Plyr

A simple, accessible and customizable HTML5, YouTube and Vimeo media player.

Donate to support Plyr

Checkout the demo

Why?

We wanted a lightweight, accessible and customizable media player that 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 - under 10KB 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 - works with any screen size
• HTML Video & Audio - support for both formats
• Embedded Video - support for YouTube and Vimeo video playback
• Streaming - support for hls.js, Shaka and dash.js streaming playback
• API - toggle playback, volume, seeking, and more
• 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
• i18n support - support for internationalization of controls
• No dependencies - written in “vanilla” JavaScript, no jQuery required
• SASS and LESS - to include in your build processes

Oh and yes, it works with Bootstrap.

Changelog

Check out the changelog to see what’s new with Plyr.

Features currently being developed

• Playback speed selection
• Quality selection
• Caption language selection
• AirPlay
• Picture in Picture (MacOS Sierra + Safari)

more info

Planned features

• Playlists
• Google cast
• Facebook video support
• Wistia video support
• YouTube and Vimeo audio support
• 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.

CMS plugins

WordPress

Created and maintained by Ryan Anthony Drake (@iamryandrake)

Neos

Created and maintained by Jon Uhlmann (@jonnitto)

Kirby

Created and maintained by Dominik Pschenitschni (@dpschen)

Using package managers

You can grab the source using one of the following package managers.

npm

npm install plyr

https://www.npmjs.com/package/plyr

Bower

bower install plyr

http://bower.io/search/?q=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

Quick setup

Here’s a quick run through on getting up and running. There’s also a demo on Codepen.

HTML

Plyr extends upon the standard HTML5 markup so that’s all you need for those types. More info on advanced HTML markup can be found under initialising.

HTML5 Video

<video poster="/path/to/poster.jpg" controls>
  <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>

HTML5 Audio

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

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

YouTube embed

<div data-type="youtube" data-video-id="bTqVqk7FSmY"></div>

Note: data-video-id value can now be the ID or URL for the video. This attribute name will change in a future release to reflect this change.

Vimeo embed

<div data-type="vimeo" data-video-id="143418951"></div>

Note: data-video-id value can now be the ID or URL for the video. This attribute name will change in a future release to reflect this change.

JavaScript

Include the plyr.js script before the closing </body> tag and then call plyr.setup(). More info on setup() can be found under initialising.

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

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

<script src="https://cdn.plyr.io/2.0.12/plyr.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/2.0.12/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/2.0.12/plyr.svg.

Advanced

LESS & SASS/SCSS

You can use plyr.less or plyr.scss file included in /src as part of your build and change variables to suit your design. The LESS and SASS require you to use the autoprefixer plugin (you should already) as all declerations use the W3C definitions - e.g. appearance: none; will be prefixed to -webkit-appearance: none; by autoprefixer.

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

By default, setup() will find all <video>, <audio> and [data-type] elements with the document and initialises on any found. Each target media element found will be wrapped in a <div> for styling and setup individually. You can specify a variety of arguments to setup() to use, including a different NodeList, HTMLElement, Array of HTMLElements or string selector as below:

Passing a NodeList:

plyr.setup(document.querySelectorAll('.js-player'), options);

Passing a HTMLElement:

plyr.setup(document.querySelector('.js-player'), options);

Passing an Array of HTMLElements:

plyr.setup([
	document.querySelector('.js-player-1'),
	document.querySelector('.js-player-2')
], options);

Passing a string selector:

plyr.setup('.js-player', options);

The NodeList, HTMLElement or string selector can be the target <video>, <audio> or [data-type] (for embeds) element itself or a container element.

Passing just the options object:

plyr.setup(options);

setup() will return an array of instances that can be used with the API methods. See the API section for more info.

RangeTouch

Some touch browsers (particularly Mobile Safari on iOS) seem to have issues with <input type="range"> elements whereby touching the track to set the value doesn’t work and sliding the thumb can be tricky. To combat this, I’ve created RangeTouch which I’d recommend including in your solution. It’s a tiny script with a nice benefit for users on touch devices.

