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.

js
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():

js
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:

js
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

See also