Description
Screenroom shows YouTube videos as a slider, a player with playlist, a grid, a Shorts wall, a list or a single video. Your website stays fast, and visitors are not connected to Google before they click play.
Use it as a YouTube channel feed on your homepage, a video gallery for your portfolio, courses or products, a Shorts wall or a playlist player. You no longer embed videos one by one, and unlike other YouTube feed plugins it does not ask for an API key.
Try it first: click Live Preview above. The studio opens in your browser with four demo galleries of the Blender open movies, and there is nothing to install.
Three ways to pick videos
- Channel: the newest videos of any channel appear automatically. Choose videos, Shorts or both.
- Playlist: any public playlist, also from other channels.
- Your own list: paste links to any videos, or pick them from the videos your galleries have loaded.
Show them as they come, newest or oldest first, A–Z, most viewed first or in random order.
Six layouts
- Slider with swipe support, endless and optionally moving on by itself; arrows left, centered, right, far apart or on the pictures; progress as lines, dots, a number or a bar
- Large player with a playlist beside or below it, a soft ambient glow and a cinema mode
- Grid with a large lead video
- Shorts wall: upright videos side by side, swipeable on phones
- Compact list for long archives with title, date and a small picture, newest or oldest first
- Single video
Design
- Four styles to start from (Modern, Classic, Minimal and Cinema), for the whole website or as a style of its own for one gallery
- Any accent color, light or dark scheme, corner radius, spacing
- Image formats 16:9, 4:3, 1:1 and 9:16 for Shorts
- Title below or on the image, hover effects (zoom, drift, shine, lift)
- Play button in three colors, four shapes (circle, rounded square, wide or just the triangle) and four triangle styles
- Play in place, large right below its row in a grid, or in a lightbox that grows from the card. An “Up next” card appears before the next video starts
- Start time per video, subtitles on, start muted
- Show dates, view counts, the description and a “New” badge for fresh videos
- Hide single videos or filter by words in the title
- Swipe and keyboard in every layout; no animation for visitors who turned animations off
Fast pages
Video lists are loaded in the background about once an hour and cached, so pages never wait for YouTube. The YouTube player is only loaded when a visitor clicks play. A page with ten videos loads as fast as a page with none.
Privacy-friendly
- Thumbnails are copied to your own website. Before clicking play, visitors do not connect to Google at all.
- Videos play from youtube-nocookie.com, YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode.
- Optional notice before playing, with an “always play” choice that is remembered in the visitor’s browser without a cookie.
- Follows your cookie banner: Borlabs Cookie, Complianz, Real Cookie Banner, CookieYes, Cookiebot, Usercentrics and Klaro are asked at the moment of the click.
Easy to use
- The studio: each gallery is edited full screen, with the real gallery in the middle. Where the videos come from is on the left, its design on the right, and below it you pick the device (desktop, tablet, phone) and a light or dark website. Click a part of the gallery to change it, or switch to “Try it” and use it like a visitor. Undo and redo, keyboard shortcuts and panels you can widen are there too. It saves itself.
- From the block editor, the block opens the studio right over the page.
- Overview: what needs attention at a glance. Videos: every video your galleries have loaded. Search them, hide one everywhere or make a gallery from a selection.
- Shows on which pages each gallery is used.
- Privacy check with a text suggestion for your privacy policy.
- Settings: how often YouTube is asked, how new galleries start, whether editors may edit galleries, export and import.
- Help and status page: frequently asked questions, last refresh, a one-click refresh and “Copy diagnostics” for the support forum.
- “Screenroom” block for the block editor, shortcode for page builders. Pages that show a gallery leave the page cache when it changes (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, SiteGround Optimizer, Elementor).
- No YouTube API key and no Google account needed.
Pro version
Everything above is free, without limits on galleries. An optional Pro version adds coverflow, stories, bento, spotlight and testimonial layouts, smart galleries that fill themselves by rules, chapters and a course mode, “Show more” for long galleries, an end card with a call to action, galleries as tabs or as a shelf of tiles, a search field, a link to each video, several channels in one gallery, up to 200 videos via your own YouTube API key, live streams and premieres first with a countdown, a mini player, a call-to-action button, video SEO, click statistics without cookies, and an Elementor widget and Divi module. The free version works fully on its own.
