Migrate from Video.js 8

Same name, different shape. Video.js 8 gives you one function, videojs(), and one big options object. You enhance a <video> element, pass configuration, and get back a player with a control bar, a plugin system, and a component tree you can reach into.

Video.js v10 is a rebuild rather than a release. There’s no videojs() call, no options object, and no plugin registry. You compose a player out of a few named pieces instead, and the result is smaller, easier to restyle, and a lot easier to use from React.

Video.js 8 lives on at its repo and docs.

Three pieces instead of one

In v8 the player was everything: playback, UI, and the skin on top of it. Options configured all three, which is why the options object grew so large.

v10 splits those jobs up. Learning the three names first makes the rest of this guide much shorter.

The player is the outer element. It holds state and hands that state to everything inside it, and it draws nothing. This is the closest thing to a v8 player instance, but it owns state rather than DOM. Which state it holds depends on the features it’s built from.

The media is the thing that plays the video. This is where v8’s tech went. A plain <video> plays progressive files, and there’s a media component for HLS, DASH, YouTube, Vimeo, and Mux. Swapping one for another is a tag change, and the rest of your player keeps working.

The skin is the UI: the controls, the poster, the captions, the settings menu, the keyboard shortcuts. It’s the v8 control bar and skin combined, except skins are plain trees of components you can read and edit rather than a class hierarchy you subclass.

So a v8 embed becomes a player wrapped around a skin wrapped around a media:

<video-player>
  <video-skin>
    <video src="/video.mp4"></video>
  </video-skin>
</video-player>

<VideoPlayer>
  <VideoSkin>
    <Video src="/video.mp4" />
  </VideoSkin>
</VideoPlayer>

Most of this guide is about which of those three a given v8 option now belongs to.

Your first player

<link href="https://vjs.zencdn.net/8.x/video-js.css" rel="stylesheet" />

<video
  id="my-video"
  class="video-js"
  controls
  preload="auto"
  poster="/poster.jpg"
  data-setup="{}"
>
  <source src="/video.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <track kind="captions" src="/captions/en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default />
</video>

<script src="https://vjs.zencdn.net/8.x/video.min.js"></script>

<script type="module" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@videojs/html/cdn/video.js"></script>

<video-player>
  <video-skin class="aspect-video">
    <video src="/video.mp4" preload="auto" playsinline>
      <track kind="captions" src="/captions/en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default />
      <track kind="metadata" src="/storyboard.vtt" label="thumbnails" default />
    </video>

    <img slot="poster" src="/poster.jpg" alt="" />
  </video-skin>
</video-player>

import '@videojs/html/video/player';
import '@videojs/html/video/skin';
import '@videojs/html/video/skin.css';

import { useEffect, useRef } from 'react';
import videojs from 'video.js';
import 'video.js/dist/video-js.css';

export function MyPlayer() {
  const containerRef = useRef<HTMLDivElement>(null);
  const playerRef = useRef<ReturnType<typeof videojs> | null>(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    const el = document.createElement('video-js');
    containerRef.current?.appendChild(el);

    playerRef.current = videojs(el, {
      controls: true,
      preload: 'auto',
      poster: '/poster.jpg',
      sources: [{ src: '/video.mp4', type: 'video/mp4' }],
    });

    return () => playerRef.current?.dispose();
  }, []);

  return <div ref={containerRef} />;
}

npm install @videojs/react

'use client';

import '@videojs/react/video/skin.css';
import { Video, VideoPlayer, VideoSkin } from '@videojs/react/video';

export function MyPlayer() {
  return (
    <VideoPlayer>
      <VideoSkin className="aspect-video" poster="/poster.jpg">
        <Video src="/video.mp4" preload="auto" playsInline>
          <track kind="captions" src="/captions/en.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default />
          <track kind="metadata" src="/storyboard.vtt" label="thumbnails" default />
        </Video>
      </VideoSkin>
    </VideoPlayer>
  );
}

Where your options went

The v8 options object is gone, and its contents scattered in four directions. This is the biggest conceptual step, so it’s worth understanding the four buckets before you go looking for a specific option.

