HTML seeked DOM Event: Reference and Examples

When someone interacts with a webpage, the browser sends events to the relevant JavaScript code. The seeked event happens when media seeking finishes.

When seeked happens

Media seeking finishes.

You can listen for it using addEventListener(). That keeps event handling separate from HTML attributes such as onclick and works well with modern code organization.

A small working example

<video id="demo-target" controls preload="metadata" width="320">
    <source src="sample-video.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<p id="event-status" role="status">Waiting for seeked...</p>
<script>
    const eventTarget = document.getElementById("demo-target");
    const eventStatus = document.getElementById("event-status");

    if (eventTarget) {
        eventTarget.addEventListener("seeked", (eventDetails) => {
            eventStatus.textContent = "seeked event received";
            console.log(eventDetails.type, eventDetails.target);
        });
    }
</script>

Reading the code

The browser listens for seeked on the relevant target. When the event occurs, the callback receives eventDetails, updates the status message and logs the event name and target in Developer Tools.

Drag the playhead to another position and wait for seek completion.

To test this example, put a real supported media file at the shown path. Events tied to buffering or download behavior may not fire in the same order on every connection. An unavailable sample file is not proof that your event listener is broken.

Try it in your browser

Open the page, show the Console panel, and follow this test: Drag the playhead to another position and wait for seek completion. Then change one thing in the example and observe whether the event still fires.

Common Beginner Mistakes

• Expecting seeked to fire without its required user action or browser condition.
• Drag the playhead to another position and wait for seek completion.
• Adding repeated event listeners without considering cleanup or unwanted side effects.

Key Takeaways

• seeked reports media seeking finishes.
• addEventListener("seeked", ...) listens for the event on the appropriate target.
• Drag the playhead to another position and wait for seek completion.