HTMLMediaElement: canplay 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 canplay event is fired when the user agent can play the media, but estimates that not enough data has been loaded to play the media up to its end without having to stop for further buffering of content.

This event is not cancelable and does not bubble.

Syntax

Use the event name in addEventListener():

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

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

oncanplay = (event) => { }

Event type

A generic Event.

Examples

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

Using addEventListener():

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

video.addEventListener("canplay", (event) => {
  console.log("Video can start, but not sure it will play through.");
});

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

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

video.oncanplay = (event) => {
  console.log("Video can start, but not sure it will play through.");
};