Ladybird browser eyes HDR video support down the line

Andreas Kling, the lead developer for the Ladybird browser, has confirmed that HDR video support is still on the to-do list.

The post attached below shows the response from Andreas to a query on X, where someone asked about HDR support on Ladybird.

So, this confirms that the browser still lacks HDR playback, though most basics have improved recently.

The browser already lets users change the playback speed without warping voices, and allows muted videos to autoplay. However, it may take a while before support for HDR is added.

For those unaware, Kling is the project president of the Ladybird Browser Initiative, which is a non-profit. A small engineering team supported by community testing runs this project, and they’ve built the entire engine from scratch, without using any code from Chromium, WebKit, or Gecko, making it a highly ambitious project.

It aims to create a truly independent browser, which is free of the usual corporate data collection or user monetization. Initially, it began as a simple HTML viewer inside SerenityOS and grew into a standalone engine.

Progress on features is fast-moving. It recently gained file downloads with progress tracking, a dedicated downloads page, and proper browsing history (via about:history), along with real OS sandboxing. More on that here.

Additionally, memory usage has dropped nearly 80 percent on heavy pages like X timelines. We covered that here. To those concerned about ad-blocking, Brave’s ad-block engine is being used, making it reliable. There are also vertical tabs (which appear on the left or right).

However, many features people use daily are still absent, so for most people, it’s not suitable as a primary browser just yet. We don’t have full Windows support, HDR, and more. Building and using Ladybird is a rather complex process, involving cloning the GitHub repository and then compiling it yourself. There’s no public one-click installation yet.

The project is currently in active pre-alpha development. The core team closed the public contribution queue to stabilize the code, ahead of the first alpha release. A beta version is expected in 2027, followed by a stable/public release in 2028. While enthusiasts can still build and test the browser out, we’re around 2 years away from a public build.

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