What's new
Every update that ships to DevReel — newest first.
- ImprovedLatest
One render engine, everywhere, is in certification
- We rebuilt preview, browser export, and cloud rendering around one strict project manifest and one shared software renderer, so the same frame no longer has three separate implementations deciding how it should look.
- The new engine pins fonts and media runtimes, verifies assets by hash, uses exact frame and audio clocks, and carries cancellation through decode, rendering, encoding, and cloud settlement.
- GIF, PNG, video, audio, and the replay-safe cloud control plane now have a unified v2 foundation, with local server tests and a real-browser certification harness.
- This engine remains behind a disabled flag while cross-runtime visual parity, production performance, isolated staging, private media ingest, and FFmpeg licensing gates finish. Production exports continue using engine v1.
- Improved
Animated-background GIF exports got ~2x faster
- Shader and video backgrounds were rendered at full resolution every frame, then immediately shrunk to soften them — paying for pixels that were thrown away. The background now renders directly at the softened size, cutting the per-frame cost by more than half.
- The color-smoothing pass on animated backgrounds was recomputing the same math three times per pixel; it now uses a lookup table and runs about 10x faster with bit-identical results.
- Your code stays pixel-sharp: only the background layer renders small — text and window chrome are still drawn at full export resolution.
- Improved
GIF encoding engine rebuilt
- The GIF compressor itself now runs in background workers — previously workers only prepared frames and the actual compression still queued up on the main thread at the end of every export. Encoding now overlaps rendering instead of running after it.
- Frames travel to workers in batches over persistent channels, eliminating thousands of tiny scheduling round-trips that were costing more time than the encoding itself.
- Exports produce byte-for-byte identical files to before — verified, not vibes — just faster, and slightly smaller: a redundant color table shipped inside every frame is gone.
- Best-quality exports no longer duplicate held frames in memory before encoding, cutting peak memory use on long clips by up to 10x.
- Improved
GIF exports got dramatically faster
- The exporter now understands your timeline: moments where a frame just holds still are rendered ONCE and held with GIF timing, instead of being re-rendered and re-encoded 15 times a second. With a solid, gradient, pattern, or image background, exports that took 30 seconds now finish in a few.
- Animated (shader/video) backgrounds still render every frame, but your code window is now drawn once per held frame instead of every tick.
- Fewer duplicate frames also means noticeably smaller files — identical playback, a fraction of the bytes.
- Every shortcut is safety-checked: the exporter renders a test pair of frames first, and if anything actually animates it falls back to rendering everything.
- Fixed
GIF export no longer freezes the page
- Exporting a GIF in the browser used to lock up the whole editor for seconds at a time. Encoding now runs in background workers with the page yielding properly — everything stays responsive while your GIF renders.
- Found the root cause: a security header was silently blocking every export worker, so "parallel" encoding had been running on the main thread all along. Fixed for good.
- Best-quality encoding moved off the main thread too — the progress bar keeps moving instead of freezing mid-export.
- New
Suggest what's missing
- Every curated list in the editor — languages, themes, fonts, background effects, patterns — now ends with a "Suggest a …" option that sends your request straight to the team.
- Searching fonts for something we don't have? The empty state offers to suggest exactly what you typed.
- Settings dropdowns now close on Escape, like everything else.
- Fixed
Icons render instantly
- Icons were fetched from a third-party CDN while the page loaded, so they could pop in late or briefly show as blank gaps. Every icon now ships with the app and renders immediately — even on slow connections.
- Improved
Know which project you're saving to
- The editor's Save control now shows the name of the cloud project it saves into — no more silently overwriting your first project forever.
- A New button sits right next to Save: start a fresh project any time, with a confirmation that tells you exactly what happens to your current work.
- Rename your project right from the Save menu, and the name sticks: saving no longer resets it to an auto-generated one.
- Hitting your plan's project limit now opens a real dialog with your options — upgrade, free a slot, or overwrite the current project — instead of a dead error message.
- Improved
A timeline you can read
- The scrubber is now segmented — one segment per frame, sized by duration, filling as playback moves through it. The bar IS your timeline.
- Transitions moved to where they happen: a connector between frames opens the effect picker, with the transition length right under it. No more duplicate controls fighting inside cramped cards.
