Feature

Videos

Show a YouTube video from its link. The page carries only a cover picture and a play button, and YouTube’s player loads only when a visitor presses play, from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced address.

Things to try

Press play

Nothing but the thumbnail is fetched from YouTube until you do. Then the player replaces the cover and takes focus.

Use the keyboard

Tab to a play button and press Enter. With script off, it is a plain link to the video on YouTube.

Try a Short

A link to a YouTube Short draws a tall box, never taller than most of the screen.

Choose your own cover

With a cover image set, nothing at all is requested from YouTube or Google before the click.

A video from its link

Paste the link and give the video a title. The box is at its final size before anything loads, so the page does not jump.

A morning at the bookshops of Bath.

Side by side

A video is a block like any other, so two sit in a pair of columns. On a phone they stack.

A YouTube Short

The shape follows the link: a Shorts link is tall (9:16). At full width it would be taller than the screen, so the box is capped and centred.

Quick recommendations

Short clips suit a book club’s social posts: a title, a line on why, and gone in a minute.

Set Shape by hand to show a Short in another ratio.

Your own cover

The cover is an uploaded picture, not YouTube’s thumbnail, so this page makes no request to YouTube or Google until a visitor presses play.

Choose a cover image and the thumbnail is never fetched.

A start time and subtitles

This link carries ?t=1m30s, so the video starts at one minute thirty. Subtitles are on where the video has them.

Starts at 1:30, with subtitles.

How this page is built

  1. Add a YouTube block from the Elements group in the block picker.
  2. Paste the video’s link into YouTube link and write a Title: it names the video for screen readers.
  3. Optionally set Start at, a Shape and a Cover image.
  4. Under the player options, turn controls, looping and subtitles on or off, and reword the play button’s text.
  5. Publish. In the editor the block shows its cover only, so clicking it selects it instead of playing.