/plyr

A simple HTML5, YouTube and Vimeo player

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Plyr is a simple, lightweight, accessible and customizable HTML5, YouTube and Vimeo media player that supports modern browsers.

Checkout the demo - Donate - Slack

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Image of Plyr

Features

  • 📼 HTML Video & Audio, YouTube & Vimeo - support for the major formats
  • 💪 Accessible - full support for VTT captions and screen readers
  • 🔧 Customizable - make the player look how you want with the markup you want
  • 😎 Clean HTML - 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 - works with any screen size
  • 💵 Monetization - make money from your videos
  • 📹 Streaming - support for hls.js, Shaka and dash.js streaming playback
  • 🎛 API - toggle playback, volume, seeking, and more through a standardized API
  • 🎤 Events - no messing around with Vimeo and YouTube APIs, all events are standardized across formats
  • 🔎 Fullscreen - supports native fullscreen with fallback to "full window" modes
  • ⌨️ Shortcuts - supports keyboard shortcuts
  • 🖥 Picture-in-Picture - supports picture-in-picture mode
  • 📱 Playsinline - supports the playsinline attribute
  • 🏎 Speed controls - adjust speed on the fly
  • 📖 Multiple captions - support for multiple caption tracks
  • 🌎 i18n support - support for internationalization of controls
  • 👌 Preview thumbnails - support for displaying preview thumbnails
  • 🤟 No frameworks - written in "vanilla" ES6 JavaScript, no jQuery required
  • 💁‍♀️ SASS - to include in your build processes

Demos

You can try Plyr in Codepen using our minimal templates: HTML5 video, HTML5 audio, YouTube, Vimeo. For Streaming we also have example integrations with: Dash.js, Hls.js and Shaka Player

Quick setup

HTML

Plyr extends upon the standard HTML5 media element markup so that's all you need for those types.

HTML5 Video

<video id="player" playsinline controls data-poster="/path/to/poster.jpg">
  <source src="/path/to/video.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <source src="/path/to/video.webm" type="video/webm" />

  <!-- Captions are optional -->
  <track kind="captions" label="English captions" src="/path/to/captions.vtt" srclang="en" default />
</video>

Note: The poster image should be specified using data-poster. This is to prevent it being downloaded twice. If you're sure the image will be cached, you can still use the poster attribute for true progressive enhancement.

HTML5 Audio

<audio id="player" controls>
  <source src="/path/to/audio.mp3" type="audio/mp3" />
  <source src="/path/to/audio.ogg" type="audio/ogg" />
</audio>

For YouTube and Vimeo players, Plyr uses progressive enhancement to enhance the default <iframe> embeds. Below are some examples. The plyr__video-embed classname will make the embed responsive. You can add the autoplay, loop, hl (YouTube only) and playsinline (YouTube only) query parameters to the URL and they will be set as config options automatically. For YouTube, the origin should be updated to reflect the domain you're hosting the embed on, or you can opt to omit it.

YouTube

We recommend progressive enhancement with the embedded players. You can elect to use an <iframe> as the source element (which Plyr will progressively enhance) or a bog standard <div> with two essential data attributes - data-plyr-provider and data-plyr-embed-id.

<div class="plyr__video-embed" id="player">
  <iframe
    src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bTqVqk7FSmY?origin=https://plyr.io&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;playsinline=1&amp;showinfo=0&amp;rel=0&amp;enablejsapi=1"
    allowfullscreen
    allowtransparency
    allow="autoplay"
  ></iframe>
</div>

Note: The plyr__video-embed classname will make the player a responsive 16:9 (most common) iframe embed. When plyr itself kicks in, your custom ratio config option will be used.

Or the <div> non progressively enhanced method:

<div id="player" data-plyr-provider="youtube" data-plyr-embed-id="bTqVqk7FSmY"></div>

Note: The data-plyr-embed-id can either be the video ID or URL for the media.

Vimeo

Much the same as YouTube above.

<div class="plyr__video-embed" id="player">
  <iframe
    src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/76979871?loop=false&amp;byline=false&amp;portrait=false&amp;title=false&amp;speed=true&amp;transparent=0&amp;gesture=media"
    allowfullscreen
    allowtransparency
    allow="autoplay"
  ></iframe>
</div>

Or the <div> non progressively enhanced method:

<div id="player" data-plyr-provider="vimeo" data-plyr-embed-id="76979871"></div>

JavaScript

You can use Plyr as an ES6 module as follows:

import Plyr from 'plyr';

const player = new Plyr('#player');

Alternatively you can include the plyr.js script before the closing </body> tag and then in your JS create a new instance of Plyr as below.

