Embed a playable video into your GitBook docs

Add videos to your GitBook docs that users can click to play instantly

The best way to embed videos in GitBook is by adding a URL from publicly-accessible sources like YouTube and Google Drive. Not only is it the easiest way to add videos to GitBook — it’s also the most efficient. That means your end-users get a great experience, and your SEO ranking is boosted by the fastest possible performance.

However, it is technically possible to upload a video to GitBook and then embed that video on a page via its URL. This is very inefficient for end-users who view the videos — and that slower page load can also impact your SEO ranking.

However, if you only want to upload very short videos with small file sizes, you can upload a clip without needing to host it in another tool. This guide shows you how.

Embedding large videos using this method way can impact SEO and user experience

Uploading and embedding large video files will impact the loading speed of your page, which can affect performance and SEO. We suggest only using this process for small video files under 2MB, such as short tutorials or demos.

For large videos, we strongly recommend uploading to a publicly accessible platform like YouTube or Google Drive and embedding those URLs instead.

1

Drag and drop your video

First, simply drag and drop your video onto your page in GitBook. This will upload your video to your space’s Files area.

When the upload is done, the video will appear as a file block on the page.

2

Click to open the video file

Click the file block in the editor. Your video will open in a new browser tab and start playing automatically.

3

Copy the URL

You now have the hosted video’s URL — select and copy it from your browser’s address bar.

4

Paste the URL into GitBook

Head back to your GitBook page, create a new line, and paste your video’s URL into the editor. Hit Enter and the URL will automatically embed into the page, adding the video in a dedicated player.

You can add a caption to the video, or just leave it as it is. Your users will see the embedded video and can click to play it right on your docs page.

5

Delete the file block

To clean up your page, you can now delete the file block that was created when you uploaded the video — you don’t need it on the page any more.

Don’t worry — it’ll still be accessible in your space’s Files tab in the table of contents, and deleting the block won’t delete the hosted file.

How to upload a video and show it to users as a playable video.