Inspiro PRO – Video Background Support in Slideshow

This article refers to Inspiro PRO

Inspiro PRO theme allows you to display videos in background in each slide from the Slideshow.

Until recently, most mobile devices didn’t support video autoplay, in order to prevent users from unsolicited data consumption.

However, Inspiro PRO supports video backgrounds if you’re using self-hosted video (MP4) or Vimeo. Unfortunately, YouTube videos cannot be played automatically in background on mobile devices.

Vimeo videos are also supported in background and this works best with Vimeo Plus, Pro and Business accounts. Vimeo videos will also play on mobile devices with video autoplay support.

Vimeo: paid vs. free or legacy accounts

Vimeo now limits true background playback (its background=1 mode) to videos hosted on current paid Vimeo plans. Inspiro PRO handles both cases automatically:

Paid Vimeo account — the video plays as a real background: looped, muted, no controls.
Free or legacy account — the theme falls back to a standard muted embed. When Vimeo stops its playback, the slide fades to the Featured Image instead of showing a paused player, and background iframes ignore the mouse so player controls never appear on hover.

You will also see a notice in the Video Settings metabox when the Vimeo video you entered is hosted on a free or legacy account, so you know in advance how it will behave. (Inspiro PRO 1.10.23+)

Pasting a Vimeo URL into the YouTube Video URL field also works — the theme detects it and plays it with the Vimeo player.

Upgrade to Vimeo PRO Today!

Even though Inspiro PRO supports self-hosted videos, it’s much better to host them on a dedicated video platform like Vimeo. With Vimeo PRO, your videos will load faster and you will not have to deal with issues like server bandwidth or slow-loading videos.

Upgrade to Vimeo PRO →

Don’t want the background video to play on mobile devices?

You can disable it in Customizer > Homepage Slider:

When you create a Slideshow post, find the Video Background tab in Video Settings section:

There you can insert a video that will play in the background for the current slide in the slideshow.

The Featured Image of that Slideshow post will act as a fallback during page load and on devices that don’t support video autoplay (mobile devices).

Video Background Support on Mobile Devices

Currently, only self-hosted and Vimeo videos can be played automatically in background on mobile devices. YouTube player has some limitations and doesn’t provide such a possibility.

Requirements for Video File to play on Mobile Devices (self-hosted):

Video format must be MP4 with the h.264 encoding. You can resize/convert it using Handbrake.
Video must be Muted
We also recommended to keep your video file size small (5-20MB) to load fast enough on 3G/4G connections

Video Not Playing on Mobile?
If your phone is in Low Power Mode (iOS), then your mobile browser won’t play the video automatically in order to save battery.

Video background not playing on mobile? Upload a GIF as Featured Image!
You can easily convert your video file using an online converter in a GIF file and set it as Featured Image, and it will play fine on mobile devices.

The theme includes also a feature called Video Lightbox which is fully supported by tablets & mobile devices.

Using Video Lightbox you can display YouTube, Vimeo or self-hosted videos in the slideshow on both desktop and mobile devices:

You can read more about Video Lightbox feature.

Last updated on August 30, 2026