Playing media in the browser
Playing mediaPlaying media in the browser; Which formats play in the browser.
A file that your browser can decode gets a Play action. It opens in gettor’s player, which wraps the browser’s own video or audio element with its own controls.
What the player gives you
- Seeking anywhere in the file, without waiting for the whole thing to arrive.
- A buffered-range indicator, so you can see what has loaded ahead.
- Volume, playback speed, fullscreen and picture-in-picture.
- An offer to resume where you last stopped.
What it counts
Playback draws from the same monthly downloads-and-streaming allowance as downloading. Watching an hour of video costs roughly what downloading that hour would.
Note: Seeking backwards and forwards re-requests parts of the file, so scrubbing repeatedly through a large video uses more allowance than watching it straight through.
Which formats play in the browser
Three answers, not two: plays, might play, and download-only.
gettor classifies every file by its media type, never by guessing from the extension, and the answer is deliberately three-way.
| Answer | Containers | What the row shows |
|---|---|---|
| Plays | MP4, WebM, Ogg video; MP3, M4A, AAC, Ogg, WAV, FLAC, WebM audio | Play |
| Might play | Matroska (.mkv) | Try to play |
| Download only | AVI, WMV, FLV, and anything that is not media | Download |
Why “plays” is still an attempt
A container is not a codec. An MP4 can hold HEVC that a given browser refuses even though MP4 itself is universally supported. When that happens the player says so clearly and offers the file as a download instead.
Tip: For anything download-only, a desktop media player will almost certainly handle it. The limitation is the browser’s, not the file’s.