Privacy Lite Video Embeds for YouTube

Privacy Lite Video Embeds for YouTube replaces YouTube embeds with lightweight local placeholders.

Fast video embeds for YouTube. Nothing loads until click.

Trademark note: this is a third-party plugin and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google.

Before the visitor clicks, the frontend loads only local resources from the site:

• local HTML markup;
• local CSS from the plugin;
• local JavaScript from the plugin;
• locally cached video thumbnail, when available.

The YouTube player is created only after user interaction and uses the privacy-enhanced youtube-nocookie.com embed domain.

This can help reduce external frontend requests, improve perceived loading performance, and provide a more privacy-friendly default behavior for embedded YouTube videos.

Important: this plugin is a technical privacy/performance aid. It does not constitute legal advice and does not by itself guarantee compliance with privacy laws. Site owners remain responsible for their own privacy notices, consent setup, and legal assessment.

Main features

• Replaces Gutenberg YouTube embed blocks.
• Optional replacement scope for all YouTube videos found in post content.
• Replaces classic oEmbed output when scope is set to “All”.
• Replaces manually pasted YouTube iframes when scope is set to “All”.
• Downloads YouTube thumbnails server-side into the WordPress uploads directory.
• Serves thumbnails locally from /wp-content/uploads/privacy-lite-video-embeds/.
• Falls back to a local CSS placeholder when no thumbnail can be downloaded.
• Loads YouTube only after click.
• Uses youtube-nocookie.com for the iframe player.
• Optional privacy/consent text in the placeholder.
• Optional autoplay after click.
• Customizable overlay play button color.
• Accessible button markup with keyboard support.
• Admin tool to scan content and generate missing thumbnails.
• Admin tool to clear the local thumbnail cache.
• Privacy policy helper text for the WordPress privacy tools.