How to remove Next and Previous button from SimpleExoPlayerView in Android

You'll need a custom layout exo_playback_control_view.xml file which is what exoplayer looks for by default for inflating the control view. It is important that the custom layout is named exo_playback_control_view and that certain ids are used

The default controls can be seen in the source code here release-v2 or here dev-v2-r2.3.1 (Make sure you find the version of exoplayer which you're using)

You can copy that file into your res/layout directory, and remove the undesirable buttons, here is what the default looks like:

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_prev"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Previous"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_rew"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Rewind"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_play"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Play"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_pause"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Pause"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_ffwd"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.FastForward"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_next"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Next"/>

---

There is also a post on medium which is a big help for customizing exoplayer; the author writes a custom control:

<FrameLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="match_parent"
android:layout_height="match_parent">

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_play"
  android:layout_width="100dp"
  android:layout_height="100dp"
  android:layout_gravity="center"
  android:background="#CC000000"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Play"/>

<ImageButton android:id="@id/exo_pause"
  android:layout_width="100dp"
  android:layout_height="100dp"
  android:layout_gravity="center"
  android:background="#CC000000"
  style="@style/ExoMediaButton.Pause"/>

</FrameLayout>

Notice the ids are required

There are default styles for each button. Just override the styles of Previous and Next buttons and add visibility gone.
Put below styles in your style.xml

<style name="ExoMediaButton.Previous">
    <item name="android:visibility">gone</item>
</style>

<style name="ExoMediaButton.Next">
    <item name="android:visibility">gone</item>
</style>