Plyr

A simple, accessible HTML5 media player.

Why?

We wanted a lightweight, accessible and customisable media player that just supports modern browsers. Sure, there are many other players out there but we wanted to keep things simple, using the right elements for the job.

Features

Accessible - full support for VTT captions and screen readers.
Lightweight - just 8KB minified and gzipped.
Customisable - make the player look how you want with the markup you want.
Semantic - uses the right elements. <input type="range"> for volume and <progress> for progress and well, <button>s for buttons. There's no <span> or <a href="#"> button hacks.
Responsive - as you'd expect these days.
Audio & Video - support for both formats.
Embedded Video - support for YouTube (Vimeo soon).
API - toggle playback, volume, seeking, and more.
Fullscreen - supports native fullscreen with fallback to "full window" modes.
i18n support - support for internationalization of controls.
No dependencies - written in vanilla JavaScript, no jQuery required.

Oh and yes, it works with Bootstrap.

Changelog

Check out the changelog

Planned development

Vimeo support
Playback speed
Playlists
Multiple language captions (with selection)
Audio captions ... and whatever else has been raised in issues

If you have any cool ideas or features, please let me know by creating an issue or of course, forking and sending a pull request.

Implementation

Check docs/index.html and docs/dist/docs.js for an example setup.

Heads up, the example index.html file needs to be served from a webserver (such as Apache, Nginx, IIS or similar) unless you change the file sources to include http or https. e.g. change //cdn.plyr.io/1.3.5/plyr.js to https://cdn.plyr.io/1.3.5/plyr.js

Bower

If bower is your thang, you can grab Plyr using:

bower install plyr

More info on setting up dependencies can be found in the Bower Docs

Ember

The awesome @louisrudner has created an ember component, available by running:

ember addon:install ember-cli-plyr

More info is on npm and GitHub

CDN

If you want to use our CDN, you can use the following:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.plyr.io/1.3.5/plyr.css">
<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/1.3.5/plyr.js"></script>

You can also access the sprite.svg file at https://cdn.plyr.io/1.3.5/sprite.svg.

CSS

If you want to use the default css, add the plyr.css file from /dist into your head, or even better use plyr.less or plyr.sass file included in /src in your build to save a request.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/plyr.css">

SVG

The SVG sprite for the controls icons is loaded in by AJAX to help with performance. This is best added before the closing </body>, before any other scripts.

<script>
(function(d, p){
	var a = new XMLHttpRequest(),
		b = d.body;
	a.open("GET", p, true);
	a.send();
	a.onload = function(){
		var c = d.createElement("div");
		c.style.display = "none";
		c.innerHTML = a.responseText;
		b.insertBefore(c, b.childNodes[0]);
	}
})(document, "dist/sprite.svg");
</script>

More info on SVG sprites here: http://css-tricks.com/svg-sprites-use-better-icon-fonts/ and the AJAX technique here: http://css-tricks.com/ajaxing-svg-sprite/

HTML

The only extra markup that's needed to use plyr is a <div> wrapper. Replace the source, poster and captions with urls for your media.

<div class="player">
	<video poster="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/poster.jpg" controls crossorigin>
		<!-- Video files -->
		<source src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
		<source src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.webm" type="video/webm">
		
		<!-- Text track file -->
		<track kind="captions" label="English captions" src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie_captions_en.vtt" srclang="en" default>
		
		<!-- Fallback for browsers that don't support the <video> element -->
		<a href="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.mp4">Download</a>
	</video>
</div>

And the same for <audio>

<div class="player">
	<audio controls>
		<!-- Audio files -->
		<source src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/logistics-96-sample.mp3" type="audio/mp3">
		<source src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/logistics-96-sample.ogg" type="audio/ogg">
		
		<!-- Fallback for browsers that don't support the <audio> element -->
		<a href="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/logistics-96-sample.mp3">Download</a>
	</audio>
</div>

For YouTube, Plyr uses the standard YouTube API markup (an empty <div>):

<div class="player">
	<div data-video-id="L1h9xxCU20g" data-type="youtube"></div>
</div>

Cross Origin (CORS)

You'll notice the crossorigin attribute on the example <video> and <audio> elements. This is because the media is loaded from another domain. If your media is hosted on another domain, you may need to add this attribute.

