GeniusTray: YouTube playlists that feel like YouTube, on any WordPress site.
- Client
- Year
- Genius Creations
- 2025
- Available on
- wordpress.org/plugins/geniustray-video-playlist-for-youtube ↗
- Built with
- WordPressPHPJavaScriptYouTube Data API
Overview
A YouTube-style playlist, a shortcode away.
GeniusTray Video Playlist for YouTube shows videos in an interactive playlist on any WordPress site: a main player beside a scrollable list, the way people already know from YouTube. Visitors browse and switch videos without leaving the page.
It is published on the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Challenge
Embedding videos one by one makes a page, not a playlist.
WordPress makes it easy to embed one video. A course, a series of product demos or a channel’s latest uploads need a playlist people can browse, and site owners need to manage it without touching code.
Solution
Two ways to build a playlist, and nothing loaded where it is not used.
Build a playlist by hand from video links, with drag and drop to reorder, or pull a channel’s recent videos through the YouTube Data API. Place it anywhere with a shortcode.
Its assets only load on pages with a playlist, API responses are cached for six hours, and it comes with keyboard navigation, a stacked layout on phones and every string ready for translation. Hooks and filters let other developers extend it.
Results
On WordPress.org, free for anyone to install.
It passed the WordPress.org plugin review and anyone can install it free from their WordPress dashboard. It is one of the tools Genius Creations built for its own work and then gave away.
2
ways to build a playlist
6 hrs
of API caching