Is there a way to make HTML5 video fullscreen?

2020 answer

HTML 5 provides no way to make a video fullscreen, but the parallel Fullscreen API defines an API for elements to display themselves fullscreen.

This can be applied to any element, including videos.

Browser support is good, but Internet Explorer and Safari need prefixed versions.

An external demo is provided as Stack Snippet sandboxing rules break it.

<div id="one">
    One
</div>

<div id="two">
    Two
</div>

<button>one</button>
<button>two</button>

div {
    width: 200px;
    height: 200px;
}
#one { background: yellow; }
#two { background: pink; }

addEventListener("click", event => {
    const btn = event.target;
    if (btn.tagName.toLowerCase() !== "button") return;
    const id = btn.textContent;
    const div = document.getElementById(id);
    if (div.requestFullscreen) 
        div.requestFullscreen();
    else if (div.webkitRequestFullscreen) 
        div.webkitRequestFullscreen();
    else if (div.msRequestFullScreen) 
      div.msRequestFullScreen();
});

2012 answer

HTML 5 provides no way to make a video fullscreen, but the parallel Fullscreen specification supplies the requestFullScreen method which allows arbitrary elements (including <video> elements) to be made fullscreen.

It has experimental support in a number of browsers.

2009 answer

Note: this has since been removed from the specification.

From the HTML5 spec (at the time of writing: June '09):

User agents should not provide a public API to cause videos to be shown full-screen. A script, combined with a carefully crafted video file, could trick the user into thinking a system-modal dialog had been shown, and prompt the user for a password. There is also the danger of "mere" annoyance, with pages launching full-screen videos when links are clicked or pages navigated. Instead, user-agent specific interface features may be provided to easily allow the user to obtain a full-screen playback mode.

Browsers may provide a user interface, but shouldn't provide a programmable one.

Most of the answers here are outdated.

It's now possible to bring any element into fullscreen using the Fullscreen API, although it's still quite a mess because you can't just call div.requestFullScreen() in all browsers, but have to use browser specific prefixed methods.

I've created a simple wrapper screenfull.js that makes it easier to use the Fullscreen API.

Current browser support is:

• Chrome 15+
• Firefox 10+
• Safari 5.1+

Note that many mobile browsers don't seem to support a full screen option yet.

Safari supports it through webkitEnterFullscreen.

Chrome should support it since it's WebKit also, but errors out.

Chris Blizzard of Firefox said they're coming out with their own version of fullscreen which will allow any element to go to fullscreen. e.g. Canvas

Philip Jagenstedt of Opera says they'll support it in a later release.

Yes, the HTML5 video spec says not to support fullscreen, but since users want it, and every browser is going to support it, the spec will change.

webkitEnterFullScreen();

This needs to be called on the video tag ele­ment, for example, to full­screen the first video tag on the page use:

document.getElementsByTagName('video')[0].webkitEnterFullscreen();

Notice: this is outdated answer and no longer relevant.