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.

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 methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

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

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:

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.",
  );
};

Specifications

Specification
HTML # event-media-play
HTML # handler-onplay

Browser compatibility

Related Events

The HTMLMediaElement playing event
The HTMLMediaElement waiting event
The HTMLMediaElement seeking event
The HTMLMediaElement seeked event
The HTMLMediaElement ended event
The HTMLMediaElement loadedmetadata event
The HTMLMediaElement loadeddata event
The HTMLMediaElement canplay event
The HTMLMediaElement canplaythrough event
The HTMLMediaElement durationchange event
The HTMLMediaElement timeupdate event
The HTMLMediaElement pause event
The HTMLMediaElement ratechange event
The HTMLMediaElement volumechange event
The HTMLMediaElement suspend event
The HTMLMediaElement emptied event
The HTMLMediaElement stalled event