1. Media attributes. Anything the browser itself understands stays exactly where it was, on your media element.
2. Skin attributes. The poster belongs to the skin, because the skin is what paints it.
3. Your CSS. Sizing, aspect ratio, and responsive behavior are layout, and layout is yours.
4. Composition. Which controls exist, which shortcuts fire, which language you’re in. You express these by choosing components rather than by setting flags.

Media attributes

Port these across untouched. They’re native attributes and always were.

Skin attributes

The poster belongs to the skin rather than the media, which is what lets the skin control how it appears:

<video-skin>
  <video src="/video.mp4"></video>
  <img slot="poster" src="/poster.jpg" alt="" />
</video-skin>

<VideoSkin poster="/poster.jpg">
  <Video src="/video.mp4" />
</VideoSkin>

content-title is the closest thing to v8’s TitleBar, and it does reach player state, so your own UI can read it. No packaged skin draws it, so v8’s TitleBar has no visual equivalent (#1123). See the Poster reference for the poster component itself.

Your CSS

v8 had a small sizing language of its own. v10 doesn’t, because CSS already has one.

Composition

These are the ones that need a decision rather than a rename, so each has a section below.

Techs become media components

v8’s tech system was one of its harder ideas: an abstraction layer with a registry, a resolution order, and source handlers on top. Getting HLS meant getting VHS, which meant reasoning about overrideNative and hoping the right thing won.

v10 replaces the whole mechanism with a choice you make in markup. You pick the media component that plays your format, and that’s the tech decision.

Each needs its own import.

<script type="module" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@videojs/html/cdn/media/hls-video.js"></script>

<video-player>
  <video-skin>
    <hls-video src="/stream.m3u8" playsinline></hls-video>
  </video-skin>
</video-player>

import { HlsVideo } from '@videojs/react/media/hls-video';

<VideoPlayer>
  <VideoSkin>
    <HlsVideo src="/stream.m3u8" playsInline />
  </VideoSkin>
</VideoPlayer>

Two things to know when you pick between the HLS options. The default HLS component runs on SPF, Video.js’s own playback engine, and it’s the reason v10 can be as small as it is. The hls.js one is a much larger download but supports more, including TS-packaged media and DRM. Start with the default and move to hls.js if you hit something it doesn’t handle.

Your VHS tuning options don’t have direct equivalents. Rendition capping, bandwidth hints, and the rest are engine-specific, so they belong to whichever engine you chose rather than to a shared options object.

Customize your player

In v8, customizing meant three different techniques depending on what you wanted: options for some things, addChild and component subclassing for others, and CSS overrides on .vjs-* selectors for the look. v10 has one path with three levels of commitment. Try them in order.

Level 1: pick a skin

The default skin is a modern, frosted look. The minimal skin is closer to v8’s control bar. Both bring controls, tooltips, captions, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures, and a settings menu that appears when there’s something to put in it. See Skins.

Both also include AirPlay and Cast buttons, which v8 had no answer for. Remote playback is a feature you compose in rather than a plugin you install.

Level 2: restyle it

v8 customization meant writing selectors against internal class names and hoping they survived the next release. v10 skins expose custom properties instead, which are part of the public surface:

/* Video.js 8 */
.video-js .vjs-play-progress {
  background-color: rebeccapurple;
}

/* Video.js v10 */
video-player {
  --media-accent-color: rebeccapurple;
}

--media-accent-color reaches the sliders, the active buttons, and the accent surfaces at once. Video.js derives a readable text color to sit on top of it; override that with --media-accent-text-color if you’d rather choose. --media-border-radius rounds the player, and --media-scale-unit scales the whole control bar, which is the closest thing to v8’s font-size trick for sizing controls. Customize skins has the full list.

Level 3: eject

Ejecting means copying the skin’s source into your project and editing it, the way you would a shadcn component. The packaged skin isn’t compiled magic; it’s a tree of components, so ejecting starts as copy and paste. Customize skins has copy-paste-ready implementations for every packaged skin.

