Adding a password to your video is an easy way to limit your audience to specific people. Password-protected videos require viewers to enter a password of your choosing to watch.
Note
Wistia audio players cannot be gated behind a password.
Video example
This video requires a password to watch. Click on the play button to check out the feature. Solve the riddle to watch the video!
Tip
This Customize feature applies to individual videos. If you'd like to password-protect a Channel, check out this page. To password-protect a folder, learn more about permissions here.
Add a password
If you’d like to add a password to your videos, head to the video within Wistia. From there, select "Customize."
On the Customize page, navigate to the "Password" tab and toggle the password to "On." Then enter the text to show on the password gate and create a password.
Once done, save your settings at the top of the page.
Note
Passwords cannot contain an ampersand (&) symbol.
Each visitor will be required to enter the same password to play the video. If you’d like to apply more fine-grained permissions, we recommend checking out our Private Sharing page to learn more about access and permissions in Wistia.
Choose a password
There are a few things to remember when picking your passwords.
Passwords are case-sensitive, so make sure to share the password with your audience in the correct case.
Spaces, special characters, and numbers are all included in the password.
Anyone with access to Customize a video (any Manager, Standard, or Limited User with Can manage or Upload permissions) can update the password. You can learn more about user roles and permissions here.
Password security
We've made great improvements to the security of password-protected videos. To get a bit technical, when the page and your (password-protected) video first load, we load only the thumbnail and omit references to the video assets. Once the correct password is entered, we return those video assets right away, and your viewers can begin watching the video.
This is the best way to ensure your video assets aren’t on the page before the password is entered, and it is the best protection for your Wistia videos.
Everyone with access to the Customize panel in your account can check and change the password for your videos. Users with this access level include:
Managers on your Wistia account
Standard Users in folders they create
Standard and Limited Users with Can manage permission on the folder
Standard and Limited Users with Upload permission (these users will only be able to customize videos they’ve uploaded)
If this level of security is not strong enough for your use case, we recommend sharing your content privately with users instead.
Tip
The password for the example video above is wind.