v0.0.5 Release Notes

Released: July 8, 2026

This release focuses on HLS startup performance, secure token handling correctness, and general UI polish. No breaking API changes.

HLS Startup Optimizations (@playerkit/core)

We significantly tuned the internal HLS.js configuration to reduce Time-to-First-Frame (TTFF) and prevent excessive RAM usage on long sessions.

Impact: First-frame time improved significantly (up to 2–3× faster on typical connections). Adaptive bitrate logic remains unaffected after the initial ramp-up.

TokenRefresher API Architecture

We separated the token fetching architecture into two explicit phases to prevent unwanted background API calls.

• Before (0.0.4): tokenRefresher timers were scheduled even for public videos if a tokenFetcher was globally registered.
• After (0.0.5): tokenRefresher is explicitly registered alongside tokenFetcher via props. Background timers are only started when an auth token explicitly returns an expiresAt timestamp.

UI Polish (@playerkit/ui)

The buffered progress bar now smoothly animates between discrete segment downloads, rather than jumping suddenly.

.pk-progress__buffered {
  transition: inline-size 0.4s ease-out;
}

Developer Experience (@playerkit/react)

• Added: The PlayerControls type is now exported directly from @playerkit/react, eliminating the need to install @playerkit/core just for types.
• Fixed: Resolved useCallback stale closure bugs in internal hook dependencies.

Migration Guide

No breaking changes. Run:

npm install @playerkit/react@latest @playerkit/core@latest @playerkit/ui@latest