I took back Video.js after 16 years and we rewrote it to be 88% smaller
What do you do when private equity buys your old company and fires the maintainers of the popular open source project you started over a decade ago? You reboot it, and bring along some new friends to do it. Video.js is used by billions of people every month, on sites like Amazon.com, Linkedin, and Dropbox, and yet it wasn’t in great shape. A skeleton crew of maintainers were doing their best with a dated architecture, but it needed more. So Sam from Plyr, Rahim from Vidstack, and Wes and Christain from Media Chrome jumped in to help me rebuild it better, faster, and smaller. It’s in beta…
I took back Video.js after 16 years and we rewrote it to be 88% smaller launched on March 24, 2026 with 648 votes, #9 of 23,380 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Video.js is a rebuilt open-source video player library used by billions of people monthly on platforms like Amazon, LinkedIn, and Dropbox. Originally created over a decade ago, it has been completely rewritten to be 88% smaller with a modernized architecture. The project is maintained by a collaborative team including contributors from Plyr, Vidstack, and Media Chrome. Currently in beta, it serves developers building video experiences across web applications.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Video.js v10 is a ground-up rewrite combining four open source players into one modern framework — 88% smaller default bundles, first-class React and TypeScript support, composable architecture, and beautiful new skins designed by Plyr
Today we’re excited to release the Video.js v10.0.0 beta. It’s the result of a rather large ground-up rewrite, not just of Video.js ( discussion ) but also of Plyr , Vidstack , and Media Chrome , through a rare teaming-up of open source projects and people who care a lot about web video, with a combined 75,000 github stars and tens of billions of video plays monthly. I built Video.js 16 years ago to help the transition from Flash to HTML5 video. It’s grown a lot since then with the help of many people , but the codebase and APIs have continued to reflect a different era of web development. This rebuild modernizes the player both for how developers build today and sets up the foundation for…from videojs.org
In the maker’s words, at launch
What do you do when private equity buys your old company and fires the maintainers of the popular open source project you started over a decade ago? You reboot it, and bring along some new friends to do it. Video.js is used by billions of people every month, on sites like Amazon.com, Linkedin, and Dropbox, and yet it…
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