Updates

• For accessibility, added aria-expanded attributes to the buttons in the captions styling submenu. 
• Improved the experience for mp4 videos under 90 seconds that are single items so that when set to repeat, the looping is seamless. 

Fixes

• Fixed an issue on Tizen preventing the quality from upswitching beyond a certain level. 
• Fixed an issue causing buffering on some DASH streams. 
• Fixed an issue preventing seeking when a player is set up with the Google IMA ad client but no ad tag. 
• Fixed an accessibility issue preventing the playlist number from being read by screen readers. 
• Fixed a javascript error thrown by the displayClick event listener when player controls are set to false. 

Fix

Fixed an issue where SDK is not working properly with Xcode 12 or lower. 

General Improvements 

• Added support for OMID (Open Measurement Interface Definition) in JWP VAST client.
• Improved OMID support for Google IMA, reporting more accurate viewability data.
• Added a new API, JWPlayer.friendlyObstructions, where friendly obstructions can be reported to both IMA and JWP VAST ad clients.
• Added double-tap to rewind and fast forward. 
• Added the ability to specify a playlist URL in JWPlayerConfigurationBuilder.
• Deprecated JWPlayerItemBuilder.setAutostart. 

General Improvements

• Added support for OMID (Open measurement Interface Definition) in JWP VAST client. 
• Added the ability to specify a playlist URL in PlaylistItem.playlistUrl. 
• Added caption analytics support.

Fix

• Fixed an issue where InPlaylistTimedMetaData start and end values differ from web and iOS. 

Fixes

• Continuing improvements to user interface. 
• Fixed a bug where JWPlayerViewController crashes in Simulator for iPhone 8 or below. 

 General Changes 

• Entirely rewritten in Swift while maintaining backward compatibility for customer applications using Objective-C. 
• Completely native player and User Interface by using UIKit, which gives easier video control presentations and customizations. 
• Decoupled user interface, which gives greater flexibility for creating own user interface with JWPlayerView. 
• License keys must be supplied programmatically through JWPlayerKit. For extra security, they are no longer read from the Info.plist in the application. 
• Thumbnail preview is shown as the user seeks across the content if the thumbnail track is specified for a JWPlayerItem. 
• New and improved customizable user interface through using the JWPlayerViewController. 
• Chromecast is supported through using our interface in JWPlayerViewController if you include GoogleCast SDK in your project. 
• Related content is displayed in a new and improved user interface, complete with autoplay functionality. 
• Added a common error reporting JWError for warnings and errors. 
• Added specialized metadata event delegates, which can be subscribed to events through the JWPlayer protocol. 
• Added fast forward button to compliment the rewind button 

 Ads 

• Upgraded IMA support to 3.14.3 include iOS 14 and above. JW iOS SDK 4.0 supports Google IMA, Google IMA DAI, and JWP VAST. 
• Added Picture-in-Picture support for IMA DAI ads. 
• Added ability to set custom initialization options through the assetOptions property. 

API Updates 

• Added dedicated builders for each type of ad, and renamed JWAdConfig to JWAdertisingConfig.
  • Google IMA JWImaAdvertisingConfigBuilder 
  • Google IMA DAI JWImaDaiAdvertisingConfigBuilder 
  • JWP VAST JWAdsAdvertisingConfigBuilder 
• Renamed JWConfig to JWPlayerConfiguration, which is created using a separate object JWPlayerConfigurationBuilder. 
• Renamed JWPlaylistItem to JWPlayerItem. 
• Renamed JWSource to JWVideoSource. 
• Renamed JWRelatedConfig to JWRelatedContentConfiguration. 
• Deprecated JWTrack, and added associated builders JWMediaTrack, JWChapterTrack, JWCaptionTrack, and JWThumbnailTrack. 

Event API 

• Added multiple delegates for different events
  • JWPlayer
  • JWPlayerDelegate
  • JWPlayerStateDelegate
  • JWPlayerViewControllerDelegate
  • JWViewControllerDelegate
  • JWAdDelegate
  • JWAVDelegate
  • JWPlaybackMetadataDelegate 

User Interface 

• Added Lock screen control, which is more reactive to the state of the player:
     • The next item and previous item buttons are shown if the current item is part of a playlist.
     • The rewind and fast forward buttons are enabled if there is only one item. “Advertisement” is displayed as the video title when an ad is playing.
     • The application’s name is displayed in the controls if a currently playing item does not have a title.
     • “Previous Item” button is disabled for the first item in a playlist, and the “Next Item” button is disabled for the final item in a playlist. 
• Added chapter markers, which are displayed as cue points and chapters have been defined for the player item. 

Captions 

• Added ability to customize the look of captions using JWCaptionStyle. These settings are observed only if they are not specified in the user’s accessibility settings.
• Added side-loaded VTT captions positional attributes, which is specified within the VTT file. Vertically-displayed text is not supported. 
• Added In-manifest Caption support for Chromecast. 

