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.

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

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

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:

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

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