Question

I have a website with a video background. Autoplay does not work in iOS so a user click is required.

When clicking on the youtube thumbnail for a video to play the video is loaded in the youtube app, is it posible to make it load in the browser itself without loading the app?

The idea is to let the user browser the site while watching the video in the background. Having to watch it on an external player is a deal breaker.

Answer 1

It’s not possible to do so. Apple does not allow autoplaying anything in the browser for iOS.

In order for a video to play on the browser you need:

1. Interaction from the user (a click).
2. The user must interact with the youtube player directly (click on an external button that triggers the play method on the API won’t work, you need the user to interact directly with the player).

It’s not possible to overcome requirement 1, and there are some nasty hacks you can do to overcome number 2 (such as placing the player with opacity 0.01 on top of some other element and making it look like you are clicking that element, while you are in fact clicking the almost invisible player, thus faking a playvideo button). But that as far as it goes.