External services
This plugin connects to YouTube, a service provided by Google LLC, to show videos. No API key or account is used.
From your server (in the background, about once an hour, and when you save a gallery):
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml: loads the list of videos (ID, title, date, view count) of the channels and playlists you configured. Sent: the channel or playlist ID.https://www.youtube.com/oembed: loads the title of videos you added as your own list. Sent: the video URL.https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=…: used only when you enter an old channel link with /user/, to find its channel ID once. Sent: the user name.https://i.ytimg.com: downloads video thumbnails to your uploads folder (unless “Serve thumbnails from this website” is turned off). Sent: the video ID.
These requests come from your server and contain no data about your visitors. If WP-Cron is disabled and a refresh is overdue, a page view starts wp-cron.php once in the background, which is a request from your site to itself. The admin area also asks your own site, at most once a day, which referrer rule it sends, and Help & status checks at most twice a day whether the site can reach itself. Both are requests from your site to itself; nothing goes to other servers.
From your visitors’ browsers:
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com: the YouTube player, loaded only after a visitor clicks play. YouTube receives the visitor’s IP address and browser data.https://i.ytimg.com: thumbnails are loaded directly from YouTube, but only if you turn off “Serve thumbnails from this website”.
In the admin area only: the live preview and the gallery overview may load thumbnails directly from https://i.ytimg.com while local copies do not exist yet. Visitors are not affected.
YouTube Terms of Service: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
Screenshots
Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- Screenroom Show a video gallery or slider from YouTube.
Installation
- Install and activate the plugin.
- Open Screenroom in the admin menu.
- Open the “Default” gallery in the studio: enter a channel (its ID, which starts with “UC”, or a link that contains it), a playlist link or a list of video links. The gallery saves itself.
- Add the Screenroom block to a page, or paste the shortcode shown next to the gallery, for example
[devenzi_video gallery="default"].
FAQ
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Do I need a YouTube API key?
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No. The plugin uses the public video feeds that YouTube offers for every channel and playlist.
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How do I find the channel ID?
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It starts with “UC”. Your own: on YouTube under Settings Advanced settings (the studio links there). Any channel: on its page under “more” “Share channel” “Copy channel ID”. A link that contains the ID works too. The plugin never reads YouTube’s web pages to look it up, so an @name alone does not work. If you paste one, the studio shows these steps. With Pro and your own YouTube API key, an @handle works as well.
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What happens when I delete the plugin?
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By default your galleries and settings stay, so you can switch to Pro or reinstall without losing anything. Turn on “Remove all galleries and settings” under Screenroom Settings to remove everything when the plugin is deleted: galleries, settings, statistics and the stored thumbnails. On a multisite network every site decides for itself.
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Why at most 15 videos per channel or playlist?
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The public feeds contain the 15 newest entries. To show older videos, add them as your own list.
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Does it slow down my website?
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No. All data is loaded in the background (WP-Cron) and cached. Visitors only download the thumbnails from your own server; the YouTube player loads after a click.
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Do plays on my website count as views on YouTube?
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Visitors watch in YouTube’s own player, so YouTube can count the views. Which plays it counts is YouTube’s decision; very short ones, for example, often do not count. The plugin cannot see or change this.
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A video shows “Error 153”.
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YouTube needs to know on which website its player runs. The plugin asks the browser to tell it, but some security plugins or servers forbid that for the whole site (rule “Referrer-Policy: no-referrer”). Set this rule to “strict-origin-when-cross-origin” in the security plugin or ask your host. Screenroom Help & status shows the rule your site sends.
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Is it GDPR compliant (DSGVO)?
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The plugin is built to avoid data transfers to Google until a visitor actively clicks play, and it can show a notice before playing. Whether this is sufficient for your website depends on your situation. Please check with your privacy advisor and mention YouTube in your privacy policy.
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How is it different from other YouTube feed plugins?
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Most of them need a YouTube API key, a Google account or a connection to YouTube as soon as the page opens. Screenroom reads YouTube’s public feeds on your server, keeps the thumbnails on your website and connects visitors to YouTube only when they click play. You design each gallery in a full-screen studio with the real gallery in the middle.