<script src="path/to/plyr.js"></script>
<script>
  const player = new Plyr('#player');
</script>

See initialising for more information on advanced setups.

You can use our CDN (provided by Fastly) for the JavaScript. There's 2 versions; one with and one without polyfills. My recommendation would be to manage polyfills seperately as part of your application but to make life easier you can use the polyfilled build.

<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/3.6.8/plyr.js"></script>

...or...

<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/3.6.8/plyr.polyfilled.js"></script>

CSS

Include the plyr.css stylsheet into your <head>.

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

If you want to use our CDN (provided by Fastly) for the default CSS, you can use the following:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.plyr.io/3.6.8/plyr.css" />

SVG Sprite

The SVG sprite is loaded automatically from our CDN (provided by Fastly). To change this, see the options below. For reference, the CDN hosted SVG sprite can be found at https://cdn.plyr.io/3.6.8/plyr.svg.

Ads

Plyr has partnered up with vi.ai to offer monetization options for your videos. Getting setup is easy:

Any questions regarding the ads can be sent straight to vi.ai and any issues with rendering raised through GitHub issues.

If you do not wish to use Vi, you can set your own ads.tagUrl option.

Advanced

Customizing the CSS

If you want to change any design tokens used for the rendering of the player, you can do so using CSS Custom Properties.

Here's a list of the properties and what they are used for:

