How Kuikly Powers 100% Cross‑Platform Game Live‑Streaming SDK on HarmonyOS

Following the release of HarmonyOS Next, more apps are being adapted to the new system, prompting product and technical teams to plan the adaptation of the game live‑streaming SDK. Simply meeting technical goals is insufficient; the goal is to maximize the value of HarmonyOS adaptation. This article introduces a Kuikly‑based cross‑platform solution for HarmonyOS. Kuikly is a widely used cross‑platform development framework at Tencent, offering Kotlin‑based development for Android, iOS, HarmonyOS, Web, and mini‑programs, and is a key member of the Tencent Service Alliance.

Adaptation Work

Current Situation

The game live‑streaming SDK is a long‑standing core component used in games such as CODM, QQ Speed, Need for Speed, and AOV. Its product shape is similar across these apps, and the team aims to reuse the same code across multiple games and platforms, potentially saving more than 50% of manpower and significantly improving development efficiency.

New Work

After adding the HarmonyOS Next platform, the additional workload is expected to increase. The team needs to choose an adaptation plan that reduces cost while amplifying the value of the adaptation.

To ensure the technical plan is solid, the team first strengthened HarmonyOS development basics, covering ArkTS, custom components, declarative layout, multithreading, and multi‑process development.

Adaptation Goals

From the perspective of improving development efficiency, the team set two goals: low‑cost HarmonyOS adaptation and maximizing the value of the adaptation work.

Solution Design

The SDK has collaborated with the Kuikly team for nearly two years, achieving cross‑platform business on Android and iOS for multiple projects. For HarmonyOS, the same Kuikly foundation is used, with the native layer handling platform‑specific differences while the majority of logic remains shared.

The approach follows a "big common, small differences" principle: shared logic is written in Kotlin (KMP), while platform‑specific code is implemented in the native language.

Native Component Kuiklyization

To achieve 100% cross‑platform coverage, native business modules are embedded into Kuikly via custom component interfaces, creating KuiklyNativeView wrappers for native Views.

These wrappers allow Kuikly pages to nest other Kuikly pages, similar to Android Fragments, enabling flexible UI composition.

Full‑Screen Transparent Popup Mapping

For non‑full‑screen overlay scenarios (e.g., activity float layers), a transparent native Ability is used as a container for KuiklyNativeView, allowing the SDK to control size and position of overlay content.

Player Component Kuiklyization

Previously, the player was a native container with Kuikly slots, leading to heavy glue code. The new approach embeds the native player view into a KuiklyPlayerView, letting Kuikly manage its lifecycle, hierarchy, size, and position.

Danmaku & WebView Kuiklyization

Both the danmaku and WebView components are wrapped as Kuikly components to simplify business integration and operation.

Feature Modular Sharing

The SDK’s strong operational features often need to be shared across games. By encapsulating each feature in an independent KuiklyPager and using schema‑based routing, the team achieves weak coupling and easy configuration.

Iterative Standardization

By investing modest effort in establishing standardized processes—such as atomic native APIs, Kuikly business guidelines, schema management, CI pipelines, and review workflows—the team reduces technical debt and improves scalability.

Initial Effect

After the HarmonyOS adaptation, all business code runs on the Kuikly cross‑platform layer, achieving 100% code reuse across three platforms and multiple apps, with performance and product experience meeting expectations.

About Kuikly

Kuikly is now open‑source. Interested parties can learn more or get involved via the official documentation, GitHub repository, and Tencent service portals.

Official docs: https://kuikly.tds.qq.com/Introduction/arch.html

GitHub: https://github.com/Tencent-TDS/KuiklyUI