To set up the controls for your video, click "Customize" from a video's Manage page.
Here, navigate to the Controls tab, where you can customize your video's controls and playback behavior.
Start from a preset
At the top of the Controls tab, pick a preset to set up your player in one click:
Standard player: click to play, controls visible
Silent loop: autoplay, muted, looping, no controls shown
You can still change individual controls after selecting a preset.
Tip
The Silent loop preset turns captions off. This differs from standard muted autoplay, which can display available captions automatically. If viewers need captions, configure the playback and captions controls individually rather than relying on the Silent loop preset.
Start and end options
In the Start/End options section of the Controls tab, there are a few options to customize the playback behavior of your video. Check the "Autoplay" option to enable this setting and ensure your video plays automatically when a viewer visits the page, whenever possible.
Open the dropdown menu to select one of three options for the end behavior of your video:
Pause on the last frame
Reset to the first frame
Loop the video
Autoplay your video
Autoplaying videos can help grab your viewers’ attention. Once the Autoplay option is enabled, you can choose amongst several autoplaying variations.
Click for sound: Autoplay the video in a muted state with the option to manually enable sound. You can choose to have just a volume icon here, or set this to show "Click for sound" on hover.
Muted: Play the entire video silently.
Play with sound: Begin playback with audio, meaning the video will only autoplay in browsers that allow autoplaying videos with sound.
Play sound if possible: Autoplay with sound where permitted and silently where required.
Note
The Click for sound text cannot currently be edited.
Tip
The Muted setting is a good option for background videos and content without audio.
Note
Autoplay with sound is blocked by default on mobile devices, Chrome, and Safari. For the best experience across all devices and browsers, we recommend the "Muted" or the "Play sound if possible" option. Videos set to autoplay with sound will display a thumbnail and play button where autoplay with sound is blocked.
Loop your video
By default, videos pause on the last frame once they end. Choose "Loop the video" from the end behavior dropdown menu to replay the video continuously.
To set up a silent background loop (autoplay, muted, no controls) in one step, select the "Silent loop" preset at the top of the Controls tab. Looping videos set up this way play back without a pause at the loop point.
Big play button
The big play button overlays on your thumbnail. It’s visible before your viewer clicks play and indicates that your image is a video.
Check the "Video length on play button" option to display the video duration beneath the big play button.
Tip
For developers interested in building a custom play button, check out: Aurora Player Methods → play()
Small play button
The small play button will pause and play your video. It will appear on your video when the viewer hovers over the video during playback. This option will also be shown if the "Controls visible on load" box is checked.
Play bar
The play bar allows your viewers to scrub through your video. Disabling the play bar will prevent viewers from skipping ahead and jumping backward in your video. When the play bar is enabled, viewers can hover over it to reveal thumbnail previews of any point in the video.
Captions control
When enabled, the captions control allows viewers to turn captions on or off and select a language if more than one is available. In the Controls panel, you can configure captions to appear on by default (i.e., captions will display automatically) or off by default (i.e., the viewer must enable captions manually).
Once captions are enabled, preferences will be saved across all videos viewed on the same domain. For more information on captions, check out our Transcripts and Captions guide.
Note
If your video is set to autoplay and click for sound or autoplay muted, captions display automatically for accessibility purposes.
Volume control
Hover over the volume icon and drag the white circle up or down to adjust the sound level.
Fullscreen
The Wistia player includes a fullscreen option by default, though you can disable this button in the Controls menu.
Settings control
The settings button on the Wistia player contains speed and quality controls. Most videos are set to Auto, which will use adaptive streaming to play your videos. However, viewers can manually choose within the settings menu.
Controls visible on load
With the Controls visible on load setting enabled, all player controls (i.e., play buttons, play bar, volume) will be visible as soon as the video's thumbnail loads.
360 Video
If you’ve uploaded a 360 video, select the "This is a 360° video" checkbox in the Format controls section of the Controls tab. Refer to our 360 video guide for more information.
Bulk control settings
If you've set up controls on a specific video that you'd like to apply to others in a folder, use Folder Defaults.
Note
Folder defaults include “Captions on by default,” but each video still needs its own captions.
Controls on mobile devices
Most mobile environments will utilize Wistia’s player controls, though playback may be handed off to the native player of the device in some cases. When using the native player of another device, most customizations made in Wistia will not be visible. This primarily occurs when entering fullscreen on iOS devices, or using some older mobile browsers that don’t fully support our modern mobile player.
Wistia context menu
Right-clicking on any Wistia video will open the context menu with various options.
About Wistia brings folks to the Wistia website to learn more if they wish.
Report a problem allows viewers to log playback issues that our support team can use for troubleshooting purposes.
Copy Link & Thumbnail is an easy way to grab the link and thumbnail of the video you are watching. Read more about this functionality here.
Troubleshooting
Why do the controls look different on my website?
If player controls are incorrect or missing on your website, compare the embedded video with its preview in Wistia. There a few reasons why this might be happening:
Your embed code or website’s video component may set explicit player options that override settings saved in Customize. Compare those options with your intended settings, then test with a fresh embed code from Wistia.
Your website’s CSS may conflict with the player. We recommend testing out the fallback embed. It’s a more resilient iframe embed code type that’s not as easily affected by external CSS styling.
Still no luck? Check out our embed troubleshooting guide for more, or give us a shout.