Name Description Default / Fallback
--plyr-color-main The primary UI color. #f03c15 #00b3ff
--plyr-video-background The background color of video and poster wrappers for using alpha channel videos and poster images. rgba(0, 0, 0, 1)
--plyr-tab-focus-color The color used for the dotted outline when an element is :focus-visible (equivalent) keyboard focus. --plyr-color-main
--plyr-badge-background The background color for badges in the menu. #4a5464 #4a5464
--plyr-badge-text-color The text color for badges. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-badge-border-radius The border radius used for badges. 2px
--plyr-tab-focus-color The color used to highlight tab (keyboard) focus. --plyr-color-main
--plyr-captions-background The color for the background of captions. rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8)
--plyr-captions-text-color The color used for the captions text. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-control-icon-size The size of the icons used in the controls. 18px
--plyr-control-spacing The space between controls (sometimes used in a multiple - e.g. 10px / 2 = 5px). 10px
--plyr-control-padding The padding inside controls. --plyr-control-spacing * 0.7 (7px)
--plyr-control-radius The border radius used on controls. 3px
--plyr-control-toggle-checked-background The background color used for checked menu items. --plyr-color-main
--plyr-video-controls-background The background for the video controls. linear-gradient(rgba(0, 0, 0, 0), rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.75))
--plyr-video-control-color The text/icon color for video controls. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-video-control-color-hover The text/icon color used when video controls are :hover, :focus and :focus-visible (equivalent). #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-video-control-background-hover The background color used when video controls are :hover, :focus and :focus-visible (equivalent). --plyr-color-main
--plyr-audio-controls-background The background for the audio controls. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-audio-control-color The text/icon color for audio controls. #4a5464 #4a5464
--plyr-audio-control-color-hover The text/icon color used when audio controls are :hover, :focus and :focus-visible (equivalent). #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-audio-control-background-hover The background color used when video controls are :hover, :focus and :focus-visible (equivalent). --plyr-color-main
--plyr-menu-background The background color for menus. rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9)
--plyr-menu-color The text/icon color for menu items. #4a5464 #4a5464
--plyr-menu-shadow The shadow used on menus. 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15)
--plyr-menu-radius The border radius on the menu. 4px
--plyr-menu-arrow-size The size of the arrow on the bottom of the menu. 6px
--plyr-menu-item-arrow-color The color of the arrows in the menu. #728197 #728197
--plyr-menu-item-arrow-size The size of the arrows in the menu. 4px
--plyr-menu-border-color The border color for the bottom of the back button in the top of the sub menu pages. #dcdfe5 #dcdfe5
--plyr-menu-border-shadow-color The shadow below the border of the back button in the top of the sub menu pages. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-progress-loading-size The size of the stripes in the loading state in the scrubber. 25px
--plyr-progress-loading-background The background color on the loading state in the scrubber. rgba(35, 40, 47, 0.6)
--plyr-video-progress-buffered-background The fill color for the buffer indication in the scrubber for video. rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.25)
--plyr-audio-progress-buffered-background The fill color for the buffer indication in the scrubber for audio. rgba(193, 200, 209, 0.6)
--plyr-range-thumb-height The height of the scrubber handle/thumb. 13px
--plyr-range-thumb-background The background of the scrubber handle/thumb. #ffffff #ffffff
--plyr-range-thumb-shadow The shadow of the scrubber handle/thumb. 0 1px 1px rgba(215, 26, 18, 0.15), 0 0 0 1px rgba(215, 26, 18, 0.2)
--plyr-range-thumb-active-shadow-width The width of the shadow when the scrubber handle/thumb is :active (pressed). 3px
--plyr-range-track-height The height of the scrubber/progress track. 5px
--plyr-range-fill-background The fill color of the scrubber/progress. --plyr-color-main
--plyr-video-range-track-background The background of the scrubber/progress. --plyr-video-progress-buffered-background
--plyr-video-range-thumb-active-shadow-color The color of the shadow when the video scrubber handle/thumb is :active (pressed). rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5)
--plyr-audio-range-track-background The background of the scrubber/progress. --plyr-video-progress-buffered-background
--plyr-audio-range-thumb-active-shadow-color The color of the shadow when the audio scrubber handle/thumb is :active (pressed). rgba(215, 26, 18, 0.1)
--plyr-tooltip-background The background color for tooltips. rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.9)
--plyr-tooltip-color The text color for tooltips. #4a5464 #4a5464
--plyr-tooltip-padding The padding for tooltips. calc(var(--plyr-control-spacing) / 2))
--plyr-tooltip-arrow-size The size of the arrow under tooltips. 4px
--plyr-tooltip-radius The border radius on tooltips. 3px
--plyr-tooltip-shadow The shadow on tooltips. 0 1px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15)
--plyr-font-family The font family used in the player.
--plyr-font-size-base The base font size. Mainly used for captions. 15px
--plyr-font-size-small The smaller font size. Mainly used for captions. 13px
--plyr-font-size-large The larger font size. Mainly used for captions. 18px
--plyr-font-size-xlarge The even larger font size. Mainly used for captions. 21px
--plyr-font-size-time The font size for the time. --plyr-font-size-small
--plyr-font-size-menu The font size used in the menu. --plyr-font-size-small
--plyr-font-size-badge The font size used for badges. 9px
--plyr-font-weight-regular The regular font weight. 400
--plyr-font-weight-bold The bold font weight. 600
--plyr-line-height The line height used within the player. 1.7
--plyr-font-smoothing Whether to enable font antialiasing within the player. false

You can set them in your CSS for all players:

:root {
  --plyr-color-main: #1ac266;
}

...or for a specific class name:

.player {
  --plyr-color-main: #1ac266;
}

...or in your HTML:

<video class="player" style="--plyr-color-main: #1ac266;">
    ...
</video>

SASS

You can use plyr.scss file included in /src/sass as part of your build and change variables to suit your design. The SASS requires you to use autoprefixer (you should be already!) as all declarations use the W3C definitions.

The HTML markup uses the BEM methodology with plyr as the block, e.g. .plyr__controls. You can change the class hooks in the options to match any custom CSS you write. Check out the JavaScript source for more on this.

SVG

The icons used in the Plyr controls are loaded in an SVG sprite. The sprite is automatically loaded from our CDN by default. If you already have an icon build system in place, you can include the source plyr icons (see /src/sprite for source icons).

Using the iconUrl option

You can however specify your own iconUrl option and Plyr will determine if the url is absolute and requires loading by AJAX/CORS due to current browser limitations or if it's a relative path, just use the path directly.

If you're using the <base> tag on your site, you may need to use something like this: svgfixer.js

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/

Cross Origin (CORS)

You'll notice the crossorigin attribute on the example <video> elements. This is because the TextTrack captions are loaded from another domain. If your TextTrack captions are also hosted on another domain, you will need to add this attribute and make sure your host has the correct headers setup. For more info on CORS checkout the MDN docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Access_control_CORS

Captions

WebVTT captions are supported. To add a caption track, check the HTML example above and look for the <track> element. Be sure to validate your caption files.

