Introduction
Developing a commercial audiobook application with React Native can appear straightforward in the beginning, but as your app scales to serve thousands of concurrent users, challenges begin to surface. In this ebook, we take you through the journey of Treefort—a guide on building an audiobook platform from a Proof of Concept (PoC) to a production-ready app.
Through this guide, you'll learn about the critical decisions, technical roadblocks, and solutions that made it possible for Treefort to support complex audio features like multi-track playback, background streaming, and lock screen controls. Whether you're building an audiobook app for iOS, Android, or the web, this ebook will provide actionable insights for creating a robust, scalable application.
Here’s what Elliot Dickison, co-founder of Treefort, had to say about working with TWG:
I reached out to TWG because for help fixing crashes in my app related to the react-native-track-player library on Android devices. Not only did they guide me to strong candidates for the solution, they also provided extensive feedback on the ecosystem of media libraries, including honest and straightforward input on my future plans. It was a great collaboration, and last but not least - they did it all for free! This is a great way to build trust in their work. I will certainly consider their commercial support in the future.
1. The Hard Decision to Build Two Separate Apps (Web and Native)
Treefort initially hoped for a unified approach to development but eventually found that separate codebases were essential for managing the web and native experiences efficiently.
2. Limitations of Open Source Libraries
Building upon open-source libraries is common for React Native applications, but when aiming for commercial viability, relying solely on these libraries may introduce scaling issues. This section details the pros and cons of the following libraries:
- react-native-track-player:
A popular choice for audio playback in React Native. It's highly customizable but struggles with background audio on Android. - expo-av:
Used for video playback, expo-av is great for iOS but lacks the flexibility and system control that Android apps need. - react-native-music-control:
Allows control of media through lock screens but suffers from deprecation issues and bugs, especially with Android support. - react-native-video:
An important tool for video playback, but lacks certain features like Chromecast support out of the box.
3. Current Setup: Three Libraries, Custom Code, and Complex Workarounds
After evaluating several libraries, Treefort settled on a combination of react-native-track-player, expo-av, and react-native-music-control, alongside custom code to handle features like queuing and background playback. Here, we'll walk through the setup, why it works, and where it falls short.
4. Background Playback Challenges
One of the most significant technical challenges Treefort faced was ensuring background playback across platforms, especially Android, which aggressively manages background services and tasks. The use of react-native-track-player helped address some of these issues, but there were still hurdles with maintaining state when the app was backgrounded.
5. Implementing Custom Player Controls for Android and iOS
Treefort’s journey involved building custom audio player controls, particularly for Android, which lacks some of the built-in flexibility of iOS. The default player controls provided by expo-av were serviceable on iOS but fell short on Android, leading to missing features like custom playback rate adjustments and subtitle support.
6. The Future: Moving Toward a Unified Library Solution
With the current limitations in place, Treefort's next step is to consolidate functionality into one overarching solution. This section discusses what a unified library might look like and the benefits of this approach—fewer dependencies, better cross-platform support, and simplified updates.
7. Future Enhancements: Chromecast Integration
As Treefort plans to implement Chromecast support, they’re actively working on both video and audio casting solutions to allow users to cast audiobooks to external devices like TVs or smart speakers.
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