by
Alec Rust
4.7 (15 reviews)
Protected Video
YouTube/Vimeo player that prevents easy sharing of the video.
Protected Video ranks #5,931 among WordPress.org plugins with 1,000+ active installations, is #636 of 6,308 in the Media category, a 4.7/5 rating from 15 reviews, and was last updated Apr 19, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.
Tested up to WP 6.9.7 (Current: 7.1)
v2.0.4
Current Version v2.0.4
Updated 4 months ago
Last Update on 19 Apr, 2026
Refreshed 6 hours ago
Last Refreshed on
#636 of 6,308 in Media
Top 10% by installs
Rank
#5,931
—
No change
Active Installs
1K+
-39.8%
KW Avg Position
61.2
0.6 worse
Downloads
32.5K
+12 today
Support Resolved
0%
—
No change
Rating
94%
Review 4.7 out of 5
4.7
(15 reviews)
Next Milestone 2K
1K+
2K+
796
Ranks to Climb
-
Growth Needed
8,000,000
Active Installs
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Rank Changes
Current
#5,931
Change
Best
#
Downloads Growth
Downloads
Growth
Peak
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4.7
15 reviews
Overall
94%
5
14
(93%)
4
0
(0%)
3
0
(0%)
2
0
(0%)
1
1
(7%)
Security History
Source: WPVulnerabilityNo known vulnerabilities on record for Protected Video. Checked 1 month ago.
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- Version
- 2.0.4
- Last Updated
- Apr 19, 2026
- Requires WP
- 6.6+
- Tested Up To
- 6.9.7
- PHP Version
- 7.2 or higher
- Author
- Alec Rust
Support & Rating
- Rating
- ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.7
- Reviews
- 15
- Support Threads
- 0
- Resolved
- 0%
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TL;DR
AI summary of the plugin's readmeThis plugin is for site owners who embed YouTube or Vimeo videos as gated or premium content. It solves the problem of viewers easily accessing or extracting the underlying video by overlaying a custom player and hiding the video ID in the page source.
- Gutenberg block for videos
- Shortcode for embedding videos
- Plyr player overlay
- Blocks default player clicks
- Encodes video ID in HTML
- Settings page for player theme
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Protected Video
Embeds YouTube/Vimeo videos on your pages and takes steps to prevent users obtaining the e.g. YouTube URL of the video by clicking on the player or viewing the page source. Watch this YouTube video for an introduction to the plugin and its potential use cases.
This plugin only provides a basic level of protection against users accessing the default player or otherwise determining the video URL. Technical users may still be able to figure out this information.
Yes, the custom player works on mobile browsers and the disabling of access to the default player is still in place even in fullscreen mode.
The default Plyr player overlays YouTube/Vimeo players with its own controls, which prevents access to the underlying video copy/share buttons under some scenarios, but this is a side-effect of the way it works rather than a feature. The goal of Protected Video is to make this a feature by accounting for more scenarios e.g. when the player is paused, and providing additional features such as obfuscation of the underlying video ID in the HTML. If you don't care about your users sharing the video or actually want them to, a plugin like WP YouTube Lyte is probably more suitable.
The main color of the player can be configured at Settings > Protected Video. If you'd like to style the player further, you can provide your own CSS to override the player's CSS variables: <style> :root { --plyr-badge-background: #000; --plyr-control-radius: 5px; } </style>
Unfortunately not. This plugin loads the standard YouTube player behind the overlay, which we have no control over. These aspects of the YouTube player cannot be disabled.
This plugin embeds the Plyr player in a particular way and adds modifications to prevent access to the underlying video player. This plugin cannot provide additional features to the player itself beyond what is provided by Plyr. If you'd like to see a feature added to the player, please open an issue on Plyr's GitHub.
Currently this plugin only supports YouTube and Vimeo embeds. You can upload your videos to YouTube or Vimeo and then embed them using this plugin. Support for loading your own video file directly from a server is a potential future feature.
The Shortcode is provided as an alternative embed method that still provides the same level of protection. Some people need the Shortcode for use with 3rd party page builders (Elementor etc.) and others simply prefer using a Shortcode over Gutenberg blocks.
This is the format to use if you'd like to use the Shortcode embed method: [protected_video url="https://youtu.be/aqz-KE-bpKQ" service="youtube"] A service of either youtube or vimeo must be specified when using the Shortcode embed method.
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