This is where v8’s controlBar config and addChild calls end up, and honestly it’s the better trade. Instead of controlBar: { pictureInPictureToggle: false }, you delete a line. Instead of subclassing a component to change its behavior, you edit the markup.

import '@videojs/html/video/ui';

<video-player>
  <media-container>
    <video src="/video.mp4" playsinline></video>

    <media-poster><img src="/poster.jpg" alt="" decoding="async" /></media-poster>

    <media-controls>
      <media-play-button></media-play-button>
      <media-mute-button></media-mute-button>
      <media-volume-slider></media-volume-slider>
      <media-time type="current"></media-time>
      <media-time-slider>
        <media-slider-track>
          <media-slider-fill></media-slider-fill>
          <media-slider-buffer></media-slider-buffer>
        </media-slider-track>
        <media-slider-thumb></media-slider-thumb>
      </media-time-slider>
      <media-time type="duration"></media-time>
      <media-fullscreen-button></media-fullscreen-button>
      <!-- No media-pip-button, so no picture-in-picture control renders. -->
    </media-controls>

    <media-hotkey keys="Space" action="togglePaused"></media-hotkey>
    <media-hotkey keys="f" action="toggleFullscreen"></media-hotkey>
    <media-hotkey keys="ArrowRight" action="seekStep" value="5"></media-hotkey>
    <media-hotkey keys="ArrowLeft" action="seekStep" value="-5"></media-hotkey>

    <media-gesture type="tap" action="togglePaused" pointer="mouse" region="center"></media-gesture>
  </media-container>
</video-player>

import { Container, Controls, Hotkey, MuteButton, PlayButton, TimeSlider } from '@videojs/react';
import { Video, VideoPlayer } from '@videojs/react/video';

export function MyPlayer() {
  return (
    <VideoPlayer>
      <Container>
        <Video src="/video.mp4" playsInline />

        <Controls.Root>
          <PlayButton />
          <MuteButton />
          <TimeSlider.Root>
            <TimeSlider.Track>
              <TimeSlider.Fill />
              <TimeSlider.Buffer />
            </TimeSlider.Track>
            <TimeSlider.Thumb />
          </TimeSlider.Root>
          {/* No PiPButton, so no picture-in-picture control renders. */}
        </Controls.Root>

        <Hotkey keys="Space" action="togglePaused" />
        <Hotkey keys="ArrowRight" action="seekStep" value={5} />
      </Container>
    </VideoPlayer>
  );
}

Those hotkey and gesture declarations are where userActions went. v8’s userActions.hotkeys was a function you wrote; here each shortcut is a component with a key and an action, and userActions.click and doubleClick become gestures with a region. The packaged skins already include a sensible set of both, which is why you don’t see them in the earlier examples.

Ejecting is also where you take on the skin’s CSS. The packaged skins ship styles for everything above; a bare layout renders unstyled until you bring those along, which is why Customize skins hands you the CSS next to the markup.

Plugins

v10 has no plugin system. There’s no videojs.registerPlugin, no player.myPlugin(), and no plugin lifecycle.

That’s a deliberate choice rather than a missing feature. v8 plugins existed largely because there was no other way in: to add a control, change a behavior, or support a format, you had to reach into player internals through the one door the plugin API provided. v10 gives you the front door instead: components you can add, skins you can eject, media elements you can swap. Most of what plugins did is now ordinary composition.

Audit your plugins and sort them into four piles:

• Formats and techs (videojs-contrib-*, YouTube, Vimeo, Mux). Replace with the matching media component. See Techs become media components.
• UI additions (extra buttons, overlays, custom control bars). Rebuild as components in an ejected skin, or with your own component. This is usually less code than the plugin was.
• Workarounds for v8 limitations. Check whether the limitation still exists before you port anything.
• Genuinely missing features (ads, playlists). These need real work, and some have no home yet. Get them on the list early, because they’ll drive your timeline.

That last pile is the honest risk in a v8 migration. If your player depends on an ads plugin, there’s no v10 answer today.

Read player state

Events

Your media element is a real media element, so every event you already listen for still fires on it. The listeners port directly; only where you attach them changes.

// Video.js 8
const player = videojs('my-video');
player.on('timeupdate', () => console.log(player.currentTime()));

// Video.js v10
const video = document.querySelector('video');
video.addEventListener('timeupdate', () => console.log(video.currentTime));

One category doesn’t survive that translation, because those were never media events. v8’s UI events (useractive, userinactive, playerresize, texttrackchange) were the player’s own. Read the equivalent from player state instead.

import { PlayerController, playerContext, ReactiveElement, selectTime } from '@videojs/html';

class MyElapsed extends ReactiveElement {
  #time = new PlayerController(this, playerContext, selectTime);
}

import { usePlayer } from '@videojs/react/video';

function Elapsed() {
  const currentTime = usePlayer((state) => state.currentTime);
  return <span>{currentTime}</span>;
}

Drive playback

v8 used accessor methods for everything: player.currentTime() to read, player.currentTime(10) to write. v10 splits the difference by owner. Anything the browser owns you set on the media, as a plain property. Anything it doesn’t — fullscreen, captions, quality — goes through the player, because the player is what tracks it.

