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/Web APIs

HTMLMediaElement: canPlayType() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since ⁨July 2015⁩.

The HTMLMediaElement method canPlayType() reports how likely it is that the current browser will be able to play media of a given MIME type.

Syntax

canPlayType(type)

Parameters

type: A string specifying the MIME type of the media and (optionally) a codecs parameter containing a comma-separated list of the supported codecs.

Return value

A string indicating how likely it is that the media can be played. The string will be one of the following values:

"" (empty string): The media cannot be played on the current device.
probably: The media is probably playable on this device.
maybe: There is not enough information to determine whether the media can play (until playback is actually attempted).

Examples

let obj = document.createElement("video");
console.log(obj.canPlayType("video/mp4")); // "maybe"

Specifications

Specification
HTML> # dom-navigator-canplaytype-dev>

Browser compatibility

	Desktop					Mobile
	Chrome	Edge	Firefox	Opera	Safari	Chrome Android	Firefox for Android	Opera Android	Safari on IOS	Samsung Internet	WebView Android	WebView on iOS
`canPlayType`	3 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	12 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	3.5 ["Before Firefox 28, `canPlayType()` returned `probably` when asked about WebM audio or video files without the `codecs` parameter. Since multiple codecs are supported, this is not enough information to determine if a file can be played, so `maybe` is now correctly returned.", "Before Firefox 101, `canPlayType()` ignored `codecs` parameter options for `av01` codecs (treating them as `av1`)."]	≤12.1 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	4	18 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	4 ["Before Firefox for Android 28, `canPlayType()` returned `probably` when asked about WebM audio or video files without the `codecs` parameter. Since multiple codecs are supported, this is not enough information to determine if a file can be played, so `maybe` is now correctly returned.", "Before Firefox for Android 101, `canPlayType()` ignored `codecs` parameter options for `av01` codecs (treating them as `av1`)."]	≤12.1 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	3	1.0 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	4.4 ["`codecs` string can contain any subset of optional parameters (should be all or none).", "Errors if `codecs` string contains unexpected characters (should evaluate string up to character)."]	3