twilio video app ios

A collaboration application built with the Twilio Video iOS SDK

twilio
213
45
Swift

Twilio Video iOS App

[!WARNING]
We are no longer allowing new customers to onboard to Twilio Video. Effective December 5th, 2024, Twilio Video will End of Life (EOL) and will cease to function for all customers. Customers may transition to any video provider they choose, however, we are recommending customers migrate to the Zoom Video SDK and we have prepared a Migration Guide. Additional information on this EOL is available in our Help Center here.

This app is a sample video conferencing app that uses the Twilio Programmable Video SDK. The open source app can be easily configured by developers to try out real-time video and audio features.

App Preview

Features

  • [x] Video conferencing with real-time video and audio
  • [x] Speaker grid layout
  • [x] Presentation layout
  • [x] Enable/disable camera
  • [x] Mute/unmute mic
  • [x] Switch between front and back camera
  • [x] Dominant speaker indicator
  • [x] Network quality indicator
  • [x] Bandwidth Profile API

Getting Started

Deploy Twilio Access Token Server

NOTE: The Twilio Function that provides access tokens via a passcode should NOT be used in a production environment. This token server supports seamlessly getting started with the collaboration app, and while convenient, the passcode is not secure enough for production environments. You should use an authentication provider to securely provide access tokens to your client applications. You can find more information about Programmable Video access tokens in this tutorial.

The app requires a back-end to generate Twilio access tokens. Follow the instructions below to deploy a serverless back-end using Twilio Functions.

  1. Install Twilio CLI.
  2. Run twilio login and follow prompts to login to your Twilio account.
  3. Run twilio plugins:install @twilio-labs/plugin-rtc.
  4. Run twilio rtc:apps:video:deploy --authentication passcode.
  5. The passcode that is output will be used later to sign in to the app.

The passcode will expire after one week. To generate a new passcode, run twilio rtc:apps:video:deploy --authentication passcode --override.

Troubleshooting

If any errors occur after running a Twilio CLI RTC Plugin command, or the application fails to validate a passcode, then try the following steps.

  1. Update your application to the latest source
  2. Run twilio plugins:update to update the RTC plugin to the latest version.
  3. Run twilio rtc:apps:video:delete to delete any existing authentication servers.
  4. Run twilio rtc:apps:video:deploy --authentication passcode to deploy a new authentication server.

App Behavior with Different Room Types

NOTE: Usage charges will apply for most room types. See pricing for more information.

After running the command to deploy a Twilio Access Token Server, the room type will be returned in the command line output. Each room type provides a different video experience. More details about these room types can be found here. The rest of this section explains how these room types affect the behavior of the video app.

Group - The Group room type allows up to fifty participants to join a video room in the app. The Network Quality Level (NQL) indicators and dominant speaker are demonstrated with this room type. Also, the VP8 video codec with simulcast enabled along with a bandwidth profile are set by default in order to provide an optimal group video app experience.

Small Group - The Small Group room type provides an identical group video app experience except for a smaller limit of four participants.

Peer-to-peer - Although up to ten participants can join a room using the Peer-to-peer (P2P) room type, it is ideal for a one to one video experience. The NQL indicators, bandwidth profiles, and dominant speaker cannot be used with this room type. Thus, they are not demonstrated in the video app. Also, the VP8 video codec with simulcast disabled and 720p minimum video capturing dimensions are also set by default in order to provide an optimal one to one video app experience. If more than ten participants join a room with this room type, then the video app will present an error.

Go - The Go room type provides a similar Peer-to-peer video app experience except for a smaller limit of two participants. If more than two participants join a room with this room type, then the video app will present an error.

If the max number of participants is exceeded, then the video app will present an error for all room types.

Configure Signing

  1. Open VideoApp/VideoApp.xcodeproj with Xcode.
  2. In Xcode navigate to the Signing & Capabilities pane of the project editor for the Video-Community target.
  3. Change Team to your team.
  4. Change Bundle identifier to something unique.
  5. Check Automatically manage signing.

Run

  1. In Xcode use the Scheme menu to select the Video-Community scheme.
  2. In Xcode use the Scheme menu to select a destination. Cameras do not work in the simulator so select a device for best results.
  3. Run ⌘R the app.

The Video-Internal scheme uses authentication that is only available to Twilio employees in order to make internal testing easier.

Start Video Conference

For each device:

  1. Run the app.
  2. Enter any unique name in the Your name field.
  3. Enter the passcode from Deploy Twilio Access Token Server in the Passcode field.
  4. Tap Sign in.
  5. Enter a room name.
  6. Tap Continue.
  7. Configure the camera and microphone and tap Join Now.

The passcode will expire after one week. Follow the steps below to sign in with a new passcode.

  1. Generate a new passcode.
  2. In the app tap Settings > Sign Out.
  3. Repeat the steps above.

SwiftUI

This app uses SwiftUI. SwiftUI and Combine work particularly well for the video collaboration features in this app, which involve a lot of real-time state changes. SwiftUI has allowed us to build a better app with a lot less code.

If your app uses UIKit or an older version of SwiftUI, you should still be able to use a lot of code from this repo in your app. Here are some tips:

  • UIKit can display SwiftUI views and SwiftUI can display UIKit views, so you may be able to use SwiftUI code from this repo even if your app is currently all UIKit.
  • Use the before-swift-ui tag to view the app source prior to converting from UIKit to SwiftUI. It has a lot of the same video collaboration features but the UI isn’t as nice.
  • If you can use SwiftUI but have to support iOS 13, most of the app should work well. The main issue will be LazyVGrid requires iOS 14. However our usage of LazyVGrid is very basic with no scrolling so it shouldn’t be a lot of work to replace it with a custom grid built with HStack and VStack.
  • If you don’t want to use SwiftUI but can use Combine (requires iOS 13), you should be able to use all of the view models and TwilioVideo integration code. For the UI, replace the SwiftUI code with your own UIKit implementation. The Combine interface provided by the view models and TwilioVideo integration layer should be nice for UIKit to use.
  • If you need to support older than iOS 13, you will have to replace the SwiftUI code with your own UIKit implementation, and replace the Combine code used in the view models and TwilioVideo integration layer with something else. It shouldn’t be a lot of work to replace Combine with NotificationCenter or a multicast delegate.

Tests

Unit Tests

For unit tests use:

UI Tests

UI tests require credentials that are only available to Twilio employees.

Known Issues

  1. Running tests ⌘U will crash if the app was run ⌘R on the device previously. See issue #12 for a workaround and more details.

Related

For Twilions

Twilio employees should follow these instructions for internal testing.

License

Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.