🎉 react-native-video v7 is now in Beta!

[fnwk]

Hey everyone 👋

Some of you might remember our v7 Alpha announcement from July - it's been a while, and a lot has happened since then. That post is now pretty outdated, so we wanted to give you a fresh one.

TL;DR - v7 is in Beta, it's already running in production for 1M+ users (Circle case study), and it's our primary focus.

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So… what changed since Alpha?

Alpha was when we first dropped v7 (v7.0.0-alpha.0, 30 June 2025) - Nitro Modules under the hood, support for both Old and New Architectures, a brand new player API (useVideoPlayer + <VideoView>), separation of player logic from the view (which is what makes the plugin system possible), and media preloading, which simply wasn't possible in v6 (~40ms TTF with preload).

Since then we shipped 20+ releases between Alpha and Beta. The highlights:

• 🌐 Web support - one player, everywhere. The same useVideoPlayer + <VideoView> API you use on iOS and Android, now running in the browser too. thanks: @zoriya @moskalakamil
• 🧩 Plugin system - the player is now extensible without forking. This is what unlocks the whole TWG plugin ecosystem (offline video, background uploader, chapter markers, …).
• 🔐 DRM interfaces - formal DRM API for Widevine and FairPlay. thanks: @KrzysztofMoch
• 🔔 Notification controls - control playback directly from system notifications and lock screen on both iOS and Android. thanks: @KrzysztofMoch @moskalakamil @Arthi-chaud
• 🎬 beta.0 - v7 is officially beta. Now powering apps with 1M+ users in production, and from this point on v7 gets priority support over v6. thanks: @KrzysztofMoch
• ⚡ Nitro 0.35.0 upgrade - bumped to the latest Nitro Modules, which fixed a memory leak we were hitting on the previous version. thanks: @mrousavy @fnwk
• 🔇 Disable audio session management - opt-out for apps that manage their own audio session. thanks: @fnwk
• ✨ Smaller features along the way - keepScreenAwake, buffer config, Android PiP enhancements, side-load HLS subtitles on iOS, surface type prop, and more. thanks: @KrzysztofMoch @Pieczasz @zoriya
• 🧪 Lots of stability work - hardening across iOS (PiP, NowPlaying, subtitles, audio focus, KVO) and Android (PiP exit, foreground service, notifications). thanks: @moskalakamil @KrzysztofMoch @erank-pixel @robertert @noma4i @jiroscripts @fnwk
• 🧱 v6 is still alive - we shipped v6.15 through v6.19.1 alongside v7 work, including Google DAI support (thanks @fnwk @maciekBudzinski), media3 PlayerView migration, and a bunch of iOS/Android fixes. Going forward, v7 is where new features land first, and v6 will only get critical fixes.

Huge thanks also to everyone else who contributed along the way: @Pieczasz @pioner92 @BasixKOR @lukasjengo @sharnik @langemike @Jianlong-Nie @saseungmin @seyedmostafahasani @qusaieilouti99 @Dawqss @wn-na @arnav-cashify @Ibad9 @Varuzh1 @manini-1 @r0b0t3d @jakubboguski - and everyone who tested alpha, opened issues, and sent PRs. We hope we didn't forget anyone - if we did, sorry, and thank you! ❤️

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Should I migrate?

If you're starting a new project - yes, go straight to v7. The new architecture, preloading, plugin system, and notification controls are worth it, and the beta is already battle-tested in production.

If you're on v6 - there's no rush, but we'd recommend planning the migration. The migration guide walks you through the API changes (mainly: <Video> → useVideoPlayer + <VideoView>, refs → player instance methods, callbacks → useEvent hook).

npm install react-native-video@beta react-native-nitro-modules
cd ios && pod install

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What's next

We're focused on wrapping up the rest of the beta before we cut stable v7.0.0. If you hit anything weird, open an issue, we're on it.

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💼 Commercial support

react-native-video is maintained by The Widlarz Group. If your team needs help with integration, custom features, performance work, or anything video-related on React Native - reach out to us, we do this for a living.

TWG team

[noma4i]

Would be nice if you will implement my HLS cache proxy. I have done the simplified version of the react-native-video(link is not provided as it will be unsolicited advertisement)

Key features I want to see in v7:

• memory management via player reuse
• HLS cache

You are free to copy any part of my code to get it done.