How to Get a YouTube Video Link to Start Playing Automatically

Make linked YouTube video clips play automatically by modifying the embed code.

The YouTube video-sharing site gives Internet users the ability to embed video clips on third-party blogs, websites, social networking sites and forums by linking directly to the video clip or with a snippet of embed link code. With most YouTube video clips embedded on third-party sites, the website visitor starts the clip by clicking the “Play” button in the center of the video player. To get a YouTube video clip to play automatically, you’ll need to use the embed code link method and modify the code snippet.

Instructions

1. Launch your Web browser and go to Youtube.com. Navigate to the video clip that you want to link and play automatically.

2. Click “Share” under the YouTube video clip. The direct URL link for the video is displayed below the clip. Ignore this and click the “Embed” button instead. YouTube displays the embed link code in an HTML box. The code will look similar to the following:

   <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0dRDnaKdpGM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

3. Type “&autoplay=1” immediately after the URL element of the embed code. For this example, your modified code will look like this:

   <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0dRDnaKdpGM&autoplay=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

4. Highlight and copy the edited embed code. Paste the code into your blog post or Web page in the usual way.

Tips & Warnings

• For online forum posts and hosted blogs such as Blogger, Tumblr and WordPress, use “HTML” mode in the post editor tool to paste the copied YouTube embed code to your page or post.

References

• YouTube: Embed a YouTube Video
• YouTube: Autoplay Code for Embedded Videos

Resources

• YouTube: What Can We Help You With?