Video Player in React (video tutorial)
Last updated: Aug-20-2025
Overview
This video tutorial teaches you how to embed the Cloudinary Video Player into your React app. Learn how to install and configure the Video Player including how to make it work with the intricacies of a React application.
Video tutorial
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View the code
You can find the code from this tutorial in GitHub.Tutorial contents
This tutorial presents the following topics. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.
Introduction to the Cloudinary Video Player
 0:00 |
The Cloudinary Video Player allows you to embed videos in your React app with just a few lines of code. |
Create a VideoPlayer component
| 0:15 |
Start with a basic React application and add a new file called VideoPlayer.js in which you can create a component for the Video Player. |
Embed the Video Player script
| 0:29 |
Copy the link tag from the Installation and setup section of the docs and paste it into the <head> of the public/index.html file. Then, copy the script tag and paste it into the <body> of the same file. |
Initialize the Video Player
| 1:08 |
Use the following code in VideoPlayer.js to initialize the VideoPlayer. Make sure to use your own cloud name instead of colbycloud-examples. |
React
import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';
function VideoPlayer = () {
const cloudinaryRef = useRef();
const videoRef = useRef();
useEffect(() => {
if ( cloudinaryRef.current ) return;
cloudinaryRef.current = window.cloudinary;
cloudinaryRef.current.videoPlayer(videoRef.current, {
cloud_name: 'colbycloud-examples'
})
}, []);
return (
<video
ref={videoRef}
/>
);
}Specify the video to play
| 2:56 |
In the <video> element set the data-cld-public-id property to the public ID of the video you want to play. |
Use the VideoPlayer component
| 3:14 |
In your App.js file, import the VideoPlayer component and use the component to embed the video on the page. You can specify the width and height of the player by passing the dimensions through props. Control the player by specifying controls in the <video> element. Learn about all the options and features of the Video Player in the guide and reference. |
You can find the code used in this video tutorial in GitHub.
Keep learning
Related topics
- Read our Video Player guide and reference, covering every available parameter option.
- Check out some Video Player code explorers that you can fork for trying out some sample configuration changes.
- Take a look at our React SDK to learn how to transform your images and videos.
- Watch more Dev Hints videos on the Cloudinary YouTube channel.
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