Animation.playState

The Animation.playState property of the Web Animations API returns and sets an enumerated value describing the playback state of an animation.

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

Browser compatibility

[1] Before Chrome 50/Opera 37, this property returned idle for an animation that had not yet started. Starting with Chrome 50/Opera 37, it shows paused.

[2] Prior to Firefox 59, this property returned pending for Animations with incomplete asynchronous operations but as of Firefox 59 this is indicated by the separate Animation.pending property. This reflects recent changes to the specification.

See also

• Web Animations API
• Animation for other methods and properties you can use to control web page animation.