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Yes. With “Follow the cookie banner” switched on (Screenroom Privacy, on by default), the plugin asks Borlabs Cookie, Complianz, Real Cookie Banner, CookieYes, Cookiebot, Usercentrics or Klaro at the moment a visitor clicks play. If YouTube is allowed there, the video starts right away. If not, the plugin’s own notice appears first, even when “Play right away” is set. Other banners can answer through a small function in your theme:
window.devenziVideoConsent = function () { return true; }(true: allowed, false: not allowed, null: no answer). -
A new video does not show up yet.
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Video lists refresh every hour (under Screenroom Settings also twice or once a day). Use Screenroom Help & status Refresh now to update immediately. If WP-Cron is disabled on your site and no server cron runs it either, a page view starts the refresh in the background once it is 15 minutes overdue. Visitors do not wait for it.
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Does it work with caching plugins?
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Yes. When a gallery changes (you save it, or the background refresh brings new videos or their thumbnails), the pages that show it are removed from the page cache, so visitors never keep seeing an old or half-loaded state. Supported: WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, SiteGround Optimizer and Elementor’s cache; other cache plugins can listen to the action
devenzi_video_purge_post. -
Visitors see grey boxes instead of thumbnails.
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The thumbnails of a gallery are copied to your website when you save it; the rest follow in the background. If they still do not appear, your site probably cannot start its own background jobs (WP-Cron). Screenroom Help & status Copy diagnostics shows whether it can. Paste the text in the support forum and we will help.
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Can I use it with page builders?
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Yes. Use the shortcode
[devenzi_video gallery="…"]. You can override settings per use, for example[devenzi_video gallery="default" layout="grid" count="3"], or show any channel, playlist or videos without creating a gallery:[devenzi_video channel="UC…"](the channel ID, see above; an @handle works only with Pro and your own YouTube API key),[devenzi_video playlist="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=…"],[devenzi_video ids="https://youtu.be/…, https://youtu.be/…"]. -
Can I change the colors in my theme?
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Yes, under Screenroom Design: pick a style, any accent color, corners, spacing and more, with a live preview. In CSS you can fine-tune everything through the custom properties
--vsfy-accent,--vsfy-ink,--vsfy-radius,--vsfy-gapand--vsfy-ratio. -
Can I hide single videos of a channel?
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Yes. In the gallery, open “Filter and hide videos” and click the videos you do not want to show. You can also show only videos whose title contains certain words, or leave out videos with certain words.
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Is there a Pro version?
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Yes, optional. See Screenroom Pro in your admin area for what it adds. Your galleries and settings stay as they are when you upgrade. If Pro ends later, nothing breaks. After a paid licence the galleries keep showing as built; after a trial (or without the Pro plugin) they show the closest free version (a Pro layout as a slider, several channels as the first one). Visitors never see an error.
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I used “NR Video Slider” or “Video Slider Rich” before. What happens?
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On activation, the plugin imports their channel or video list into the “Default” gallery. Their shortcodes
[nr_videos]and[Rich_Web_Video]then show that gallery, so existing pages keep working. These two shortcodes are only registered when such an import took place and no other plugin uses them. For new content, use[devenzi_video].
Reviews
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Contributors & Developers
“Screenroom – Video Gallery & Slider for YouTube” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
Contributors
Translate “Screenroom – Video Gallery & Slider for YouTube” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.4.0
- New: set the slider’s arrows and progress yourself (left, center, right, far apart or on the pictures); arrows as ring, filled, glass or arrow only, in three sizes; progress as lines, dots, a number (“2 / 8”), a bar or none.
- The studio: click the arrows or the progress to set them right there, and every choice shows the gallery with it while you point at it.
- Choices in the studio and under Design are now small pictures of the result: the play button on a video picture, the arrows and progress as they will look.
2.3.4
- “Try it” in the studio: the panels make room and the gallery sits on a page of your website (with a browser bar, a head, a heading and a section below), on desktop, tablet and phone, light or dark.
2.3.3
- The welcome picture of the overview shows the same three videos as the new icon.
2.3.2
- A new icon: the video in front, the ones before and after it beside it.
