error Domain=CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19156 (-19156) dokeyCallbacksExist 0
default 11:18:15.122025+0800 mediaplaybackd keyboss ckb_transitionRequestToTerminalState: 0x7fa62f800 60/0 retry
default 11:18:15.123195+0800 mediaplaybackd <<<< FigCPECryptorPKD >>>> PostKeyRequestErrorOccurred: 0x7fab7be80 029592C2-093D-400D-B57F-7AB06CC292D1 key request error: Error Domain=CoreMediaErrorDomain Code=-19160 (-19160)
While validating a Dolby Vision Profile 5 playlist in CMAF format (with segments in MP4), the Media Stream Validator reported the following error in the MUXT-FIX-ISSUES list:
However, the playlist correctly specifies Dolby Vision Profile 5 in both the EXT-X-STREAM-INF and EXT-X-I-STREAM-INF tags.
Playlist:
#EXTM3U
#EXT-X-VERSION:8
#EXT-X-INDEPENDENT-SEGMENTS
#EXT-X-MEDIA:TYPE=AUDIO,GROUP-ID="audio-ec3",LANGUAGE="und",NAME="Undetermined",AUTOSELECT=YES,CHANNELS="6",URI="var14711339/aud1257/playlist.m3u8?device_profile=hls&seg_size=6&cmaf=1"
#EXT-X-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=14680000,AVERAGE-BANDWIDTH=14676380,VIDEO-RANGE=PQ,CODECS="ec-3,dvh1.05.06",RESOLUTION=3840x2160,AUDIO="audio-ec3"
var14711339/vid/playlist.m3u8?device_profile=hls&seg_size=6&cmaf=1
#EXT-X-I-FRAME-STREAM-INF:BANDWIDTH=1419881,URI="trk14711339/playlist.m3u8?device_profile=hls&cmaf=1",VIDEO-RANGE=PQ,CODECS="dvh1.05.06",RESOLUTION=3840x2160
Could you please review this and clarify:
Why is the Media Stream Validator reporting this error, even though the playlist correctly includes Dolby Vision Profile 5 parameters in CMAF format?
Why is this error not reported when using a playlist with TS segments instead of CMAF (MP4)?
Keywords: FairPlay, FPS Certificate, DRM, FairPlay Streaming, license server
Hi all,
We are currently using FairPlay Streaming in production and already have an FPS certificate in place.
However, the passphrase for the existing FPS certificate has unfortunately been lost.
We are now considering reissuing a new FPS certificate, and I would like to confirm a few points before proceeding:
1️⃣ If we reissue a new FPS certificate, will the existing certificate be automatically revoked?
Or will it remain valid until its original expiration date?
2️⃣ Is it possible to have both the newly issued and the existing certificates valid at the same time?
In other words, can we serve DRM licenses using either certificate depending on the packaging or client?
3️⃣ Are there any caveats or best practices we should be aware of when reissuing an FPS certificate?
For example, would existing packaged content become unplayable, or would CDN/packaging server configurations need to be updated carefully?
Since this affects our production environment, we would like to minimize any service disruption or compatibility issues.
Unfortunately, when we contacted Apple support directly, we were advised to post this question here in the Forums for additional guidance.
Any advice or experiences would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance.
Hello,
We're seeing an intermittent issue when playing back FairPlay-protected HLS downloads while the device is offline.
Assets are downloaded using AVAggregateAssetDownloadTask with FairPlay protection.
After download, asset.assetCache.isPlayableOffline == true.
On first playback attempt (offline), ~8% of downloads fail.
Retrying playback always works. We recreate the asset and player on each attempt.
During the playback setup, we try to load variants via:
try await asset.load(.variants)
This call sometimes fails with:
Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1009 “The Internet connection appears to be offline.” UserInfo={NSUnderlyingError=0x105654a00 {Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1009 “The Internet connection appears to be offline.” UserInfo={NSDescription=The Internet connection appears to be offline.}}, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=file:///private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/2DDF9D7C-9197-46BE-8690-C23EE75C9E90/Library/com.apple.UserManagedAssets.XVvqfh/Baggage_9DD4E2D3F9C0E68F.movpkg/, NSErrorFailingURLKey=file:///private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/2DDF9D7C-9197-46BE-8690-C23EE75C9E90/Library/com.apple.UserManagedAssets.XVvqfh/Baggage_9DD4E2D3F9C0E68F.movpkg/, NSURL=file:///private/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/2DDF9D7C-9197-46BE-8690-C23EE75C9E90/Library/com.apple.UserManagedAssets.XVvqfh/Baggage_9DD4E2D3F9C0E68F.movpkg/, AVErrorFailedDependenciesKey=(
“assetProperty_HLSAlternates”
), NSLocalizedDescription=The Internet connection appears to be offline.}
This variant load is used to determine available audio tracks, check for Dolby support, and apply user language preferences.
After this step, the AVPlayerItem also fails via Combine’s publisher for .status.
However, retrying the entire process immediately after (same offline conditions, same asset path, new AVURLAsset) results in successful playback.
Assets are represented using the following class:
public class DownloadedAsset: AVURLAsset {
public let id: String
public let localFileUrl: URL
public let fairplayLicenseUrlString: String?
public let drmToken: String?
var isProtected: Bool {
return fairplayLicenseUrlString != nil
}
public init(id: String,
localFileUrl: URL,
fairplayLicenseUrlString: String?,
drmToken: String?) {
self.id = id
self.localFileUrl = localFileUrl
self.fairplayLicenseUrlString = fairplayLicenseUrlString
self.drmToken = drmToken
super.init(url: localFileUrl, options: nil)
}
}
We use user-selected quality levels to control bitrate and multichannel (e.g. Dolby 5.1) downloads:
let downloadQuality = UserDefaults.standard.downloadVideoQuality
let bitrate: Int
let shouldDownloadMultichannelTracks: Bool
switch downloadQuality {
case .dataSaver:
shouldDownloadMultichannelTracks = false
bitrate = 596564
case .standard:
shouldDownloadMultichannelTracks = false
bitrate = 1503844
case .best:
shouldDownloadMultichannelTracks = true
bitrate = 7038970
}
var selections = multichannelIdentifiedMediaSelections
if !shouldDownloadMultichannelTracks {
selections = selections.filter { !$0.isMultichannel }
}
let task = session.aggregateAssetDownloadTask(
with: asset,
mediaSelections: selections.map { $0.mediaSelection },
assetTitle: title,
assetArtworkData: nil,
options: [AVAssetDownloadTaskMinimumRequiredMediaBitrateKey: bitrate]
)
Seen on devices running iOS 16, iOS 17, and iOS 18.
What could cause the initial failure of an otherwise valid, offline-ready FairPlay HLS asset?
Could .load(.variants) internally trigger a failed network resolution, even when offline?
Is there an internal caching or initialization behavior in AVFoundation that might explain why the second attempt works?
Any guidance would be appreciated.
Topic:
Media Technologies
SubTopic:
Streaming
Tags:
FairPlay Streaming
iOS
HTTP Live Streaming
AVFoundation