JavaScript

Initialising

You can specify a range of arguments for the constructor to use:

Note: If a NodeList, Array, or jQuery object are passed, the first element will be used for setup. To setup multiple players, see multiple players below.

Single player

Passing a CSS string selector that's compatible with querySelector:

const player = new Plyr('#player');

Passing a HTMLElement:

const player = new Plyr(document.getElementById('player'));
const player = new Plyr(document.querySelector('.js-player'));

The HTMLElement or string selector can be the target <video>, <audio>, or <div> wrapper for embeds.

Multiple players

You have two choices here. You can either use a simple array loop to map the constructor:

const players = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.js-player')).map(p => new Plyr(p));

...or use a static method where you can pass a CSS string selector, a NodeList, an Array of HTMLElement, or a JQuery object:

const players = Plyr.setup('.js-player');

Both options will also return an array of instances in the order of they were in the DOM for the string selector or the source NodeList or Array.

Options

The second argument for the constructor is the options object:

const player = new Plyr('#player', {
  title: 'Example Title',
});

Options can be passed as an object to the constructor as above or as JSON in data-plyr-config attribute on each of your target elements:

<video src="/path/to/video.mp4" id="player" controls data-plyr-config='{ "title": "Example Title" }'></video>

Note the single quotes encapsulating the JSON and double quotes on the object keys. Only string values need double quotes.