- Frame cards calmed down: number, name, a readable line of your code, and the duration — click any of them to edit in place.
- Scroll the frame strip with a plain mouse wheel, no Shift required.
- New
A real marketplace
- Search, categories, and sorting on /templates — find templates by name, browse by category (release notes, code tips, tutorials, launches, repo heroes), and sort by newest, top rated, or most used.
- Rate templates right from the marketplace — the star row on every card is live, no need to open the template page.
- Author names are now a fixed identity: your first publish sets your name, and every template you publish carries it. No more per-publish name switching.
- Publishing asks for a category, so your template lands where people browse.
- The editor's Community tab got the same powers — search, categories, and sorting without leaving the editor.
- Improved
A dashboard worth opening
- Projects got real cards: a teaser of your actual code, language, format, and length at a glance — plus rename and delete right from the dashboard.
- Start a new project from the dashboard: the New project button opens a fresh editor that saves as its own cloud project.
- Render history now reads like English — labeled durations, sizes, and download deadlines instead of a wall of raw numbers.
- Billing shows your balance, plan, and exactly what a credit buys (1 credit = 1 minute of 1080p) before you spend anything.
- Overview cards link straight to top-ups, plans, and your render history, with a usage meter for project slots.
- Fixed
Line numbers respect blank lines
- Code with blank lines showed wrong line numbers in the video preview and in exports — every number after a blank line was shifted up. The gutter now matches your code exactly.
- New
Rate community templates
- Every community template can now be rated 1-5 stars from its share page — averages show up in the marketplace, share pages, and the editor's Community tab.
- One rating per person: rate again and your vote moves, it never stacks.
- Fixed the Community tab spinning forever — an empty marketplace now says so instead of loading indefinitely.
- New
Publish your templates
- Publish any animation as a reusable template straight from the editor — it gets its own share page and a spot in the new marketplace at /templates.
- Templates support {{variable}} slots: mark the values to replace, and whoever opens your template knows exactly what to fill in.
- The editor's template gallery grew a Community tab showing what others have published.
- Share links (devreel.dev/t/…) open the template in the editor in one click — with a live install counter on the page.
- New
Templates for real workflows, and a blog
- Five new templates in the gallery: Release notes, Repo hero, Code tip, Lesson walkthrough, and Launch day — one for each job people actually make code videos for.
- Templates can now set the window style and aspect ratio too (Repo hero opens in a terminal, Code tip is square for feeds).
- The DevReel blog is live at /blog with practical guides for each workflow.
- On phones, the editor now says so honestly instead of half-working — and you can tap to vote for mobile support.
- New
A fresh coat of paint
- This changelog — every update ships here, and the ✦ button in the editor lights up when there's something new.
- Built-in feedback: report a bug or request a feature right from this page, straight to the team inbox.
- New icon set across the whole app for a sharper, more distinctive look.
- Fixed
Shader backgrounds are real now
- Every shader preset previously rendered the same gradient wash — each of the 9 now has a real, distinct effect.
- New looks: aurora gradient mesh, layered liquid waves, glow particles, anime speed lines, noir spotlight, live film grain, paper cutout layers, halftone dot waves, and riso glitch.
- Effects render identically in the live preview, browser exports, and cloud renders — at every resolution.
- Improved
Cleaner export flow and settings
- Export modal rebuilt around two destinations: free on-device export and cloud render.
- One MP4 option instead of encoder jargon — the fastest available encoder is picked automatically.
- Duration is a free input now (1–60s), not four preset buttons.
- Settings panel redesigned as compact single-line controls — everything fits without endless scrolling.
- New window styles (Glass, Terminal, Blueprint, Brutalist) with live previews in the picker.
- Improved
Faster, more reliable rendering
- Cloud render pipeline sped up and hardened against job lifecycle edge cases.
- Local preview, browser export, and cloud render now share one timeline renderer — what you see is what exports.
- Render layout normalized across HD, Full HD, and 4K outputs.
- New
New dashboard
- Dashboard rebuilt with a sidebar layout covering projects, renders, billing, and API keys.
- Fresh app-wide theme with light and dark modes.