And if you’re a developer listening: don’t let the future erase the present. Keep libvpx alive. Keep her in the build. Keep her in the pipeline.
There’s a quiet but growing cry echoing through issue trackers, forum threads, and late-night Slack channels: “Bring her back, libvpx.” bring her back libvpx
Bring her back, libvpx.
Developers who cut libvpx often do so without a deprecation notice, without a migration path, and without asking the community. Then one day, users try to play an old VP9 home video or a conference recording, and they’re met with: And if you’re a developer listening: don’t let
For the uninitiated, libvpx is the open-source VP8 and VP9 video codec library developed by Google and the open-source community. It has powered everything from WebRTC video calls to high-efficiency streaming on YouTube and millions of self-hosted video platforms. But recently, some projects — especially lightweight browsers, media frameworks, and custom FFmpeg builds — have started dropping or sidelining libvpx. The reasons vary: build complexity, binary size, or a misguided belief that “everyone has moved to AV1.” Keep her in the pipeline