Option Type Default Description
enabled Boolean true Completely disable Plyr. This would allow you to do a User Agent check or similar to programmatically enable or disable Plyr for a certain UA. Example below.
debug Boolean false Display debugging information in the console
controls Array, Function or Element ['play-large', 'play', 'progress', 'current-time', 'mute', 'volume', 'captions', 'settings', 'pip', 'airplay', 'fullscreen'] If a function is passed, it is assumed your method will return either an element or HTML string for the controls. Three arguments will be passed to your function; id (the unique id for the player), seektime (the seektime step in seconds), and title (the media title). See CONTROLS.md for more info on how the html needs to be structured.
settings Array ['captions', 'quality', 'speed', 'loop'] If the default controls are used, you can specify which settings to show in the menu
i18n Object See defaults.js Used for internationalization (i18n) of the text within the UI.
loadSprite Boolean true Load the SVG sprite specified as the iconUrl option (if a URL). If false, it is assumed you are handling sprite loading yourself.
iconUrl String null Specify a URL or path to the SVG sprite. See the SVG section for more info.
iconPrefix String plyr Specify the id prefix for the icons used in the default controls (e.g. "plyr-play" would be "plyr"). This is to prevent clashes if you're using your own SVG sprite but with the default controls. Most people can ignore this option.
blankVideo String https://cdn.plyr.io/static/blank.mp4 Specify a URL or path to a blank video file used to properly cancel network requests.
autoplay² Boolean false Autoplay the media on load. If the autoplay attribute is present on a <video> or <audio> element, this will be automatically set to true.
autopause¹ Boolean true Only allow one player playing at once.
seekTime Number 10 The time, in seconds, to seek when a user hits fast forward or rewind.
volume Number 1 A number, between 0 and 1, representing the initial volume of the player.
muted Boolean false Whether to start playback muted. If the muted attribute is present on a <video> or <audio> element, this will be automatically set to true.
clickToPlay Boolean true Click (or tap) of the video container will toggle play/pause.
disableContextMenu Boolean true Disable right click menu on video to help as very primitive obfuscation to prevent downloads of content.
hideControls Boolean true Hide video controls automatically after 2s of no mouse or focus movement, on control element blur (tab out), on playback start or entering fullscreen. As soon as the mouse is moved, a control element is focused or playback is paused, the controls reappear instantly.
resetOnEnd Boolean false Reset the playback to the start once playback is complete.
keyboard Object { focused: true, global: false } Enable keyboard shortcuts for focused players only or globally
tooltips Object { controls: false, seek: true } controls: Display control labels as tooltips on :hover & :focus (by default, the labels are screen reader only). seek: Display a seek tooltip to indicate on click where the media would seek to.
duration Number null Specify a custom duration for media.
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).
invertTime Boolean true Display the current time as a countdown rather than an incremental counter.
toggleInvert Boolean true Allow users to click to toggle the above.
listeners Object null Allows binding of event listeners to the controls before the default handlers. See the defaults.js for available listeners. If your handler prevents default on the event (event.preventDefault()), the default handler will not fire.
captions Object { active: false, language: 'auto', update: false } active: Toggles if captions should be active by default. language: Sets the default language to load (if available). 'auto' uses the browser language. update: Listen to changes to tracks and update menu. This is needed for some streaming libraries, but can result in unselectable language options).
fullscreen Object { enabled: true, fallback: true, iosNative: false, container: null } enabled: Toggles whether fullscreen should be enabled. fallback: Allow fallback to a full-window solution (true/false/'force'). iosNative: whether to use native iOS fullscreen when entering fullscreen (no custom controls). container: A selector for an ancestor of the player element, allows contextual content to remain visual in fullscreen mode. Non-ancestors are ignored.
ratio String null Force an aspect ratio for all videos. The format is 'w:h' - e.g. '16:9' or '4:3'. If this is not specified then the default for HTML5 and Vimeo is to use the native resolution of the video. As dimensions are not available from YouTube via SDK, 16:9 is forced as a sensible default.
storage Object { enabled: true, key: 'plyr' } enabled: Allow use of local storage to store user settings. key: The key name to use.
speed Object { selected: 1, options: [0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2] } selected: The default speed for playback. options: The speed options to display in the UI. YouTube and Vimeo will ignore any options outside of the 0.5-2 range, so options outside of this range will be hidden automatically.
quality Object { default: 576, options: [4320, 2880, 2160, 1440, 1080, 720, 576, 480, 360, 240] } default is the default quality level (if it exists in your sources). options are the options to display. This is used to filter the available sources.
loop Object { active: false } active: Whether to loop the current video. If the loop attribute is present on a <video> or <audio> element, this will be automatically set to true This is an object to support future functionality.
ads Object { enabled: false, publisherId: '', tagUrl: '' } enabled: Whether to enable advertisements. publisherId: Your unique vi.ai publisher ID. tagUrl is a URL for a custom VAST tag if you're not using Vi.
urls Object See source. If you wish to override any API URLs then you can do so here. You can also set a custom download URL for the download button.
vimeo Object { byline: false, portrait: false, title: false, speed: true, transparent: false } See Vimeo embed options. Some are set automatically based on other config options, namely: loop, autoplay, muted, gesture, playsinline
youtube Object { noCookie: false, rel: 0, showinfo: 0, iv_load_policy: 3, modestbranding: 1 } See YouTube embed options. The only custom option is noCookie to use an alternative to YouTube that doesn't use cookies (useful for GDPR, etc). Some are set automatically based on other config options, namely: autoplay, hl, controls, disablekb, playsinline, cc_load_policy, cc_lang_pref, widget_referrer
previewThumbnails Object { enabled: false, src: '' } enabled: Whether to enable the preview thumbnails (they must be generated by you). src must be either a string or an array of strings representing URLs for the VTT files containing the image URL(s). Learn more about preview thumbnails below.
  1. Vimeo only
  2. Autoplay is generally not recommended as it is seen as a negative user experience. It is also disabled in many browsers. Before raising issues, do your homework. More info can be found here:

API

There are methods, setters and getters on a Plyr object.

Object

The easiest way to access the Plyr object is to set the return value from your call to the constructor to a variable. For example:

const player = new Plyr('#player', {
  /* options */
});

You can also access the object through any events:

element.addEventListener('ready', event => {
  const player = event.detail.plyr;
});

Methods

Example method use:

player.play(); // Start playback
player.fullscreen.enter(); // Enter fullscreen
Method Parameters Description
play()¹ - Start playback.
pause() - Pause playback.
togglePlay(toggle)¹ Boolean Toggle playback, if no parameters are passed, it will toggle based on current status.
stop() - Stop playback and reset to start.
restart() - Restart playback.
rewind(seekTime) Number Rewind playback by the specified seek time. If no parameter is passed, the default seek time will be used.
forward(seekTime) Number Fast forward by the specified seek time. If no parameter is passed, the default seek time will be used.
increaseVolume(step) Number Increase volume by the specified step. If no parameter is passed, the default step will be used.
decreaseVolume(step) Number Increase volume by the specified step. If no parameter is passed, the default step will be used.
toggleCaptions(toggle) Boolean Toggle captions display. If no parameter is passed, it will toggle based on current status.
fullscreen.enter() - Enter fullscreen. If fullscreen is not supported, a fallback "full window/viewport" is used instead.
fullscreen.exit() - Exit fullscreen.
fullscreen.toggle() - Toggle fullscreen.
airplay() - Trigger the airplay dialog on supported devices.
toggleControls(toggle) Boolean Toggle the controls (video only). Takes optional truthy value to force it on/off.
on(event, function) String, Function Add an event listener for the specified event.
once(event, function) String, Function Add an event listener for the specified event once.
off(event, function) String, Function Remove an event listener for the specified event.
supports(type) String Check support for a mime type.
destroy() - Destroy the instance and garbage collect any elements.
  1. For HTML5 players, play() will return a Promise for most browsers - e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Edge according to MDN at time of writing.

