HLS stream player & tester
M3U8 Player Online.
Play or test any HLS (.m3u8) stream in your browser: paste the URL, press Load, and the stream starts with adaptive quality. Works with single live streams and full M3U8 channel playlists.
Open a playlist to start watching
Built on HLS — the web's live-streaming standard
HLS delivers live video as a rolling series of small segments listed in the .m3u8 manifest, letting the player switch quality on the fly as your connection changes. This page uses hls.js — the same engine trusted by major streaming platforms — with native Safari playback on iPhone and iPad. Raw MPEG-TS (.ts) streams and MP4 files are supported too, so one player covers everything an IPTV playlist can throw at it.
Questions, answered.
What is an M3U8 stream?+
M3U8 is the manifest format of HLS (HTTP Live Streaming), the standard for live video on the web. The .m3u8 file lists the available quality levels and the short video segments the player downloads in sequence. This player uses hls.js to play HLS in every modern browser.
Can I use this to test if an M3U8 stream is working?+
Yes — that's one of its main uses. Paste the .m3u8 URL and press Load. If the stream is live and browser-accessible it plays within seconds; if not, the diagnostics panel tells you whether the problem is the link, the host's CORS policy, or the codec.
What's the difference between M3U and M3U8?+
They're the same text format — .m3u8 just guarantees UTF-8 encoding. In practice, .m3u files usually contain IPTV channel lists, while a .m3u8 URL usually points at a single HLS live stream manifest. This player handles both: channel lists open in the sidebar, single streams play directly.
Why does my M3U8 stream play in VLC but not in the browser?+
Browsers enforce CORS and mixed-content rules that desktop apps don't. If the stream host doesn't send CORS headers, or the URL is http:// while this site is https://, the browser refuses the connection. Our diagnostics tell you which rule was hit.