Swapping sources is the change most likely to surprise you. There’s no player.src(); you set src on the media element, or replace the media element entirely, and the UI follows. Changing formats is changing tags.

Languages

v8 shipped one language and asked you to register more with videojs.addLanguage. v10 ships locale packs for around 50 languages, so most apps need no setup at all. See Internationalization.

import { registerI18n } from '@videojs/html/i18n';

registerI18n('en', {
  buttons: { play: 'Start video', pause: 'Pause video' },
  menu: { settings: 'Options' },
});

import { I18nProvider } from '@videojs/react/i18n';

<I18nProvider locale="en" translations={{ buttons: { play: 'Start video' } }}>
  {/* … */}
</I18nProvider>

Live and audio-only

v8 turned live UI on with a liveui flag, and audio-only on with audioOnlyMode. In v10 these are different players with different skins, because live and audio-only have different state and a genuinely different UI. See Presets.

<live-video-player>
  <live-video-skin>
    <hls-video src="/live.m3u8"></hls-video>
  </live-video-skin>
</live-video-player>

import { HlsVideo } from '@videojs/react/media/hls-video';
import { LiveVideoPlayer, LiveVideoSkin } from '@videojs/react/live-video';

<LiveVideoPlayer>
  <LiveVideoSkin>
    <HlsVideo src="/live.m3u8" playsInline />
  </LiveVideoSkin>
</LiveVideoPlayer>

You get streamType, targetLiveWindow, and liveEdgeStart in state, plus a live button that jumps to the live edge. v8’s liveTracker tuning has no equivalent (#1730).

The live composition is deliberately narrower than the video one. It leaves out playback rate, quality, and audio-track state, so those controls don’t appear in a live skin’s settings menu. If you need one of them on a live player, build your own player from a feature list rather than taking the preset’s.

Known gaps

Ordered roughly by how likely each is to block a v8 migration.

• No ads support. v8’s IMA and ad-plugin ecosystem has no v10 equivalent. This is the most common hard blocker.
• No playlist support. No videojs-playlist equivalent.
• No plugin system, by design. Budget for rebuilding UI plugins as components. See Plugins.
• No skin draws content-title, so v8’s TitleBar has no visual equivalent (#1123).
• Playback rates are a fixed set — 0.2, 0.5, 0.7, 1, 1.2, 1.5, 1.7, 2 — so v8’s playbackRates has no equivalent yet (#1404).
• No text-track settings dialog. v8’s textTrackSettings let viewers restyle captions; v10 exposes only the positioning custom properties its skins define.
• No spatial navigation. v8’s spatialNavigation for TV and D-pad remotes has no equivalent.
• Nothing persists between sessions: volume, captions language, speed, quality. That’s out of scope for GA (#944). Default subtitle language is tracked at #1423.
• No VHS-equivalent tuning surface. Engine settings belong to the engine you chose, and the default HLS component deliberately exposes few of them.
• Chapters render in the time slider from a <track kind="chapters">, but there’s no chapter menu to navigate from and no active-chapter state, so v8’s chapters menu has no equivalent (#1873). Cue points aren’t implemented (#1442).
• The controls auto-hide delay isn’t configurable, so v8’s inactivityTimeout has no equivalent (#1728).
• No full-window fullscreen fallback. v8 had one for browsers without the Fullscreen API; support is around 96% now.
• Multiple <source> elements with size metadata don’t become a quality menu. Use HLS or DASH for adaptive quality; picking renditions by resolution won’t be added (#1415).
• Two skins, and no runtime theme switch.
• Native controls are not automatically removed when custom controls load (#1160).
• Smaller conveniences without homes yet: debug mode (#1406) and autoplay with a muted fallback (#1039).

See also

• Features and Presets
• Media sources
• Skins and Customize skins