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Playing videos automatically, one after another

Written by Robert Blessing

Your app can roll straight from one video into the next, the way a streaming service does. It is a single toggle, but it is off by default, so it has to be switched on deliberately.

Turning it on

In your dashboard, open the Playlists page and switch on "Autoplay the next video in a playlist".

That is the whole setup. With it on, when a video finishes the next one starts on its own, with no one reaching for the remote.


Three things worth knowing

These are the details that decide whether autoplay feels great or slightly broken to your viewers.

It is one switch for your whole app

You only do this once. The toggle covers every playlist in the app, so there is nothing to switch on playlist by playlist. The wording "in a playlist" describes what it does — carry on to the next video inside a playlist — rather than how far the setting reaches.

It plays through one playlist and stops

Autoplay advances to the next video inside the same playlist, and stops when it reaches the end. It does not roll over into your next playlist.

This matters more than it sounds: if you split a season across several showcases, the binge breaks at every boundary. Keep a full season inside a single showcase and viewers get a clean run from the first episode to the last.

It also does not start over. When the last video in the playlist finishes, playback ends and your viewers are back at the menu. There is no setting that makes a playlist repeat from the beginning — if that is what you were looking for, you have not missed it.

If you need a screen that runs on its own all day — a waiting room, a shop floor, a stand at a show — reply here with your app name and roughly how long it needs to run. That case is one we are actively working on, and we would rather hear from you than have you build around the gap.

The order comes from your source, not from us

Playback follows the exact order the videos sit in inside your Vimeo showcase. We do not re-sort them.

So if your episodes are in upload order rather than episode order, autoplay will faithfully play them in the wrong order. Ordering them E1, E2, E3 in Vimeo is what makes the run work.

Quick check before you announce it: open the showcase and read the episode order top to bottom. That is exactly what your viewers will get.


A good setup for an episodic series

  1. One showcase per season, with every episode of that season inside it.

  2. Episodes ordered E1 to E-last in the showcase.

  3. Autoplay switched on (once, for the app).

The result: a viewer starts episode one and the season plays through on its own.


Want a hand checking that your episode order is right before you tell your audience? Reply here with your app name and we will take a look.

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