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.

Changelog

Check out the changelog

Planned development

• Accept a string selector, a node, or a nodelist for the container property of selectors.
• Accept a selector for the html template property.
• Multiple language captions (with selection)
• Localisation of control labels

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/1.0.19/plyr.css">
<script src="//cdn.plyr.io/1.0.19/plyr.js"></script>

You can also access the sprite.svg file at //cdn.plyr.io/1.0.19/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.

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:

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

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

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

Also these links helped created Plyr:

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

Copyright and License

The MIT license.