by Frank Goossens 4.8 (206 reviews)

WP YouTube Lyte

Name: WP YouTube Lyte
Rating: 4.8 (206 reviews)
Author: Frank Goossens

High performance YouTube video, playlist and audio-only embeds which don't slow down your blog and offer optimal accessibility.

WP YouTube Lyte ranks #1,101 among WordPress.org plugins with 20,000+ active installations, is #185 of 8,571 in the Customization category, a 4.8/5 rating from 206 reviews, and was last updated Aug 20, 2026. Data from WordPress.org, refreshed twice daily — see methodology.

Compatible with WP 7.1

v1.7.32 Current Version v1.7.32

Updated 1 month ago Last Update on 20 Aug, 2026

Refreshed 13 hours ago Last Refreshed on

#185 of 8,571 in Customization Top 5% by installs Downloads -19.4% this week

View on WordPress.org

Rank

#1,101

+2 this week

Active Installs

20K+

-32.8%

KW Avg Position

0.2 better

Downloads

+129 today

Support Resolved

— No change

Rating

96%

Review 4.8 out of 5

4.8 (206 reviews)

Next Milestone 30K

Total Progress 97.2%

20K+ 30K+

Ranks to Climb

Growth Needed

8,000,000

Active Installs

Pro

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Need 278 more installs to reach 30K+

Rank Changes

Current #1,101

Change

Best #

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Active Installs Growth

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Active Installs 0,000,000+

Growth +0.0%

Peak 0,000,000

Downloads Growth

Downloads

Growth

Peak

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Reviews & Ratings

4.8

206 reviews

Overall 96%

189 (92%)

6 (3%)

2 (1%)

7 (3%)

Support Threads Overview

Resolved

Unresolved

Total Threads

Resolved

Unresolved

Resolution Rate

Security History

Source: WPVulnerability

3 known vulnerabilities on record · 2 in the last 24 months · checked 23 hours ago

Apr 15, 2026

WP YouTube Lyte [wp-youtube-lyte] < 1.7.30

CVE-2026-3299 · Fixed in v1.7.30
Nov 14, 2025

WP YouTube Lyte [wp-youtube-lyte] < 1.7.29

CVE-2025-66062 · Fixed in v1.7.29
May 3, 2021

WP YouTube Lyte [wp-youtube-lyte] < 1.7.16

CVE-2021-24419 · Fixed in v1.7.16

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Plugin Details

Version: 1.7.32
Last Updated: Aug 20, 2026
Requires WP: 6.0+
Tested Up To: 7.1
PHP Version: N/A
Author: Frank Goossens

Support & Rating

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.8
Reviews: 206
Support Threads: 1
Resolved: 0%

Keywords

GDPR lazy load performance video youtube

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TL;DR

AI summary of the plugin's readme

WP YouTube Lyte is for WordPress site owners who embed YouTube videos, playlists, or audio on their pages. It solves slow page load and privacy/accessibility issues caused by standard embeds by lazy-loading a lightweight placeholder that only calls YouTube's player when clicked.

Lazy-loaded video embeds
Playlist embeds
Audio-only embeds
Local thumbnail caching
Shortcode support
Responsive embeds
VideoObject microdata
Multi-language support

Frequently Asked Questions

Common questions about WP YouTube Lyte

An API is a way to have two pieces of software talk to each other to exchange information. In this case WP YouTube Lyte contacts YouTube to ask it for the thumbnail, the title and the description of the video you added. The thumbnail and title are visible on the webpage (in the Lyte player) while the description is in the HTML as microdata for search engines optimization reasons (see below).

Go to Google Developer Console and log in with your Google account. Click on 'Create Project' and: Fill in a Project Name Fill in a Project ID Click on 'Create' On the next page (or when there is no next page, click on your Project's name): Scroll down to YouTube Data API v3 and click on it Click on 'ENABLE' at the top to enable the API Optionally disable other API's In the sidebar on the left: Click on 'Credentials' Click on 'Create Credential' at the top. Click on 'API key' Set as little restrictions as possible, most problems with getting this working are caused by these settings. Click on 'Create' Copy your API key to WP YouTube Lyte settings page. I'm getting "technical errors" when validating my YouTube API key In certain cases when adding restrictions the API key when tested might give technical warnings even if things are working correctly, make sure to check if new video’s are having the title displayed to confirm all is well.

Yes, with some exceptions; WP YouTube Lyte will continue to work, rendering Lyte players, but without the title and microdata (description, time, ...) and without thumbnails for playlists.

Just enter "none" (without the quotes) in the API key field and Lyte will stop nagging you.

As opposed to some of the most important plugins there is no 3rd party tracking code in WP YouTube Lyte, but YouTube off course does see visitor requests coming in for the thumbnails unless the option to cache thumbnails locally is enabled. If thumbnails are cached locally, no request will be sent to YouTube by your visitor's browser until/ unless the video is played.

LYTE by default uses WordPress' "the_content"-filter. Page builders don't apply that filter to their content and thus LYTE does not get triggered on those. As a workaround you can either add the LYTE widget or add the LYTE video using the shortcode in your page-builder Text-block, this works in most page-builders.

Just pass the httpv url of such a field to lyte_preparse like this: if(function_exists('lyte_preparse')) { echo lyte_preparse($video); } and you're good to go!

Starting from version 1.1.0 it does; in Infinite Scroll's configuration you just have to add "ly.te()" in the "Javascript to be called after the next posts are fetched"-box.

There is a specific microdata scheme for "videoObject" which WP YouTube Lyte can add to your page, which Google can use to display the video thumbnail next to the search-result This is optional and can be disabled in the options page The videoobject microdata is NOT added for audio-only embeds, playlists or widgets Google will not always display the thumbnail, this presumably depends of the relevance of the video to the rest of the page.

In January 2014 Benetech, a U.S. nonprofit that develops and uses technology to create positive social change, offered a patch that adds the accessibilityFeature property to the microdata for videos that have captions. If you have microdata enabled, WP YouTube Lyte will automatically try to check (in a seperate, asynchronous call via a proxy-webservice, as YouTube only offers captions in their API v3 which requires authentication) if captions are available and if so, adds the accessibilityFeature property with value captions to the microdata. This can be disabled by either disabling microdata or, if you want microdata but not the accessibilityFeature-property by using the "lyte_docaptions"-filter to set captions to false (example-code is in lyte_helper.php_example). Responsive LYTE embeds The video width in posts and pages will adapt to the width of the container (the div) in which your blogposts/ pages are shown. This means that if your theme is responsive, WP YouTube Lyte will follow. Widgets are not responsive. if the content div width gets to around 200 pixels, the LYTE UI will become garbled (YouTube requires the minimum embed width to be 200px as well).