ReactPlayer

A React component for playing a variety of URLs, including file paths, HLS, DASH, YouTube, Vimeo, Wistia and Mux.

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Version 3 of ReactPlayer is a major update with a new architecture and many new features. It is not backwards compatible with v2, so please see the migration guide for details.

Using Next.js and need to handle video upload/processing? Check out next-video.

✨ The future of ReactPlayer

Maintenance of ReactPlayer is being taken over by Mux. Mux is a video api for developers. The team at Mux have worked on many highly respected projects and are committed to improving video tooling for developers.

ReactPlayer will remain open source, but with a higher rate of fixes and releases over time. Thanks to everyone in the community for your ongoing support.

Usage

npm install react-player # or yarn add react-player

import React from 'react'
import ReactPlayer from 'react-player'

// Render a YouTube video player
<ReactPlayer src='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXb3EKWsInQ' />

If your build system supports import() statements and code splitting enable this to lazy load the appropriate player for the src you pass in. This adds several reactPlayer chunks to your output, but reduces your main bundle size.

Demo page: https://cookpete.github.io/react-player

The component parses a URL and loads in the appropriate markup and external SDKs to play media from various sources. Props can be passed in to control playback and react to events such as buffering or media ending. See the demo source for a full example.

For platforms without direct use of npm modules, a minified version of ReactPlayer is located in dist after installing. To generate this file yourself, checkout the repo and run npm run build:dist.

Autoplay

As of Chrome 66, videos must be muted in order to play automatically. Some players, like Facebook, cannot be unmuted until the user interacts with the video, so you may want to enable controls to allow users to unmute videos themselves. Please set muted={true}.

Props

Prop	Description	Default
src	The url of a video or song to play	undefined
playing	Set to true or false to play or pause the media	undefined
preload	Applies the preload attribute where supported	undefined
playsInline	Applies the playsInline attribute where supported	false
crossOrigin	Applies the crossOrigin attribute where supported	undefined
loop	Set to true or false to loop the media	false
controls	Set to true or false to display native player controls.   ◦  For Vimeo videos, hiding controls must be enabled by the video owner.	false
volume	Set the volume of the player, between 0 and 1   ◦  null uses default volume on all players #357	null
muted	Mutes the player	false
playbackRate	Set the playback rate of the player   ◦  Only supported by YouTube, Wistia, and file paths	1
pip	Set to true or false to enable or disable picture-in-picture mode   ◦  Only available when playing file URLs in certain browsers	false
width	Set the width of the player	320px
height	Set the height of the player	180px
style	Add inline styles to the root element	{}
light	Set to true to show just the video thumbnail, which loads the full player on click   ◦  Pass in an image URL to override the preview image	false
fallback	Element or component to use as a fallback if you are using lazy loading	null
wrapper	Element or component to use as the container element	null
playIcon	Element or component to use as the play icon in light mode
previewTabIndex	Set the tab index to be used on light mode	0

Callback props

Callback props take a function that gets fired on various player events:

Prop	Description
onClickPreview	Called when user clicks the light mode preview
onReady	Called when media is loaded and ready to play. If playing is set to true, media will play immediately
onStart	Called when media starts playing
onPlay	Called when the playing prop is set to true
onPlaying	Called when media actually starts playing
onProgress	Called when media data is loaded
onTimeUpdate	Called when the media's current time changes
onDurationChange	Callback containing duration of the media, in seconds
onPause	Called when media is paused
onWaiting	Called when media is buffering and waiting for more data
onSeeking	Called when media is seeking
onSeeked	Called when media has finished seeking
onRateChange	Called when playback rate of the player changed   ◦  Only supported by YouTube, Vimeo (if enabled), Wistia, and file paths
onEnded	Called when media finishes playing   ◦  Does not fire when loop is set to true
onError	Called when an error occurs whilst attempting to play media
onEnterPictureInPicture	Called when entering picture-in-picture mode
onLeavePictureInPicture	Called when leaving picture-in-picture mode

Config prop

There is a single config prop to override settings for each type of player:

<ReactPlayer
  src={src}
  config={{
    youtube: {
      color: 'white',
    },
  }}
/>

Settings for each player live under different keys:

