react-native-video

The most battle-tested open-source video player component for React Native with support for DRM, offline playback, HLS/DASH streaming, and more.

[!IMPORTANT] This is a new version (v7) of react-native-video that is currently in active development. You can expect breaking changes and missing features.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].

🔍 Features

Feature	Status
📱 Plays all video formats natively supported by iOS/Android	✅ Available
▶️ Local and remote playback	✅ Available
🔁 Streaming: HLS • DASH • SmoothStreaming	✅ Available
🧩 Expo plugin support	✅ Available
📴 Offline playback, video download, support for side-tracks and side-captions (via optional SDK)	✅ Available
📱 Picture in Picture	✅ Available
🎚️ Fine-grained control over tracks, buffering & events	🏗️ In Development
🧠 Advanced control over playback and buffering	✅ Available
🔐 DRM: Widevine & FairPlay (See free DRM stream example)	✅ Available
🌐 Basic Web Support	✅ Available
📺 TV Support	📝 TODO
🥽 VisionOS Support	📝 TODO

✨ Project Status

Version	State	Architecture
v5 and lower	❌ End-of-life Commercial Support Available	Old Architecture
v6	🛠 Maintained (community + TWG)	Old + New (Interop Layer)
v7	🚀 Active Development	Old + New (Full Support)

react-native-video v7 introduces full support for the new React Native architecture, unlocking better performance, improved consistency, and modern native modules.

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📚 Documentation & Examples

• 📖 Documentation
• 🤖 AI agent skill — use react-native-video correctly with AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex); install with npx skills add TheWidlarzGroup/react-native-video
• 📦 Example: Basic Usage
• 📦 Example: Free DRM Stream

🚀 Quick Start

Requirements

• React Native 0.75 or higher
• react-native-nitro-modules (>=0.31.10) - Please see nitro requirements

Install

react-native-video requires react-native-nitro-modules (>=0.31.10) in your project.

npm install react-native-nitro-modules

Then install react-native-video

# Install the beta version of react-native-video v7
npm install react-native-video@beta

# Install pods
cd ios && pod install

Without this patch you won't be able "recognize" errors, all will be thrown as unknown errors.

see installation guide

Usage

import { useVideoPlayer, VideoView } from 'react-native-video';

export default () => (
  const player = useVideoPlayer(
    'https://www.w3schools.com/html/mov_bbb.mp4',
    (_player) => {
      _player.play();
    }
  );

  <VideoView
    player={player}
    style={{ width: '100%', aspectRatio: 16 / 9 }}
    controls
  />
);

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:inbox_tray: We're building a Pro Player!

We see the need for a more feature-rich video player. There is a gap between open source and commercial players, and we want to fill that gap with plugins.

Are you using a commercial player just for 1-2 features? Maybe you are paying for a license just to get Caching, Ads, or Analytics? Let us know. We want to identify these missing pieces and build them, so you can switch back to open source.

This is what we have already. Check out!

• Offline Video: Logic for downloading streams (HLS/DASH) and standard video files to enable offline playback.
• Background Uploader: Handles uploads even if the app is minimized (not strictly a player plugin, but super useful).
• Chapter Markers: Visual markers on the timeline to navigate content.

-> Tell us what to build next ← or reach out to us [email protected]

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This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