iphone-inline-video

Make videos playable inline on the iPhone (prevents automatic fullscreen)

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import iphoneInlineVideo from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/iphone-inline-video';
</script>

README

iphone-inline-video

Make videos playable inline on Safari on iPhone (prevents automatic fullscreen)

gzipped size Travis build status npm version

This enables iOS 10's playsinline attribute on iOS 8 and iOS 9 (almost a polyfill). It lets you:

  • Play videos without forcing the fullscreen on the iPhone (demo)
  • Play silent videos without user interaction
  • Autoplay silent videos with the autoplay attribute (demo)
  • Use videos as WebGL/ThreeJS textures (demo)

Demo

Main features

  • <2KB, standalone (no frameworks required)
  • No setup: include it, call enableInlineVideo(video), done
  • No custom API for playback, you can just call video.play() on click
  • Supports audio
  • Supports autoplay on silent videos
  • Doesn't need canvas
  • Doesn't create new elements/wrappers
  • It works with existing players like jPlayer
  • Disabled automatically on iOS 10

Limitations:

  • Needs user interaction to play videos with sound (standard iOS limitation)
  • Limited to iPhone with iOS 8 and 9. iPad support needs to be enabled separately. It's disabled on Android.
  • The video framerate depends on requestAnimationFrame, so avoid expensive animations and similar while the video is playing. Try stats.js to visualize your page's framerate
  • Known issues

Install

Pick your favorite:

<script src="dist/iphone-inline-video.min.js"></script>
npm install --save iphone-inline-video
var enableInlineVideo = require('iphone-inline-video');
import enableInlineVideo from 'iphone-inline-video';

Usage

You will need:

  • a <video> element with the attribute playsinline (this is needed on iOS 10)

    <video src="file.mp4" playsinline></video>
    
  • the native play buttons will still trigger the fullscreen, so it's best to hide them when iphone-inline-video is enabled. More info on the .IIV CSS class

    .IIV::-webkit-media-controls-play-button,
    .IIV::-webkit-media-controls-start-playback-button {
        opacity: 0;
        pointer-events: none;
        width: 5px;
    }
    
  • the activation call

    // one video
    var video = document.querySelector('video');
    enableInlineVideo(video);
    
    // or if you're already using jQuery:
    var video = $('video').get(0);
    enableInlineVideo(video);
    
    // or if you have multiple videos:
    $('video').each(function () {
        enableInlineVideo(this);
    });
    

Done! It will only be enabled on iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

Now you can keep using it just like you would on a desktop. Run video.play(), video.pause(), listen to events with video.addEventListener() or $(video).on(), etc...

BUT you still need user interaction to play the audio, so do something like this:

enableInlineVideo(video);
video.addEventListener('touchstart', function () {
    video.play();
});

If at some point you want to open the video in fullscreen, use the standard (but still prefixed) webkitEnterFullScreen() API, but it has some caveats.

Usage with audio-less videos

If your video file doesn't have an audio track, then you have to set a muted attribute:

<video muted playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>

Usage with autoplaying videos

The autoplay attribute is also supported, if muted is set:

<video autoplay muted playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>

Muted videos can also be played without user interaction — which means that video.play() doesn't need to be called inside an event listener:

<video muted playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>
setTimeout(function () { video.play(); }, 1000); // example

Usage on iPad

The iPad already supports inline videos so IIV is not enabled there.

The only reason to enabled IIV on iPad:

  • you want muted videos to autoplay, or
  • you want to play videos without user interaction

To enabled IIV on the iPad:

enableInlineVideo(video, {
    iPad: true
});

Notes about iOS 10

New features in iOS 10:

  • videos play inline:

    <video playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>
    
  • muted videos play inline without user interaction:

    <video muted playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>
    
    setTimeout(function () { video.play(); }, 1000); // example
    
  • muted videos autoplay inline:

    <video autoplay muted playsinline src="video.mp4"></video>
    

Essentially everything that this module does, so iphone-inline-video will be automatically disabled on iOS 10. Make sure you use the playsinline attribute.

License

MIT © Federico Brigante