Key	Options
youtube	https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters#Parameters
vimeo	https://developer.vimeo.com/player/sdk/embed
hls	https://github.com/video-dev/hls.js/blob/master/docs/API.md#fine-tuning

Methods

Static Methods

Method	Description
ReactPlayer.canPlay(src)	Determine if a URL can be played. This does not detect media that is unplayable due to privacy settings, streaming permissions, etc. In that case, the onError prop will be invoked after attempting to play. Any URL that does not match any patterns will fall back to a native HTML5 media player.
ReactPlayer.addCustomPlayer(CustomPlayer)	Add a custom player. See Adding custom players
ReactPlayer.removeCustomPlayers()	Remove any players that have been added using addCustomPlayer()

Instance Methods

Use ref to call instance methods on the player. See the demo app for an example of this. Since v3, the instance methods aim to be compatible with the HTMLMediaElement interface.

Advanced Usage

Light player

The light prop will render a video thumbnail with simple play icon, and only load the full player once a user has interacted with the image. Noembed is used to fetch thumbnails for a video URL. Note that automatic thumbnail fetching for Facebook, Wistia, Mixcloud and file URLs are not supported, and ongoing support for other URLs is not guaranteed.

If you want to pass in your own thumbnail to use, set light to the image URL rather than true.

You can also pass a component through the light prop:

<ReactPlayer light={<img src='https://example.com/thumbnail.png' alt='Thumbnail' />} />

The styles for the preview image and play icon can be overridden by targeting the CSS classes react-player__preview, react-player__shadow and react-player__play-icon.

Responsive player

Set width to 100%, height to auto and add an aspectRatio like 16 / 9 to get a responsive player:

<ReactPlayer
  src="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXb3EKWsInQ"
  style={{ width: '100%', height: 'auto', aspectRatio: '16/9' }}
/>

SDK Overrides

You can use your own version of any player SDK by using NPM resolutions. For example, to use a specific version of hls.js, add the following to your package.json:

{
  "resolutions": {
    "hls.js": "1.6.2"
  }
}

Adding custom players

If you have your own player that is compatible with ReactPlayer’s internal architecture, you can add it using addCustomPlayer:

import YourOwnPlayer from './somewhere';
ReactPlayer.addCustomPlayer(YourOwnPlayer);

Use removeCustomPlayers to clear all custom players:

ReactPlayer.removeCustomPlayers();

It is your responsibility to ensure that custom players keep up with any internal changes to ReactPlayer in later versions.

Mobile considerations

Due to various restrictions, ReactPlayer is not guaranteed to function properly on mobile devices. The YouTube player documentation, for example, explains that certain mobile browsers require user interaction before playing:

The HTML5 <video> element, in certain mobile browsers (such as Chrome and Safari), only allows playback to take place if it’s initiated by a user interaction (such as tapping on the player).

Multiple Sources and Tracks

Since v3 if the player supports multiple sources and / or tracks, it works the same as the native <source and <track> elements in the HTML <video> or <audio> element.

<ReactPlayer controls>
  <source src="foo.webm" type="video/webm">
  <source src="foo.ogg" type="video/ogg">
  <track kind="subtitles" src="subs/subtitles.en.vtt" srclang="en" default>
  <track kind="subtitles" src="subs/subtitles.ja.vtt" srclang="ja">
  <track kind="subtitles" src="subs/subtitles.de.vtt" srclang="de">
</ReactPlayer>

Migrating to v3

ReactPlayer v3 is a major update with a new architecture and many new features. It is not backwards compatible with v2, so please see the migration guide for details.

Some providers have not been updated for v3, it is recommended to keep using v2 and vote to add this provider to v3 in discussions

Migrating to v2

ReactPlayer v2 changes single player imports and adds lazy loading players. Support for preload has also been removed, plus some other changes. See MIGRATING.md for information.

Supported media

• Supported file types are playing using <video> or <audio> elements
• HLS streams are played using hls.js
• DASH streams are played using dash.js
• Mux videos use the <mux-player> element
• YouTube videos use the YouTube iFrame Player API
• Vimeo videos use the Vimeo Player API
• Wistia videos use the Wistia Player API

Contributing

See the contribution guidelines before creating a pull request.

Thanks

• Thanks to anyone who has contributed.
• Big thanks to my Patreon supporters!

Jackson Doherty

Joseph Fung