HTMLMediaElement: readyState property

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.readyState property indicates the readiness state of the media.

Value

A number which is one of the five possible state constants defined on the HTMLMediaElement interface:

HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_NOTHING (0)

No information is available about the media resource.

HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_METADATA (1)

Enough of the media resource has been retrieved that the metadata attributes are initialized. Seeking will no longer raise an exception.

HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_CURRENT_DATA (2)

Data is available for the current playback position, but not enough to actually play more than one frame.

HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_FUTURE_DATA (3)

Data for the current playback position as well as for at least a little bit of time into the future is available (in other words, at least two frames of video, for example).

HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_ENOUGH_DATA (4)

Enough data is available—and the download rate is high enough—that the media can be played through to the end without interruption.

Examples

This example will listen for audio data to be loaded for the element example. It will then check if at least the current playback position has been loaded. If it has, the audio will play.

html
<audio id="example" preload="auto">
  <source src="sound.ogg" type="audio/ogg" />
</audio>

js
const obj = document.getElementById("example");

obj.addEventListener("loadeddata", () => {
  if (obj.readyState >= HTMLMediaElement.HAVE_CURRENT_DATA) {
    obj.play();
  }
});