M3U8 Viewer Online – Inspect HLS Playlists

An M3U8 viewer is a tool that opens an M3U8 playlist and presents its contents in a readable form. Instead of scrolling through raw tags, you see the available quality levels, the list of media segments, their durations, and the URLs the playlist references.

An M3U8 file is a UTF-8 encoded playlist used by HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). It does not contain video itself. It lists where a player can download the video, audio, and subtitle pieces, and in what order to play them.

Paste the playlist text into the editor or drop the .m3u8 file onto the upload area. The playlist is parsed immediately in your browser. You can also load one of the built-in samples to see how the tool works.

No. This tool inspects the playlist, not the stream. It shows what the playlist contains so you can understand, debug, and document it. To watch the video you need an HLS-capable player.

The viewer does not download links, because browsers block most cross-origin requests and fetching would expose your stream address to another server. Open the link in a new tab, copy the text, and paste it here. Then enter the link as the base URL so relative paths resolve correctly.

A master playlist lists the different versions of a stream, such as 360p, 720p, and 1080p, along with audio and subtitle tracks. A media playlist lists the individual segments for one version. The viewer detects which type you opened and shows the matching tables.

Open a media playlist and choose the Segments tab. Each row shows the segment number, media sequence, start time, duration, and URI. The Overview tab shows the total duration and a chart of every segment length.

Enter the full address of the playlist in the Base URL field. The viewer resolves every relative segment, variant, key, and init-section path into a complete URL. Turn on the full URL option, then copy or download the list from the URLs tab.

Yes. The URLs tab lists every distinct URL in the playlist and lets you filter by type, such as segments, variants, keys, or renditions. You can copy the list or download it as a text file.

Yes. You can download the full parsed playlist as JSON. For media playlists you can also download a CSV of all segments with their index, start time, duration, URI, and encryption details, ready to open in a spreadsheet.

Check the Overview tab for the encryption badge and the Tags & keys tab for the key details. Encrypted streams use an #EXT-X-KEY tag, most commonly with METHOD=AES-128 or SAMPLE-AES. The tool shows the method and key URI, never the key itself.

Codec strings follow RFC 6381. For example, avc1.64001f means H.264 High profile at level 3.1, and mp4a.40.2 means AAC-LC audio. The viewer decodes common codecs into readable names and keeps the original string visible on hover.

Warnings point to places where the playlist breaks the HLS specification, such as a missing target duration, a segment longer than the declared target, or a VOD playlist without an end tag. They do not block parsing, but they can cause problems in some players.

Every HLS playlist must start with #EXTM3U on the first line. If the first line is different, the tool reports an error. This often happens when an HTML error page or a JSON response was copied by mistake, so check that you copied the real playlist text.

Yes, for any playlist text you paste. Live and event playlists are labelled as such, and low-latency tags such as part information and server control are recognised. Because the tool does not fetch updates, paste a fresh copy to see the latest window.

It reads .m3u files that use standard HLS tags. Plain IPTV channel lists with #EXTINF lines and stream addresses open as a list of entries, but IPTV-specific attributes are shown as custom tags rather than interpreted.

No. The tool runs entirely in your browser. Your playlist, files, and base URL are never sent anywhere, so it is safe to inspect private or unreleased streams.

Yes. It is free to use with no sign-up and no limit on how many playlists you inspect. It works on desktop and mobile browsers.

You can open files up to 20 MB, which covers very long VOD playlists with tens of thousands of segments. Large segment lists load in pages of 100 rows so the page stays fast.