More info on CORS here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_control_CORS

JavaScript

Much of the behaviour of the player is configurable when initialising the library. Here's an example of a default setup:

<script src="dist/plyr.js"></script>
<script>plyr.setup();</script>

Options

You can pass the following options to the setup method using plyr.setup({...}).

Option	Type	Default	Description
`enabled`	Boolean	`true`	Completely disable Plyr. This would allow you to do a User Agent check or similar to programatically enable or disable Plyr for a certain UA. Example below.
`html`	String	`See controls.md`	See controls.md for more info on how the html needs to be structured.
`controls`	Array	`["restart", "rewind", "play", "fast-forward", "current-time", "duration", "mute", "volume", "captions", "fullscreen"]`	Toggle which control elements you would like to display when using the default controls html. If you specify a `html` option, this is redundant. The default value is to display everything.
`i18n`	Object	`See controls.md`	Used for internationalisation (i18n) of the tooltips/labels within the buttons.
`iconPrefix`	String	`icon`	Specify the id prefix for the icons used in the default controls (e.g. "icon-play" would be "icon"). This is to prevent clashes if you're using your own SVG defs file but with the default controls. Most people can ignore this option.
`debug`	Boolean	`false`	Display debugging information on what Plyr is doing.
`seekTime`	Number	`10`	The time, in seconds, to seek when a user hits fast forward or rewind.
`volume`	Number	`5`	A number, between 1 and 10, representing the initial volume of the player.
`click`	Boolean	`true`	Click (or tap) will toggle pause/play of a `<video>`.
`tooltips`	Boolean	`false`	Display control labels as tooltips on :hover & :focus (by default, the labels are screen reader only).
`displayDuration`	Boolean	`true`	Displays the duration of the media on the "metadataloaded" event (on startup) in the current time display. This will only work if the `preload` attribute is not set to `none` (or is not set at all) and you choose not to display the duration (see `controls` option).
`selectors`	Object	—	See `plyr.js` in `/src` for more info. The only option you might want to change is `player` which is the hook used for Plyr, the default is `.player`.
`classes`	Object	—	Similar to above, these are the classes added to the player when state changes occur.
`captions`	Object	—	One property `defaultActive` which toggles if captions should be on by default. The default value is `false`.
`fullscreen`	Object	—	Three properties; `enabled` which toggles if fullscreen should be enabled (if the browser supports it). The default value is `true`. A `fallback` property which will enable a full window view for older browsers. The default value is `true`. A `hideControls` property which will hide the controls when fullscreen is active and the video is playing, after 1s. The controls reappear on hover of the progress bar (mouse), focusing a child control or pausing the video (by tap/click of video if `click` is `true`). The default value is `true`.
`storage`	Object	—	Two properties; `enabled` which toggles if local storage should be enabled (if the browser supports it). The default value is `true`. This enables storing user settings, currently it only stores volume but more will be added later. The second property `key` is the key used for the local storage. The default is `plyr_volume` until more settings are stored.
`onSetup`	Function	—	This callback function is called on every new plyr instance created. The context (`this`) is the plyr instance itself.

API

A plyr object is added to any element that Plyr is initialised on. You can then control the player by accessing methods in the plyr object. For example if you wanted to pause Plyr:

document.querySelectorAll(".player")[0].plyr.pause();

Here's a list of the methods supported:

Method	Parameters	Description
`play()`	—	Plays the media
`pause()`	—	Pauses the media
`restart()`	—	Restarts playback
`rewind(...)`	Number	Rewinds by the provided parameter, in seconds. If no parameter is provided, the default seekInterval is used (10 seconds).
`forward(...)`	Number	Fast forwards by the provided parameter, in seconds. If no parameter is provided, the default seekInterval is used (10 seconds).
`seek(...)`	Number	Seeks the media to the provided parameter, time in seconds.
`setVolume(...)`	Number	Sets the player volume to the provided parameter. The value should be between 0 (muted) and 10 (loudest). If no parameter is provided, the default volume is used (5). Values over 10 are ignored.
`togglePlay()`	Boolean	Toggles playback for the player based on either the boolean argument or it's current state.
`toggleMute()`	—	Toggles mute for the player.
`toggleCaptions()`	—	Toggles whether captions are enabled.
`toggleFullscreen()`	Event	Toggles fullscreen. This can only be initiated by a user gesture due to browser security, i.e. a user event such as click.
`isFullscreen()`	—	Boolean returned if the player is in fullscreen.
`support(...)`	String	Determine if a player supports a certain MIME type. This is not supported for embedded content (YouTube).
`source(...)`	String or Array	Set the media source. string `.source("/path/to/video.mp4")` This will set the `src` attribute on the `video` or `audio` element. array .source([{ src: "/path/to/video.webm", type: "video/webm", ...more attributes... }, { src: "/path/to/video.mp4", type: "video/mp4", ...more attributes... }])` This will inject a child `source` element for every element in the array with the specified attributes. `src` is the only required attribute although adding `type` is recommended as it helps the browser decide which file to download and play. YouTube Currently this API method only accepts a YouTube ID when used with a YouTube player. I will add URL support soon, along with being able to swap between types (e.g. YouTube to Audio or Video and vice versa.)
`poster(...)`	String	Set the poster url. This is supported for the `video` element only.
`destroy()`	—	Destroys the plyr UI and any media event listeners, effectively restoring to the previous state before `setup()` was called.
`restore()`	—	Reverses the effects of the `destroy()` method, restoring the UI and listeners.

Events/Callbacks

The plyr object on the player element also contains a media property which is a reference to the <audio> or <video> element within the player which you can use to listen for events. Here's an example:

var media = document.querySelectorAll(".player")[0].plyr.media;

media.addEventListener("playing", function() { 
  console.log("playing");
});

A complete list of events can be found here: Media Events - W3.org

Embeds

Currently only YouTube is supported. Vimeo will be coming soon. Some HTML5 media events are triggered on the media property of the plyr object:

play
pause
timeupdate
progress

Due to the way the YouTube API works, the timeupdate and progress events are triggered by polling every 200ms so the event may trigger without an actual value change. Buffering progress is media.buffered in the plyr object. It is a a number between 0 and 1 that specifies the percentage of the video that the player shows as buffered.

document.querySelector(".player").plyr.media.addEventListener("play", function() { 
	console.log("play");
});

The .source() API method can also be used but the video id must be passed as the argument.

Currently caption control is not supported but I will work on this.

Fullscreen

Fullscreen in Plyr is supported for all browsers that currently support it. If you're using the default CSS, you can also use a "full browser" mode which will use the full browser window by adding the player-fullscreen class to your container.

Browser support

Safari	Firefox	Chrome	Opera	IE9	IE10+
✔¹	✔	✔	✔	API²	✔³

¹ Mobile Safari on the iPhone forces the native player for <video> so no useful customisation is possible. <audio> elements have volume controls disabled.

² Native player used (no support for <progress> or <input type="range">) but the API is supported (v1.0.28+)

³ IE10 has no native fullscreen support, fallback can be used (see options)

The enabled option can be used to disable certain User Agents. For example, if you don't want to use Plyr for smartphones, you could use:

enabled: /Android|webOS|iPhone|iPad|iPod|BlackBerry/i.test(navigator.userAgent)

If a User Agent is disabled but supports <video> and <audio> natively, it will use the native player.

Any unsupported browsers will display links to download the media if the correct html is used.

Checking for support

There's an API method for checking support. You can call plyr.supported() and optionally pass a type to it, e.g. plyr.supported("video"). It will return an object with two keys; basic meaning there's basic support for that media type (or both if no type is passed) and full meaning there's full support for plyr.

Issues

If you find anything weird with Plyr, please let us know using the GitHub issues tracker.

Author

Plyr is developed by @sam_potts / sampotts.me with help from the awesome contributors

Mentions

Used by

Selz.com

Let me know on Twitter I can add you to the above list. It'd be awesome to see how you're using Plyr :-)

Useful links and credits

Credit to the PayPal HTML5 Video player from which Plyr's caption functionality is ported from:

PayPal's Accessible HTML5 Video Player
The icons used in Plyr are Vicons plus some ones I made
An awesome guide for Plyr in Japanese! by @arayutw

Also these links helped created Plyr:

Copyright and License

The MIT license.

MaryCoding/plyr