This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.
The Animation
.playState
property of the Web Animations API returns and sets an enumerated value describing the playback state of an animation.
This property is read-only for CSS Animations and Transitions.
Syntax
var currentPlayState = Animation.playState; Animation.playState = newState;
Value
idle
- The current time of the animation is unresolved and there are no pending tasks.
running
- The animation is running.
paused
- The animation was suspended and the
Animation.currentTime
property is not updating. finished
- The animation has reached one of its boundaries and the
Animation.currentTime
property is not updating.
Previously, Web Animations defined a pending
value to indicate that some asynchronous operation such as initiating playback was yet to complete. This is now indicated by the separate Animation.pending
property.
Example
In the Growing/Shrinking Alice Game example, players can get an ending with Alice crying into a pool of tears. In the game, for performance reasons, the tears should only be animating when they're visible. So they must be paused as soon as they are animated like so:
// Setting up the tear animations tears.forEach(function(el) { el.animate( tearsFalling, { delay: getRandomMsRange(-1000, 1000), // randomized for each tear duration: getRandomMsRange(2000, 6000), // randomized for each tear iterations: Infinity, easing: 'cubic-bezier(0.6, 0.04, 0.98, 0.335)' }); el.pause(); }); // Play the tears falling when the ending needs to be shown. tears.forEach(function(el) { el.play(); }); // Reset the crying tears animations and pause them. tears.forEach(function(el) { el.pause(); el.currentTime = 0; });
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
Web Animations The definition of 'playState' in that specification. |
Working Draft | Initial definition. |
Browser compatibility
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
playState | Chrome
Full support
39
| Edge Full support ≤79 | Firefox
Full support
48
| IE No support No | Opera
Full support
26
| Safari No support No | WebView Android
Full support
39
| Chrome Android
Full support
39
| Firefox Android
Full support
48
| Opera Android
Full support
26
| Safari iOS No support No | Samsung Internet Android
Full support
4.0
|
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- Experimental. Expect behavior to change in the future.
- Experimental. Expect behavior to change in the future.
- See implementation notes.
- See implementation notes.
- User must explicitly enable this feature.
- User must explicitly enable this feature.
See also
- Web Animations API
Animation
for other methods and properties you can use to control web page animation.