Player Customization

The Player step controls how your player looks and behaves. It is split into six small groups so you are never scrolling through one enormous form.

Where to Find It

Open any media item and click Player in the left step menu. Six sub-sections appear:

Appearance · Captions · Controls · Behaviour · Playback · Custom CSS

Everything you change is reflected immediately in the live preview beside the editor.

Appearance

Setting	What it does
Preset	Apply a saved preset as your starting point — you can still tweak anything below
Skin	The overall theme: Default, Modern, Simple, Minimal, Standard (plus Floating and Ambient with Pro)
Aspect ratio	16:9, 9:16, 4:3, 1:1, 21:9 or auto. Use 9:16 for vertical, Shorts-style video
Accent color	Colours the scrubber, buttons and highlights
Button hover color	Optional; default is a light overlay
Play button style	Circle, square or soft
Play button size	The diameter of the centre play button. 0 uses the skin’s own size
Control bar style	Gradient, solid or minimal
Corner roundness	How rounded the player’s corners are, in pixels
Show large center play button	The big play button over the poster

Captions

Controls how subtitles are drawn. Useful when your footage makes the default white-on-black hard to read.

Setting	What it does
Font size	As a percentage of the player’s normal caption size
Text color	Caption text colour
Background color	The box behind the text
Background opacity	How solid that box is

Add the caption tracks themselves in the Chapters & branding step.

Controls

Turn individual buttons on or off:

Play · Rewind · Forward · Progress bar · Current time · Duration · Mute · Volume · Captions · Settings gear · Picture-in-picture · Fullscreen · Download

A few worth thinking about:

Download is off by default. Turn it on only if you are happy for people to keep a copy.
Progress bar — hiding it is a blunt way to stop skipping; the Behaviour options below are usually better.
Settings gear gives viewers speed, quality and caption choices in one menu.

Behaviour

The most interesting group.

Setting	What it does
Autoplay	Off, muted, or with sound. “With sound” falls back to muted when the browser blocks it
Start muted	Begin with no sound
Loop	Restart automatically at the end
Reset to start when finished	Return to 0:00 instead of holding on the last frame
Save & resume playback position	Viewers pick up exactly where they left off
Auto-hide controls while playing	Controls fade away when the mouse is idle
Float player when scrolling away	The video shrinks into a corner and keeps playing
Float position	Which corner it floats to
Prevent skipping ahead	They can rewind, but cannot jump to unwatched parts
Disable the timeline entirely	No clicking or dragging at all, in either direction
Muted preview on hover	The thumbnail plays a silent preview when the mouse rests on it (self-hosted video)
Preload	How much to load before play: auto, metadata or none
Load strategy	When the player boots — see below

Load strategy

This is the setting that keeps pages with video fast.

Option	What happens
Facade (default)	Only a still image with a play button is shown. Nothing heavy loads until someone clicks
Eager	The full player loads with the page
On visible	Stays as a still image until the viewer scrolls to it, then loads

Leave it on Facade unless you have a specific reason not to. Autoplay automatically switches to Eager, since there is nothing to wait for.

Playback

Setting	What it does
Playback speeds	Which speeds to offer, comma-separated — e.g. 0.5, 1, 1.5, 2
Skip interval (seconds)	How far the rewind / fast-forward buttons and arrow keys jump. Default 10

Custom CSS

For anyone who wants pixel-level control. CSS entered here applies to this video only and is scoped so it cannot affect the rest of your site.

There is also a site-wide custom CSS field under Settings → Player defaults for styling every player at once.

If you are not comfortable with CSS, you can safely ignore this section — everything above covers the normal range of customization.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why won’t my video autoplay with sound?

Browsers block it. That is a browser rule, not a TruePlayer limitation. Autoplay with sound falls back to muted automatically so the video still plays.

Can I apply these settings to every video at once?

Yes — build a preset and set it as your default in Settings → General.

What is the difference between “Prevent skipping ahead” and “Disable the timeline”?

“Prevent skipping ahead” still lets viewers rewind and rewatch — they just cannot jump forward past what they have seen. “Disable the timeline” removes all seeking in both directions.

Does the floating player work on mobile?

Yes, though the effect is more noticeable on desktop where there is more to scroll past.

My skin choice reverted to Default?

Floating and Ambient require TruePlayer Pro. Without an active license they fall back to Default.