While you technically can use Media Chrome elements directly with React, it can sometimes be a bit clunky to work with Web Components in React, and some things just don't feel idiomatic to the framework (for example: having to use class= instead of className=, see React's official docs regarding web components for more details). To help with this, we've published some React wrapper components for all of our core Elements. You can read up on using them here.
Why?
More often than not web designers and developers just use the default media player controls, even when creating a beautiful custom design theme. It's hard not to.
Web browsers have built-in media controls that can't easily be customized and look different in every browser.
Social sites like Youtube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud only let you customize small details of the player, like primary button color.
Media controls are complex and hard to build from scratch. Open source players like Video.js and JW Player help, but require you to learn proprietary JS APIs, and can be difficult to use with popular Javascript frameworks.
It should be easier... <media-chrome> is an attempt at solving that.
Why now?
Web components. @heff spoke about the potential of web components for video at Demuxed 2015, and again in 2020. They allow us to extend the browser's base HTML functionality, meaning we can now build media player controls as simple HTML tags that:
Can be used like any native HTML tag in HTML, Javascript, and CSS (unleash your designer)
Are compatible by default with Javascript frameworks (React, Angular, Svelte)
Can be used across players when using multiple in the same site, e.g Youtube & <video>. (Could even be used by players as their own built-in controls)
Video.js is a popular open-source HTML5 video player that provides a wide range of features and plugins for customizing the video player interface. It offers a robust API and supports various media formats and streaming protocols. Compared to media-chrome, Video.js is more feature-rich and has a larger community, but it may be more complex to customize.
Plyr is a simple, lightweight, and accessible HTML5 media player. It supports video, audio, and YouTube/Vimeo embeds. Plyr provides a clean and modern interface with easy customization options. Compared to media-chrome, Plyr is more lightweight and easier to set up, but it may not offer as much flexibility in terms of custom components.
MediaElement.js is a JavaScript library that provides a consistent HTML5 media player interface across all browsers. It supports both audio and video playback and offers a range of plugins for additional functionality. Compared to media-chrome, MediaElement.js focuses on cross-browser compatibility and provides a more traditional approach to media player customization.
Custom elements (web components) for making audio and video player controls that look great in your website or app.
The npm package media-chrome receives a total of 1,159,173 weekly downloads. As such, media-chrome popularity was classified as popular.
We found that media-chrome demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago.It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Package last updated on 30 Oct 2025
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