Getters and Setters

Example setters:

player.volume = 0.5; // Sets volume at 50%
player.currentTime = 10; // Seeks to 10 seconds

Example getters:

player.volume; // 0.5;
player.currentTime; // 10
player.fullscreen.active; // false;
Property Getter Setter Description
isHTML5 ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is HTML5.
isEmbed ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is an embedded player.
playing ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is playing.
paused ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is paused.
stopped ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is stopped.
ended ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player has finished playback.
buffered ✓ - Returns a float between 0 and 1 indicating how much of the media is buffered
currentTime ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the currentTime for the player. The setter accepts a float in seconds.
seeking ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is seeking.
duration ✓ - Returns the duration for the current media.
volume ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the volume for the player. The setter accepts a float between 0 and 1.
muted ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the muted state of the player. The setter accepts a boolean.
hasAudio ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current media has an audio track.
speed ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the speed for the player. The setter accepts a value in the options specified in your config. Generally the minimum should be 0.5.
quality¹ ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the quality for the player. The setter accepts a value from the options specified in your config.
loop ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the current loop state of the player. The setter accepts a boolean.
source ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the current source for the player. The setter accepts an object. See source setter below for examples.
poster ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the current poster image for the player. The setter accepts a string; the URL for the updated poster image.
autoplay ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the autoplay state of the player. The setter accepts a boolean.
currentTrack ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the caption track by index. -1 means the track is missing or captions is not active
language ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the preferred captions language for the player. The setter accepts an ISO two-letter language code. Support for the languages is dependent on the captions you include. If your captions don't have any language data, or if you have multiple tracks with the same language, you may want to use currentTrack instead.
fullscreen.active ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player is in fullscreen mode.
fullscreen.enabled ✓ - Returns a boolean indicating if the current player has fullscreen enabled.
pip¹ ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the picture-in-picture state of the player. The setter accepts a boolean. This currently only supported on Safari 10+ (on MacOS Sierra+ and iOS 10+) and Chrome 70+.
ratio ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the video aspect ratio. The setter accepts a string in the same format as the ratio option.
download ✓ ✓ Gets or sets the URL for the download button. The setter accepts a string containing a valid absolute URL.
  1. HTML5 only

The .source setter

This allows changing the player source and type on the fly.

Video example:

player.source = {
  type: 'video',
  title: 'Example title',
  sources: [
    {
      src: '/path/to/movie.mp4',
      type: 'video/mp4',
      size: 720,
    },
    {
      src: '/path/to/movie.webm',
      type: 'video/webm',
      size: 1080,
    },
  ],
  poster: '/path/to/poster.jpg',
  previewThumbnails: {
    src: '/path/to/thumbnails.vtt',
  },
  tracks: [
    {
      kind: 'captions',
      label: 'English',
      srclang: 'en',
      src: '/path/to/captions.en.vtt',
      default: true,
    },
    {
      kind: 'captions',
      label: 'French',
      srclang: 'fr',
      src: '/path/to/captions.fr.vtt',
    },
  ],
};

Audio example:

player.source = {
  type: 'audio',
  title: 'Example title',
  sources: [
    {
      src: '/path/to/audio.mp3',
      type: 'audio/mp3',
    },
    {
      src: '/path/to/audio.ogg',
      type: 'audio/ogg',
    },
  ],
};

YouTube example:

player.source = {
  type: 'video',
  sources: [
    {
      src: 'bTqVqk7FSmY',
      provider: 'youtube',
    },
  ],
};

Vimeo example

player.source = {
  type: 'video',
  sources: [
    {
      src: '143418951',
      provider: 'vimeo',
    },
  ],
};

Note: src property for YouTube and Vimeo can either be the video ID or the whole URL.

