Plyr

A simple, accessible HTML5 media player.

Checkout the demo

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 captions and screen readers.
• Lightweight - just 5.3KB 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.
• API - toggle playback, volume, seeking, and more.
• Fullscreen - supports native fullscreen with fallback to "full window" modes.
• No dependencies - written in vanilla JavaScript, no jQuery required.

Oh and yes, it works with Bootstrap.

Changelog

Check out the changelog

Planned development

• Accept a string selector, a node, or a nodelist for the container property of selectors.
• Multiple language captions (with selection)
• Playlists (audio and video)
• Set source by API
• Tooltip option (for seeking and controls) ... 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.

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

CDN

If you want to use our CDN, you can use the following. HTTPS (SSL) is supported.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdn.plyr.io/1.0.21/plyr.css">
<script src="//cdn.plyr.io/1.0.21/plyr.js"></script>

You can also access the sprite.svg file at //cdn.plyr.io/1.0.21/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,!0);
	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="//cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/poster.jpg" controls crossorigin>
		<!-- Video files -->
		<source src="//cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
		<source src="//cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.webm" type="video/webm">
		
		<!-- Text track file -->
		<track kind="captions" label="English captions" src="//cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie_captions_en.vtt" srclang="en" default>
		
		<!-- Fallback for browsers that don't support the <video> element -->
		<div>
			<a href="//cdn.selz.com/plyr/1.0/movie.mp4">Download</a>
		</div>
	</video>
</div>

And the same for <audio>

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

<script src="dist/plyr.js"></script>
<script>
plyr.setup({
	*options*
});
</script>

Options

You can pass the following options to the setup method.

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.
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 `
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	—	This currently contains one property `defaultActive` which toggles if captions should be on by default. The default value is `false`.
fullscreen	Object	—	This currently contains two properties; `enabled` which toggles if fullscreen should be enabled (if the browser supports it). The default value is `true`. Also an extra property called `fallback` which will enable a 'full window' view for older browsers. The default value is `true`.
storage	Object	—	This currently contains one property `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.

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.
toggleMute	—	Toggles mute for the player.
toggleCaptions	—	Toggles whether captions are enabled.

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

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	✔²

¹ Native player used (no support for <progress> or <input type="range">)

² 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.

Issues

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

Author

Plyr is developed by Sam Potts (@sam_potts) (sampotts.me)

Mentions

• The Changelog
• HTML5 Weekly #177
• Web Design Weekly #174
• Hacker News
• Web Platform Daily
• LayerVault Designer News

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:

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

Copyright and License

The MIT license.