Embed YouTube Block – Fast Loading Videos, Shorts & Playlists vs Lightweight and Responsive Youtube Embed

The default embed block for YouTube videos sucks. It slows down your site. The more videos on the page the more it slow. This single-block plugin fixes that. Why this block is better than the default one: Instead of loading the entire iframe, only the video thumbnail is loaded, resulting in significant performance improvements Ability to play multiple different videos as a custom playlist or input a playlist ID to play the whole playlist Ability to use a custom image as the video thumbnail Ability to set a custom aspect ratio value for displaying any kind of YouTube videos Ability to loop continuously once it finishes playing Ability to show related videos from the same channel as the initial video Automatically load the video title as the caption The same UI as the default core/embed, and you can use the video title as the caption of the block with one click It can be transformed from/to the core embed block. Automatically convert all default core embed YouTube blocks to this block with one line of code. This plugin also provides a PHP API for developers to render a YouTube video URL as this block; or to automatically transform core/embed YouTube videos into this block. The simplest example is: better_youtube_embed_block_render_block( ['url' => 'https://youtu.be/paSXmpHU9K4'] ); The example with all the parameters is: better_youtube_embed_block_render_block( [ 'url' => 'https://youtu.be/paSXmpHU9K4', 'aspectRatio' => '16/9', 'isMaxResThumbnail' => false, 'thumbnailFormat' => 'jpg', 'caption' => 'My awesome video', 'caption_kses' => false, 'customThumbnail' => 'https://example.com/bg.jpg', 'settings' => ['loop' => 1, 'rel' => 0], 'echo' => false, ] ); To automatically transform all core/embed YouTube videos on your site to this block, you need to put the following code to the wp-config.php file or your theme/plugin: define('BYEB_SPEED_UP_YOUTUBE_VIDEOS', true); or add_filter( 'byeb_speed_up_youtube_videos', '__return_true' ); On iOS, browsers like Safari and Chrome require two clicks to play videos. If you want to allow users to play videos with a single click, you need to add the following code to the wp-config.php file or your theme/plugin: define('BYEB_FORCE_IFRAME_ON_UNSUPPORTED_BROWSERS', true); Please check out this page to see how fast it helps. The page contains around 30 embedded YouTube videos but they don’t slow down the page. If this plugin is useful for you, please do a quick review and rate it on WordPress.org to help us spread the word. I would very much appreciate it. Please check out my other plugins if you’re interested: Content Blocks Builder – Build custom layouts and blocks visually in the Block Editor without needing a code editor, using only core blocks and native Gutenberg features. Meta Field Block – A single block to display custom fields in the Block Editor without coding. It supports ACF, MetaBox, WooCommerce, meta, rest field, shortcode and more. Works everywhere: in the Site Editor (FSE), the Block Editor, inside Query Loop, WooCommerce Product Collection, Term Query blocks, and even in template files. SVG Block – A block to display SVG images as blocks. Useful for images, icons, dividers, and buttons. It allows you to upload SVG images and load them into the icon library. Icon separator – A tiny block just like the core/separator block but with the ability to add an icon. Breadcrumb Block – A simple breadcrumb trail block that supports JSON-LD structured data and is compatible with WooCommerce. Block Enhancements – Adds practical features to blocks like icons, box shadows, transforms, etc. Counting Number Block – A block to display numbers with a counting effect The plugin is developed using @wordpress/create-block.

If you are embedding Youtube video(s) into your site then you will need this plugin. As you may (or may not) know the default Youtube embed code is not responsive and in order to load the player itself your browser has to download more than 1MB of data from Youtube’s servers. That is way too much and this is the reason why we made this plugin. A video player has to be lightweight and responsive. Period. This plugin is replacing the default Youtube player with the video’s high quality thumbnail and a play button. The real player and the video won’t load until you click on the play button or the thumbnail itself. With this easy trick you will have a much lighter and faster website and the thumbnail + the actual player will be responsive too. Our plugin is only 60KB without any extra library or unnecessary function. If you are speed-optimizing your site or if you want to reduce the loading times of your pages then you are at the right place. This plugin will: Make all of the embedded Youtube videos responsive automatically Will reduce the size of your pages (where you have embedded videos) Will make your site faster Will improve the user experience You can also: Manually insert a different thumbnail for each embedded video with the ‘thumb_url’ parameter. [youtube_embed url=”video_url” thumb-url=”custom_thumb_url”] Manually set a different width for each video with the ‘width’ parameter. [youtube_embed url=”video_url” width=”50″] Manually align each video to left, right or center with the ‘align’ parameter. [youtube_embed url=”video_url” align=”center”] Disable the related videos Disable the video controls Disable the fullscreen option Align the videos globally or individually Set the custom video width for all videos or to just a single video with a shortcode parameter Comparison Here’s a quick comparison with the built-in TwentySeventeen theme (without any other plugin). We placed a default Youtube video embed code in a new and empty page, ran the tests and then replaced it with our solution before running the tests again. Total page size with the traditional Youtube embed code: 2.18MB Total page size with our lightweight & responsive embedder: 472KB Page load time with the traditional Youtube embed code: 5.33s Page load time with our lightweight & responsive embedder: 2.52s