HTMLMediaElement: play event

Baseline

Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

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The play event is fired when the paused property is changed from true to false, as a result of the play method, or the autoplay attribute.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in addEventListener():

addEventListener("play", (event) => { })

Alternatively, assign to the event handler property of the interface:

onplay = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

These examples add an event listener for the HTMLMediaElement's play event, then post a message when that event handler has reacted to the event firing.

Using addEventListener():

const video = document.querySelector("video");

video.addEventListener("play", (event) => {
  console.log(
    "The Boolean paused property is now 'false'. Either the play() method was called or the autoplay attribute was toggled.",
  );
});

Using the onplay event handler property (but note that this replaces other event listeners added using onplay, if any):

const video = document.querySelector("video");

video.onplay = (event) => {
  console.log(
    "The Boolean paused property is now 'false'. Either the play() method was called or the autoplay attribute was toggled.",
  );
};