Custom Thin Media Slider

A thin seek bar with a buffered track

Two layers in one Box: a progress indicator showing how much is buffered, and on top of it a Slider whose track and thumb slots you fill with SliderDefaults.Track and SliderDefaults.Thumb — "custom" here means passing sizes and turning decorations off, not redrawing.

// adapted: dimensions kept; view-model calls became callbacks, the shared bar modifier was
// hoisted, and the source's two CompositionLocalProvider wrappers were merged into one
CompositionLocalProvider(LocalMinimumInteractiveComponentSize provides Dp.Unspecified) {
    Box {
        Box(Modifier.fillMaxWidth().height(24.dp), contentAlignment = Alignment.Center) {
            val bar = Modifier.fillMaxWidth().height(4.dp)
                .padding(horizontal = 3.dp).clip(RoundedCornerShape(8.dp))  // unequal on purpose
            Crossfade(isLoading) { loading ->
                if (loading) {
                    LinearProgressIndicator(bar, strokeCap = StrokeCap.Round)  // still resolving
                } else {
                    LinearProgressIndicator(
                        progress = { bufferedPercent / 100f }, modifier = bar,
                        strokeCap = StrokeCap.Round, drawStopIndicator = {},  // no far-end dot
                    )
                }
            }
        }
        Slider(
            value = sliderValue / 100f,                            // a fraction, always
            isSliding = true; sliderValue = it * 100f },
            isSliding = false; onSeek(sliderValue) },
            modifier = Modifier.fillMaxWidth().padding(top = 3.dp).align(Alignment.TopCenter),
            track = { state ->
                SliderDefaults.Track(
                    modifier = Modifier.height(5.dp), sliderState = state,
                    colors = SliderDefaults.colors().copy(inactiveTrackColor = Color.Transparent),
                    thumbTrackGapSize = 0.dp, drawTick = { _, _ -> }, drawStopIndicator = null,
                )
            },
            thumb = {
                SliderDefaults.Thumb(
                    modifier = Modifier.height(18.dp).width(8.dp).padding(vertical = 4.dp),
                    thumbSize = DpSize(8.dp, 8.dp),
                    interactionSource = remember { MutableInteractionSource() },
                )
            },
        )
    }
}

The inactive track is transparent because the buffered indicator underneath is the inactive track.

Keeping the drag and the playback position apart

// adapted — one flag decides who owns the value
var isSliding by rememberSaveable { mutableStateOf(false) }
var sliderValue by rememberSaveable { mutableFloatStateOf(0f) }

LaunchedEffect(timeline, isSliding) {
    if (!isSliding) sliderValue =
        if (timeline.total > 0L) timeline.current * 100f / timeline.total else 0f
}
// and the elapsed label follows the thumb, not the player:
formatDuration((timeline.total * (sliderValue / 100f)).roundToLong())

Traps

Hand the slider a 0f..1f fraction; never hand it your own scale. The symptom that sends you here is a bar pinned at the full track, thumb parked at the end and never moving, on a call that passed valueRange = 0f..100f beside a 0..100 value; deleting the range and normalising fixes it. Carry that fix for a bigger reason than one build: Slider ships three overloads and the range sits somewhere different in each — fifth parameter in the plain one, last (after both slot lambdas) in the customisable one, and absent from the SliderState one, where it has moved inside the state object you construct yourself. A value on one scale meeting a range on another is a whole class of defect; a fraction has no scale to mismatch. Be careful about the cause, though: on the artifact this was seen against (Compose Multiplatform Material3 1.12.0-alpha01, tracking androidx.compose.material3 1.5.0-alpha25) the customisable overload provably does forward its range into the SliderState constructor. "The range was ignored" is a suspicion about that build, not an established mechanism — the symptom and the fix are real, the explanation is not.

Incoming position and the drag both write the same value. Without the flag, every position update snaps the thumb back to where playback actually is while the finger is still moving — worst at the end of the drag, where the seek has been issued but the position has not caught up. Gate the state write, and read the label off the slider value too. Anything else on a timer nearby (an auto-hiding overlay) needs the same flag, or the controls vanish mid-drag.

Material3 draws more than a line by default. In this version family the track paints a stop indicator at the far end and leaves a gap around the thumb, and a stepped slider paints ticks — on a 5dp white line all three read as artefacts. Each switches off separately (drawStopIndicator = null, drawTick = { _, _ -> }, thumbTrackGapSize = 0.dp); the progress indicator has its own = {}.

The minimum interactive size is the reason a thin control will not get thin. Material3 enforces a floor on touch targets, so a 5dp track still lays out around 48dp tall. Providing LocalMinimumInteractiveComponentSize as Dp.Unspecified removes the floor — and with it the guaranteed target, which you now owe by hand. Keep the gesture area larger than the paint: an 18dp thumb slot painting an 8dp shape is a deliberate 2.25×, not a rounding error.

Nothing keeps the two tracks aligned, and equal padding is the wrong instinct. They are separate composables in a stack and they do not measure alike: the slider reserves room for the thumb's travel at both ends while a LinearProgressIndicator runs edge to edge, so identical horizontal padding leaves the tracks different lengths and visibly out of line. The paddings above are unequal on purpose — horizontal = 3.dp on the indicator gives back what the slider is already holding; top = 3.dp on the slider only seats the thinner bar under the thumb. Match the corner radius too, and the loading and buffered variants to each other in height, or the row jumps the moment playback resolves. If that compensation will not hold, let the slider's own inactive track carry it instead.

A Crossfade over the whole control fades the thumb too. Fade only the layer that changes and leave the slider mounted, or the seek bar is untouchable for the length of the animation.

Related: nowplaying-pager-no-feedback-loop is the same class of problem one level up — a gesture and a player state writing the same value, where the fix is again "one owner at a time".

Verifying it

# which Slider overloads your resolved artifact actually has, and which declare a range
jar=$(find "$HOME/.gradle/caches/modules-2" -name "material3-*.jar" | head -1)
javap -classpath "$jar" androidx.compose.material3.SliderKt | grep "void Slider"

# whether a declared range is forwarded: it should reach the SliderState constructor
javap -c -classpath "$jar" androidx.compose.material3.SliderKt | grep -B8 'SliderState."<init>"'

# every explicit range in app code — a media slider on a 0..100 range is the defect
grep -rn "valueRange" --include="*.kt" .

# every control that opted out of the touch-target floor: each one owes a hand-made target
grep -rln "LocalMinimumInteractiveComponentSize" --include="*.kt" .

ClosedFloatingPointRange in a signature means that overload accepts a range; an overload without one has not dropped the feature — that is the SliderState overload, where the range moved into the state object. Do not stop at the signature: the second command shows the customisable overload loading its own range parameter into SliderState.<init>. Then, by hand: drag to the middle of a long track and hold — the thumb must stay under the finger — and release near the end.