YouTube Embed Code Generator

About the YouTube Embed Code Generator

Paste a YouTube link — a video, a Short, a playlist or a video in a playlist — and get embed code that scales to the width of your page and keeps the right shape (16:9 for videos, 9:16 for Shorts). Choose privacy-enhanced mode (youtube-nocookie.com), start and end times, muted autoplay, loop, captions in a language, the player’s language, related videos from your own channel, and whether to show the controls and the full-screen button. The options are YouTube’s documented player parameters (autoplay also adds mute=1, see below), written the way YouTube’s own embed code writes them, with a title for screen readers.

The optional click-to-load version shows a poster and a play button and makes no request to YouTube until someone clicks it — the page loads faster and visitors who never press play are not tracked. A live preview loads the real player only when you ask for it.

Without a pass, the free preview plays your video in YouTube’s standard player (Load preview) and shows the first lines of its CSS when you choose a class; the embed code, the player address, the player with your options, the copy buttons and the .html download come with a Pro pass.

Common uses

• Embedding a tutorial, a product video or a talk on a website or blog so it fits phones and wide screens alike.
• Pages with many videos, where click-to-load players keep the page fast.
• Sites with privacy requirements, using privacy-enhanced mode and players that load nothing until clicked.
• Starting a video at the part that matters, or playing just one section with a start and end time.

The options and what they do

From YouTube’s player parameters reference:

• Start / End (start, end): seconds from the beginning of the video. The end is counted from the beginning too, not from the start time.
• Autoplay (autoplay=1): written with mute=1, because browsers let a video start on its own only without sound (Chrome’s autoplay policy). mute is not in YouTube’s list, but the player starts muted with it. YouTube says autoplayed embeds do not add to the view count (YouTube Help).
• Loop (loop=1): a single video also needs playlist= with its own ID; a playlist starts again after its last video.
• Unticking Show controls (controls=0) hides the control bar, Full-screen button (fs=0) removes that button, and Keyboard shortcuts (disablekb=1) turns off the player’s shortcuts.
• Turn captions on (cc_load_policy=1) shows them even when the viewer has turned them off; Caption language (cc_lang_pref) and Player language (hl) take codes such as hi, en or pt-BR.
• Related videos from the same channel (rel=0): related videos can no longer be switched off — with this they come from the same channel.
• Play inline on iPhone (playsinline=1) and a White progress bar (color=white).

modestbranding and showinfo are not offered: YouTube’s reference says they no longer have any effect.

Privacy-enhanced mode and click-to-load

Privacy-enhanced mode changes the address of the player to www.youtube-nocookie.com. YouTube says it stops views of the embed from influencing what the viewer is shown on YouTube, and that ads in it are not personalised (YouTube Help: Embed videos & playlists).

The player still loads as soon as the page does. The click-to-load version goes further: it is an <iframe> whose srcdoc holds a small page with a poster and a play button, linked to the player. Nothing is fetched from YouTube until the link is clicked — unless you choose YouTube’s own thumbnail as the poster, which loads that one image from i.ytimg.com. The click then opens the player in the same frame and starts it. Because it uses a small inline style, a site whose Content-Security-Policy forbids inline styles needs the normal code instead.

Rules for embedded players

YouTube’s Required Minimum Functionality for embeds asks for:

• a player of at least 200 × 200 pixels (16:9 players at least 480 × 270 is recommended) — the responsive code keeps a minimum height of 200 px;
• an HTTP Referer, which referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" keeps; YouTube Help says players without one show “error 153”;
• no overlays in front of any part of the player, and not more than one autoplaying player on a page at a time.

Owners can switch off embedding for a video, and age-restricted videos cannot be watched on most other websites — the player then sends viewers to YouTube.

Limitations

• The code cannot tell whether the owner allows embedding: press Load preview, or Get title (YouTube does not answer for private or deleted videos).
• The live preview may not load on this page when its security settings do not allow YouTube frames; the code works on your site either way.
• Clip links (youtube.com/clip/…) cannot be turned into embed code here; use the video’s link with a start and end time.
• Autoplay with sound is up to the browser; the code always asks for muted autoplay.
• MySmartCoPilot is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube.

Privacy

Looks up live data online

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot. The code is made in your browser. Only if you press Get title or Load preview does the browser contact YouTube (to read the video’s title, or to show the player).