Lightweight video block – Space Lightplay

WordPress Plugin

A lightweight video block: YouTube, Vimeo and self-hosted video, a custom poster, playback in a lightbox, and a separate background video block.

The problem. The standard YouTube player brings its whole interface along: the title, the channel avatar, Share and Watch later buttons, suggested videos at the end. When a page has a considered design and a full-width video block, that borrowed UI simply ruins the look. On top of that, the player loads with its scripts and trackers as soon as the page opens, even if nobody presses Play.

What it does. The page holds only a poster with a play button styled to match the site: size, roundness, colour from the theme palette, background blur, hover overlay. The player is loaded after the click, and until then the page carries about 7 KB of CSS and JS. The poster is copied into your Media Library at the highest resolution the provider offers, so the image is served from your own domain. YouTube runs in youtube-nocookie mode, Vimeo with do-not-track, and an optional consent notice keeps everything external from loading until the visitor agrees.

The rest is native Gutenberg controls: alignment, width, aspect ratio, border, shadow, spacing, and colours from the theme palette with transparency and separate hover values.

Version 2. Added Vimeo and Media Library videos, opening in a lightbox, autoplay when the block comes into view, start and end times, and an end screen built from regular blocks with a Replay button.

A separate Space Lightplay Background block appeared: a background video behind any blocks. The native Cover block only supports Media Library videos, while this one also works with YouTube and Vimeo. On phones it can show the poster only, to spare mobile data.

The blocks convert into each other and into the core Video, Cover and Embed blocks without losing content.

Requires WordPress 6.5 or later.