Deprecated Features

• VPAID and FreeWheel support 
• CSS support

AMP Component Updates

• Updated our amp-jwplayer documentation on  amp.dev including all the attributes mentioned in the release notes. 
• To the amp-jwplayer component, added support for a new attribute, data-config-json, which accepts a full JSON configuration using any key values listed in the web player configuration reference, with the exception of media, which should use the media ID or playlist ID attribute, and the floating player, which should use the amp-video-docking component and the dock attribute on the player element. 
• Added support for appending the iframe source url before player setup, to support token signing for example, with new attributes data-player-param-* and data-player-querystring. 
• Added an attribute, data-ad-cust-params, which supports a JSON string of custom parameters that will be appended to the end of an ad tag on ad request. 
• Added an attribute, data-config-skin-url, which accepts a url to an externally-hosted CSS file that will be loaded inside of the iframe, and can be used to target JWP elements. You can also load this file as skin.url in your JSON setup configuration using data-config-json. See our documentation on how to create your own CSS file. 
• Added an attribute, data-config-plugin-url, which accepts a url to an externally-hosted Javascript file that will be loaded inside of the iframe, and can be used to apply custom Javascript to the player. 
• Added support for populating ad tag macros in AMP with a new attribute, data-ad-macro-*. The following macros are supported: An attribute used to override the default value of macros in ad tags. Supported macros include: domain, referrer, page-url, item-{custparam}, and item-{custparam}-list. For example, setting data-ad-macro-domain=jwplayer.com would ensure the requested ad tag populates the domain parameter with the defined page url. See our ad tag macro documentation for more information. 
• In AMP, added support for the amp-consent component, which a way for publishers to collect and store user’s consent through a UI and is a way to block AMP components based on the user’s consent. Added a new attribute, data-block-on-consent, which if set blocks the player from loading until the consent state is resolved. The consent data will then be passed to the player's iframe as query parameters for use with advertising implementations. See the amp-consent blocking behaviors documentation for possible values that this attribute accepts. 
• Fixed an issue in amp-jwplayer where play events erroneously fired when an ad played. 
• Remove existing logic which was manually sending additional pause events during ads with AMP, which are no longer needed. 

General Improvements

• Added the aria-expanded attribute to the settings menu button to improve accessibility. 
• When hovering over the timeline where there are chapter markers, the chapter's name and the current time will always be shown. 

Fixes

• Reintroduced a fix from 8.20.5: Fixed a bug preventing a floating player with auto pause configured from pausing when the tab is backgrounded while an ad is loading.
• Removed a demo key value from customTargetingKey in the Freewheel ad client.
• Fixed an accessibility issue where upon exiting the settings menu the focus did not return to the settings menu icon in the control bar. 

Updates

• Updated our Shaka dependency to 3.2. 
• Added 15+ new 246xxx error codes related to DASH DRM failures. 
• In the VAST client, we now define the creative type as video when making ad requests with OMID-enabled players, which should improve measurement accuracy. 
• Improved settings menu ARIA labeling for accessibility by removing the ariahaspopup attribute and changing the role attribute on many elements to better suit the screen reader experience. 
• Improved accessibility of the seek slider by adding the aria-valuenow attribute and ensuring the current time is read aloud by screen readers for both VOD and live streams. 

Fixes

• Fixed a bug in picture in picture mode where videos would pause when the player's original container was backgrounded if the player was configured to autoPause. Autopause behavior should not apply to picture in picture mode because the PiP player is always in view even if the page where the player is embedded no longer is. 
• Removed the picture in picture icon from the control bar on Tizen, where it is not supported. 
• Fixed a bug with the playlist shelf widget where if the items in the playlist do not have thumbnail images, paginating with the left and right arrow buttons breaks the component. 
• Reverted an earlier fix from 8.20.5: Fixed a bug preventing a floating player with auto pause configured from pausing when the tab is backgrounded while an ad is loading. This will be reintroduced in an upcoming release. 

New Features

• Updated the "About This Video" modal (accessible via the right click menu) to include stats for nerds, including information about the stream including media ID, buffer health, resolution, and more.
• Configuration: Added a new configuration option, allowFullscreen, which defaults to true. When set to false, fullscreen functionality is completely disabled in the player including tapping, clicking, keyboard shortcuts, and API access.
• Javascript events: Added a new method, setAllowFullscreen, which through updating the boolean, disables or re-enables the above fullscreen behavior.
• Updated the Freewheel Ad Manager SDK dependency to v6.43.
• Improved player and page security by whitelisting allowed HTML markup elements that may render in media title and description fields; links, scripts, and Javascript functions are no longer rendered.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug preventing the on('adblock') and getAdblock() methods from working as expected in all browsers.
• Fixed a bug preventing remove() from having its namesake effect on the player when it is in picture in picture mode.
• Fixed an issue where clicking and holding the seek bar fires a pause event with "unknown" pauseReason, rather than "interaction."
• Fixed an issue where opening the playlist overlay fires a pause event with "unknown" pauseReason, rather than "interaction."
• Fixed a bug in Freewheel where the adPod sequence was off by one.
• Reintroduced an earlier fix from 8.20.5: Fixed a bug preventing a floating player with auto pause configured from pausing when the tab is backgrounded while an ad is loading. This will be reverted again in the next release.

Updates

• This release was briefly available but was removed due to fatal setup errors occurring in our AMP component. This will be fixed in 8.22.1. We apologize for the inconvenience.