Property Type Description
type String Either video or audio. Note: YouTube and Vimeo are currently not supported as audio sources.
title String Optional. Title of the new media. Used for the aria-label attribute on the play button, and outer container. YouTube and Vimeo are populated automatically.
sources Array This is an array of sources. For HTML5 media, the properties of this object are mapped directly to HTML attributes so more can be added to the object if required.
poster¹ String The URL for the poster image (HTML5 video only).
tracks¹ String An array of track objects. Each element in the array is mapped directly to a track element and any keys mapped directly to HTML attributes so as in the example above, it will render as <track kind="captions" label="English" srclang="en" src="https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/example_captions_en.vtt" default> and similar for the French version. Booleans are converted to HTML5 value-less attributes.
previewThumbnails¹ Object The same object like in the previewThumbnails constructor option. This means you can either change the thumbnails vtt via the src key or disable the thumbnails plugin for the next video by passing { enabled: false }.
  1. HTML5 only

Events

You can listen for events on the target element you setup Plyr on (see example under the table). Some events only apply to HTML5 audio and video. Using your reference to the instance, you can use the on() API method or addEventListener(). Access to the API can be obtained this way through the event.detail.plyr property. Here's an example:

player.on('ready', event => {
  const instance = event.detail.plyr;
});

Standard Media Events

Event Type Description
progress Sent periodically to inform interested parties of progress downloading the media. Information about the current amount of the media that has been downloaded is available in the media element's buffered attribute.
playing Sent when the media begins to play (either for the first time, after having been paused, or after ending and then restarting).
play Sent when playback of the media starts after having been paused; that is, when playback is resumed after a prior pause event.
pause Sent when playback is paused.
timeupdate The time indicated by the element's currentTime attribute has changed.
volumechange Sent when the audio volume changes (both when the volume is set and when the muted state is changed).
seeking Sent when a seek operation begins.
seeked Sent when a seek operation completes.
ratechange Sent when the playback speed changes.
ended Sent when playback completes. Note: This does not fire if autoplay is true.
enterfullscreen Sent when the player enters fullscreen mode (either the proper fullscreen or full-window fallback for older browsers).
exitfullscreen Sent when the player exits fullscreen mode.
captionsenabled Sent when captions are enabled.
captionsdisabled Sent when captions are disabled.
languagechange Sent when the caption language is changed.
controlshidden Sent when the controls are hidden.
controlsshown Sent when the controls are shown.
ready Triggered when the instance is ready for API calls.

HTML5 only

Event Type Description
loadstart Sent when loading of the media begins.
loadeddata The first frame of the media has finished loading.
loadedmetadata The media's metadata has finished loading; all attributes now contain as much useful information as they're going to.
qualitychange The quality of playback has changed.
canplay Sent when enough data is available that the media can be played, at least for a couple of frames. This corresponds to the HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA readyState.
canplaythrough Sent when the ready state changes to CAN_PLAY_THROUGH, indicating that the entire media can be played without interruption, assuming the download rate remains at least at the current level. Note: Manually setting the currentTime will eventually fire a canplaythrough event in firefox. Other browsers might not fire this event.
stalled Sent when the user agent is trying to fetch media data, but data is unexpectedly not forthcoming.
waiting Sent when the requested operation (such as playback) is delayed pending the completion of another operation (such as a seek).
emptied he media has become empty; for example, this event is sent if the media has already been loaded (or partially loaded), and the load() method is called to reload it.
cuechange Sent when a TextTrack has changed the currently displaying cues.
error Sent when an error occurs. The element's error attribute contains more information.

YouTube only

Event Type Description
statechange The state of the player has changed. The code can be accessed via event.detail.code. Possible values are -1: Unstarted, 0: Ended, 1: Playing, 2: Paused, 3: Buffering, 5: Video cued. See the YouTube Docs for more information.

Note: These events also bubble up the DOM. The event target will be the container element.

Some event details borrowed from MDN.

Embeds

YouTube and Vimeo are currently supported and function much like a HTML5 video. Similar events and API methods are available for all types. However if you wish to access the API's directly. You can do so via the embed property of your player object - e.g. player.embed. You can then use the relevant methods from the third party APIs. More info on the respective API's here:

Note: Not all API methods may work 100%. Your mileage may vary. It's better to use the Plyr API where possible.

