About This Site

What This Site Is

In one sentence: this is a browser-based m3u8 player that needs no installation and no account — paste an HLS address into the input box and playback starts.

It is built for the case where you just need to check whether an m3u8 address works. Whether you are a developer debugging a streaming service or a regular user confirming that a live source is still reachable, you no longer have to download and install a heavyweight client application just to play one link.

Unlike solutions that transcode on the server, there is no server-side processing here at all: the pages themselves are a set of static files, they work the moment they open, there is no account system, and no usage record of any kind is produced.

How It Works

The core mechanism: the browser uses Media Source Extensions (MSE) to reassemble HLS segments into a playable stream, and the entire process happens locally.

An m3u8 file is only a plain-text playlist. To actually play it, a player must fetch the video segments one by one as the playlist dictates and stitch them into a continuous media stream. On Safari in iOS this is handled natively by the browser; on desktop browsers such as Chrome and Edge, the MSE API has to perform the segment stitching and buffer management instead.

This site uses the Tencent Cloud Player Web SDK to handle segment scheduling, buffer control and quality switching. The page itself only reads the address from the input box and hands it to the player engine.

Privacy

The address you paste never leaves your browser — it is not submitted to our servers and is never written to cookies, localStorage or any server-side log.

Because video data flows directly from the source to your browser, we cannot know what you played, and nothing is left behind after you refresh or close the page. For the same reason, we are unable to offer server-side playback history or synced favourites — that is the price local playback pays for its privacy.

Disclaimers

This site is only a playback tool. It does not store, host or provide any video content; every playback source is supplied by the visitor, who bears the corresponding responsibility.

• We make no guarantee regarding the availability, legality or content of any third-party playback source;
• Please make sure you have lawful access to the content you play; we are not responsible for how visitors use this tool;
• If a rights holder believes that some content is infringing, please contact the provider of the relevant source site directly.

Browser Compatibility

Use a reasonably recent version of Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari; other browsers may lack MSE support and fail to play.

Whether desktop playback succeeds depends not only on the browser version but also on the cross-origin (CORS) configuration of the source server and the codecs used by the video: if the source does not allow cross-origin requests, or the video uses a codec MSE cannot handle, the player will be unable to load it. In such cases, work through the checks in the FAQ on the home page one by one.

Back to the Player

To try it right away, go to the M3U8 Online Player home page. A public sample address is pre-filled there, so you can immediately verify that playback works.