Options

Options must be passed as an object to the setup() method as above or as JSON in data-plyr attribute on each of your target elements:

<video data-plyr='{ title: "testing" }'></video>

Note the single quotes encapsulating the JSON and double quotes on the object keys.

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.
html	String	See controls.md	See controls.md for more info on how the html needs to be structured.
controls	Array	['play-large', 'play', 'progress', 'current-time', '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 internationalization (i18n) of the tooltips/labels within the buttons.
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.
blankUrl	String	https://cdn.selz.com/plyr/blank.mp4	Specify a URL or path to a blank video file used to properly cancel network requests. See issue #174 for more info.
debug	Boolean	false	Display debugging information on what Plyr is doing.
autoplay	Boolean	false	Autoplay the media on load. This is generally advised against on UX grounds. It is also disabled on iOS (an Apple limitation).
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.
clickToPlay	Boolean	true	Click (or tap) of the video container will toggle pause/play.
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.
showPosterOnEnd	Boolean	false	This will restore and *reload* HTML5 video once playback is complete. Note: depending on the browser caching, this may result in the video downloading again (or parts of it). Use with caution.
keyboardShortcuts	Object	{ focused: true, global: false }	Enable keyboard shortcuts for focused players only or globally as well (this will only work if there's one player in the document)
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.
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. You probably don't need to change any of these.
listeners	Object	—	Allows early binding of event listeners to the controls. See controls above for list of controls and see plyr.js in /src for more info.
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	—	See below
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.

Fullscreen options

Option	Type	Default	Description
enabled	Boolean	true	Toggles if fullscreen should be enabled (if the browser supports it).
fallback	Boolean	true	Enable a full viewport view for older browsers.
allowAudio	Boolean	false	Allow audio play to toggle fullscreen. This will be more useful later when posters are supported.

API

Instance

The easiest way to access the plyr instances is to store the return value from your call to setup():

var players = plyr.setup('.js-player');

This will return an array of all instances that were setup. Another way is to use plyr.get() to get all instances within a given container, for example:

var players = plyr.get('.js-player');

If no argument is passed, it will find all instances in the current document. This will return an array of all instances that were found in the given selector.

A final option is to access the instance through the event handlers:

instance.on('ready', function(event) {
  var instance = event.detail.plyr;
});

Methods

Once you have your instances, you can use the API methods below on it. For example to pause the first player:

players[0].pause();

Here’s a list of the methods supported:

Method	Parameters	Description
getContainer()	—	Get the players outer container element that is automatically injected.
getMedia()	—	Get the media element (>video<, >audio< or >div< for YouTube or Vimeo).
getEmbed()	—	Get the [embed](#embed) API to access those methods - either YouTube or Vimeo.
getType()	—	Get the type - 'video', 'audio', 'youtube' or 'vimeo'.
isReady()	—	Determine if the player is loaded and UI ready.
on()	String, Function	Watch for an event (first argument) and run a callback function (second argument). This saves you doing your own addEventListner code. This is chainable.
play()	—	Plays the media
pause()	—	Pauses the media
stop()	—	Stops 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.
getCurrentTime()	—	Will return a float with the current time in seconds.
getDuration()	—	Will return a float with the duration in seconds.
getVolume()	—	Will return a float between 0 and 1 for the current volume level.
isMuted()	—	Will return a boolean for whether the media is currently muted.
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.
isPaused()	—	Will return a boolean for whether the media is currently paused.
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(...)	Object or undefined	Get/Set the media source. Object See below 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.) undefined Returns the current media source url. Works for both native videos and embeds.
poster(...)	String	Set the poster url. This is supported for the video element only.
destroy()	—	Restores the original element, reversing the effects of setup().

