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YouTube videos don't show play button #736
Description
Activity
This is actually by design. The big play button is overridden by YouTube's big play button when using a YouTube video, unless you've added a custom poster image - in that case, the poster image will cover the YouTube button, so the custom play button is overlaid again.
There is not large play button at all - except for the very small play button in the lower left of the player. So am not seeing any large play button in the middle.
UPDATE: It's odd that now I am seeing the play button on that page. You can see by the screenshot that it wasn't displaying a play button at all. It was loading blank with no play button.
Loading blank suggests that the YouTube video didn't load. Does the video actually play?
It was playing. I also tried installing it on a client's site and it was doing the same thing. The poster images were not loading (or loading all messed up (with no titles showing); however, if you clicked the play button (smaller one on bottom left) then it would play the video.
I tested on Chrome/MacOS Sequoia, and can't reproduce this. Perhaps it's something specific to Tahoe, although that seems a little unlikely. Do you have any toolbars installed on your browser that might impact this?
I wonder if it relates to being in nocookie mode. Do you see the same if you allow YouTube cookies?
Hi @joedolson, not sure if this is related to the above issue but this is what I've seen. I've also seen this on my website.
Steps to reproduce:
- Open this URL in the browser https://ableplayer.github.io/ableplayer/demos/index.html
- Click any of these links
- Then I see a player without a play button in the center or a poster
If you open a new browser tab and copy this URL https://ableplayer.github.io/ableplayer/demos/youtube6.html in the address bar and hit enter, then everything looks fine.
I'm not sure why this happens, but it happens when you navigate to the page via a link.
We are having similar issue described above. Before I file a separate issue, I wanted to check here to see if there's been any more discussion around this or if this is something that can't/won't be fixed.
We are using AP (Able Player) on some high impact marketing landing pages so the missing YouTube poster/cover images are being reported frequently by our marketing team.
I've been able to confirm through the YouTube examples on the AP docs site, as well as in my own reduced test case the following. I'll use a video from YouTube section of the examples on the AP documentation site below so that we are looking at the same test cases. All of the tests I've done are using the latest AP release (v5.0.0).
- Visit a page with a AP YouTube video in fresh browser (incognito, private, etc.) and the YouTube play button and YouTube supplied thumbnail/poster image are visible. When i say "poster" image here I am talking about what YouTube calls the "thumbnail" which is set by the user in the video settings and is expected when the video embed is loaded on a page, not the
posterHTML attribute. - Navigate away from the fresh/incognito page, then navigate back to the original page with the AP YouTube video described in step 1. Now the video defaults to showing the first frame of the video which is often times a blank black/white screen from which a fade-in starts. Refreshing the page does not change or fix anything. The play button is also no longer visible.
- From then on any subsequent visits to other pages in the same browser session with AP YouTube videos have the same default to first frame, no play button behavior. Closing the incognito browser window/session and opening a new one starts the process again. E.g. first visit to page with AP YouTube video the thumbnail and play button loads as expected, and subsequent visits to any other page with AP YouTube videos, default to first frame, no visible play button.
- All videos still play via the default AP video controls. E.g. clicking on the "Play" button plays the video as expected.
So far I cannot find any workaround for this, but need to confirm whether this is something that can/will be fixed so I can take that back to our stakeholders. I see above that some aspects of showing/not showing the play button seem like expected behavior, but I would expect the YouTube thumbnail to load for videos by default, especially if the user has not interacted with them yet.
I appreciate all your hard work on this project. Please, let me know if there is any additional details I can provide!
Screenshots
Example from the AP docs first visit/thumbnail and play button visible (incognito/no cache):
Navigated away from first page and then back, not thumbnail or play button (same incognito session):
Network tab still shows the YouTube thumbnail loaded, but is not visible on the page:
- Visit a page with a AP YouTube video in fresh browser (incognito, private, etc.) and the YouTube play button and YouTube supplied thumbnail/poster image are visible. When i say "poster" image here I am talking about what YouTube calls the "thumbnail" which is set by the user in the video settings and is expected when the video embed is loaded on a page, not the
@joedolson Thanks for the quick response! My fault, I should have included that info as well.
All of the screenshots and behavior list above I was using
OS: MacOS 26.6.2
Browser: ChromeI also did a bit of additional testing in Safari on the same MacOS and it has similar behavior, except the YouTube Thumbnail and button never load even on the first visit in a private tab.
Firefox on MacOS does seem to be working. YouTube thumbnail loads consistently on every page visit, which is what I would expect across browsers.
I was writing a message about what I was seeing, and it made me realize what's actually causing this - it's the auto-triggered
playthat's used to trigger the YouTube API event that loads the captions module. This is an awkward thing in the YouTube API - the captions module isn't loaded initially, so Able Player triggers playback then immediately stops it so that the event that loads captions is triggered.It's working, but in just a few cases (in my testing, only on Safari), it leaves the player in a "played" state, hiding the default image and the play button. On the majority of browsers, the brief instant of playback doesn't have any impact on the player.
So I have to explore this, and see if I can work around it.
This is a gnarly problem. There may be a way to do it (by running
cueVideoByIdafter fetching the tracks to reset the player to its unplayed state, but this has a lot of fall out, because it disrupts awareness of whether the YouTube player is ready, which will require some more extensive rewriting.This is unlikely to make it into the 5.1 release, but it's not impossible.
I've got a possible fix for this; will need some further testing to be sure, but I'm tentatively milestoning this for 5.1.
Reacted by Levi McGranahan@joedolson I appreciate the update! If there's any other info I can provide, I'm happy to.
- added a commit that references this issue
on Oct 4, 2026
Describe the bug
When I try to load a page that has a YouTube video, I don't see the large play button in the center of the player.
Version tested
Which version of AblePlayer are you reporting against?
4.8.0
To Reproduce
View https://ableplayer.github.io/ableplayer/demos/youtube3.html
You'll see that the player doesn't have a button in the center and the "thumbnail" disappears along with the video title.
Expected behavior
I'd expect to see the large play button so I can click on the video to play it.
Screenshots
Desktop (please complete the following information):