2.3.1
- The plugin now shows its full name, “Screenroom – Video Gallery & Slider for YouTube”. Nothing else changes.
2.3.0
- Only one video plays at a time: with several galleries on one page, starting a video now pauses the videos of the other galleries too.
- New: lines in “Video links” that are not a YouTube video are named right below the field, instead of being left out silently.
- New name: Video Slider for YouTube is now Screenroom. Galleries, settings, blocks and shortcodes stay as they are; blocks saved with the old name move over by themselves.
- Changed: “Follow the cookie banner” is on for existing websites too. Where a banner has not allowed YouTube, visitors now see the notice before a video plays, even with “Play right away”.
- New: the studio. Each gallery is edited full screen with the real gallery in the middle, videos on the left, design on the right, device and a light or dark website below. Click a part of the gallery to change it or “Try it” as a visitor; undo and redo, keyboard shortcuts, panels you can widen. The block opens it right over the block editor.
- New: a style of its own for a single gallery, besides the design of the whole website.
- New layouts: Shorts wall and compact list. Player with playlist: the list also below the player, and a cinema mode. Grids can open a video large right below its row.
- Videos in the order you choose (newest, oldest, A–Z, most viewed, random); start time per video, subtitles on, start muted; the description below the player and on the cards.
- Smoother playback: soft transitions, a lightbox that grows from the card, an “Up next” card with a countdown, swipe and keyboard in every layout, an endless slider, hover effects “Drift” and “Shine”.
- Follows your cookie banner: Borlabs Cookie, Complianz, Real Cookie Banner, CookieYes, Cookiebot, Usercentrics and Klaro are asked at the moment of the click.
- New tabs: Overview (what needs attention), Videos (every loaded video: search, hide everywhere, make a gallery from a selection) and Settings (refresh interval, defaults for new galleries, editors may edit galleries, export and import). Gallery cards show the real gallery in small.
- No more grey boxes: saving a gallery copies the thumbnails it shows first right away, and the background loads the rest until all are there.
- Pages that show a changed gallery leave the page cache (WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache, W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, SiteGround Optimizer, Elementor).
- A channel’s @name in the studio or the shortcode now explains how to find the channel ID, instead of “no videos found”.
- Help & status: “Copy diagnostics” for the support forum, help for YouTube’s “Error 153”; a clear message for private playlists, right under the field.
- A studio tab left open overnight keeps saving (it fetches a fresh security token), and a change made just before closing the page is still saved.
- Without WP-Cron, an overdue refresh starts wp-cron.php instead of an own background request.
- Pro: smart galleries, stories, bento, spotlight and testimonial layouts, shelf and search, live streams first, chapters and course mode, “Show more”, end card with a call to action, a free trial. When Pro ends, paid galleries stay as built and a trial falls back to the free version.
2.2.0
- Settings save themselves, with “Undo”; a gallery saves without reloading the page, also with Ctrl+S; deleting a gallery can be undone.
- Saving a gallery no longer waits for YouTube: videos and thumbnails load in the background.
- Channels are entered by their ID; YouTube’s web pages are never read. Old /user/ links still work.
- “Used on” is kept up to date page by page instead of searching all posts.
- New switch: remove all data when the plugin is deleted (off by default); multisite aware.
- A slider that moves by itself has a pause button; video titles are headings for screen readers; better contrast.
- New admin look; all names in the code now carry the prefix devenzi_video. Settings, blocks and the shortcode [vsfy_videos] of 2.1 move over by themselves.
2.1.0
- Initial release.
- Guided gallery editor with live preview, design options with four styles, privacy check, help and status page.
- Sources: channel, playlist or your own list of videos; hide single videos or filter by title.
- Layouts: slider, player with playlist, grid, single video; lightbox, ambient glow, next video plays automatically.
- View counts and “New” badge.
- Play button with three colors, four shapes and four triangle styles.
- Local thumbnails and optional notice before playing.
- Block for the block editor.
- Imports settings from “NR Video Slider” and videos from “Video Slider Rich”; their shortcodes keep working.
- Works without WP-Cron: refreshes itself in the background when WP-Cron is disabled.
- If YouTube does not answer when a new gallery is first loaded, it tries again after 5, 15 and 30 minutes instead of waiting an hour.