.source() method

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

Video example:

player.source({
  type:       'video',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    '/path/to/movie.mp4',
      type:   'video/mp4'
  },
  {
      src:    '/path/to/movie.webm',
      type:   'video/webm'
  }],
  poster:     '/path/to/poster.jpg',
  tracks:     [{
      kind:   'captions',
      label:  'English',
      srclang:'en',
      src:    '/path/to/captions.vtt',
      default: true
  }]
});

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',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    'bTqVqk7FSmY',
      type:   'youtube'
  }]
});

Note: src can be the video ID or URL

Vimeo example

player.source({
  type:       'video',
  title:      'Example title',
  sources: [{
      src:    '143418951',
      type:   'vimeo'
  }]
});

Note: src can be the video ID or URL

More details on the object parameters

Key	Type	Description
type	String	Options are video, audio, youtube and vimeo
title	String	Title of the new media. Used for the `aria-label` attribute on the play button, and outer container.
sources	Array	This is an array of sources. type is optional for YouTube and Vimeo when specifying an array. For YouTube and Vimeo media, the video ID or URL must be passed as the source as shown above. The keys of this object are mapped directly to HTML attributes so more can be added to the object if required.
poster	String	URL for the poster image (video only).
tracks	Array	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 ``. Booleans are converted to HTML5 value-less attributes.

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:

instance.on('ready', function(event) {
  var instance = event.detail.plyr;
});

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

Event name	HTML5 only	Description
setup		When an initial setup has completed
ready		Triggered when the instance is ready for API use and external APIs are ready (in the case of YouTube and Vimeo).
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.
emptied	✔	The 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.
ended		Sent when playback completes. Note: with Vimeo this does not occur if `loop` is enabled.
error	✔	Sent when an error occurs.  The element's error attribute contains more information.
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.
loadstart	✔	Sent when loading of the media begins.
pause		Sent when playback is paused.
play		Sent when playback of the media starts after having been paused; that is, when playback is resumed after a prior pause event.
playing		Sent when the media begins to play (either for the first time, after having been paused, or after ending and then restarting).
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.
seeked		Sent when a seek operation completes.
seeking		Sent when a seek operation begins.
stalled	✔	Sent when the user agent is trying to fetch media data, but data is unexpectedly not forthcoming.
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 attribute is changed).
waiting	✔	Sent when the requested operation (such as playback) is delayed pending the completion of another operation (such as a seek).
enterfullscreen		User enters fullscreen (either the proper fullscreen or full-window fallback for older browsers)
exitfullscreen		User exits fullscreen
captionsenabled		Captions toggled on
captionsdisabled		Captions toggled off
destroyed		When an instance is destroyed. The original element that replaced the container will be returned to your handler as the event target.

Details borrowed from: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Guide/Events/Media_events

Embeds

YouTube and Vimeo are currently supported and function much like a HTML5 video. Check the relevant documentation sections for any differences.

Plyr references a custom version of the Vimeo Froogaloop API as Vimeo have neglected to maintain the library and there were bugs with their version. You don’t need to worry about including your own versions of the Vimeo or YouTube JavaScript APIs.

The embed third party API’s can be accessed through the getEmbed() API method.

More info on the respective API’s here:

• YouTube API Reference
• Vimeo API Reference

Please note: not all API methods may work 100%. Your mileage may vary. It’s better to use the universal 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	Global	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

Streaming

Because Plyr is an extension of the standard HTML5 video and audio elements, third party streaming plugins can be used with Plyr. Massive thanks to Matias Russitto (@russitto) for working on this. Here’s a few examples:

• Using hls.js - Demo
• Using Shaka - Demo
• Using dash.js - Demo

Fullscreen

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

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 customization 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

Donate

Plyr costs money to run, not my time - I donate that for free but domains, hosting and more. Any help is appreciated…
Donate to support Plyr

Mentions

• ProductHunt
• The Changelog
• HTML5 Weekly #177
• Responsive Design #149
• Web Design Weekly #174
• Hacker News
• Web Platform Daily
• LayerVault Designer News
• The Treehouse Show #131
• noupe.com

Used by

• Selz.com
• Peugeot.fr
• Peugeot.de
• TomTom.com
• DIGBMX
• Grime Archive
• koel - A personal music streaming server that works.
• Oscar Radio

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:

• Media Events - W3.org
• Styling the <progress> element - hongkiat.com

Thanks

Thanks to Fastly for providing the CDN services.

Copyright and License

The MIT license.