Shortcuts

By default, a player will bind the following keyboard shortcuts when it has focus. If you have the global option to true and there's only one player in the document then the shortcuts will work when any element has focus, apart from an element that requires input.

Key Action
0 to 9 Seek from 0 to 90% respectively
space Toggle playback
K Toggle playback
← Seek backward by the seekTime option
→ Seek forward by the seekTime option
↑ Increase volume
↓ Decrease volume
M Toggle mute
F Toggle fullscreen
C Toggle captions
L Toggle loop

Preview thumbnails

It's possible to display preview thumbnails as per the demo when you hover over the scrubber or while you are scrubbing in the main video area. This can be used for all video types but is easiest with HTML5 of course. You will need to generate the sprite or images yourself. This is possible using something like AWS transcoder to generate the frames and then combine them into a sprite image. Sprites are recommended for performance reasons - they will be much faster to download and easier to compress into a small file size making them load faster.

You can see the example VTT files here and here for how the sprites are done. The coordinates are set as the xywh hash on the URL in the order X Offset, Y Offset, Width, Height (e.g. 240p-00001.jpg#xywh=1708,480,427,240 is offset 1708px from the left, 480px from the top and is 427x240px. If you want to include images per frame, this is also possible but will be slower, resulting in a degraded experience.

Fullscreen

Fullscreen in Plyr is supported by all browsers that currently support it.

Browser support

Plyr supports the last 2 versions of most modern browsers.

Browser Supported
Safari ✓
Mobile Safari ✓¹
Firefox ✓
Chrome ✓
Opera ✓
Edge ✓
IE11 ✓³
IE10 ✓2,3
  1. Mobile Safari on the iPhone forces the native player for <video> unless the playsinline attribute is present. Volume controls are also disabled as they are handled device wide.
  2. Native player used (no support for <progress> or <input type="range">) but the API is supported. No native fullscreen support, fallback can be used (see options).
  3. Polyfills required. See below.

Polyfills

Plyr uses ES6 which isn't supported in all browsers quite yet. This means some features will need to be polyfilled to be available otherwise you'll run into issues. We've elected to not burden the ~90% of users that do support these features with extra JS and instead leave polyfilling to you to work out based on your needs. The easiest method I've found is to use polyfill.io which provides polyfills based on user agent. This is the method the demo uses.

Checking for support

You can use the static method to check for support. For example

const supported = Plyr.supported('video', 'html5', true);

The arguments are:

  • Media type (audio or video)
  • Provider (html5, youtube or vimeo)
  • Whether the player has the playsinline attribute (only applicable to iOS 10+)

Disable support programmatically

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.

Plugins & Components

Some awesome folks have made plugins for CMSs and Components for JavaScript frameworks:

Type Maintainer Link
WordPress Brandon Lavigne (@drrobotnik) https://wordpress.org/plugins/plyr/
Angular Simon Bobrov (@smnbbrv) https://github.com/smnbbrv/ngx-plyr
React Chintan Prajapati (@chintan9) https://github.com/chintan9/plyr-react
Vue Gabe Dunn (@redxtech) https://github.com/redxtech/vue-plyr
Neos Jon Uhlmann (@jonnitto) https://packagist.org/packages/jonnitto/plyr
Kirby Dominik Pschenitschni (@dpschen) https://github.com/dpschen/kirby-plyrtag
REDAXO FriendsOfRedaxo / skerbis (@skerbis) https://github.com/FriendsOfREDAXO/plyr
svelte-plyr Ben Woodward / benwoodward (@benwoodward) https://github.com/benwoodward

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

Donate

Plyr costs money to run, not only my time. I donate my time for free as I enjoy building Plyr but unfortunately have to pay for domains, hosting, and more. Any help with costs is appreciated...

Mentions

Used by

If you want to be added to the list, open a pull request. It'd be awesome to see how you're using Plyr 😎

Useful links and credits

Thanks

Fastly

Massive thanks to Fastly for providing the CDN services.

Sentry

Massive thanks to Sentry for providing the logging services for the demo site.

Contributors

Code Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute. [Contribute].

Financial Contributors

Become a financial contributor and help us sustain our community. [Contribute]

Individuals

Organizations

Support this project with your organization. Your logo will show up here with a link to your website. [Contribute]

Copyright and License

The MIT license