MetaSlider Gallery 2.38: Video Galleries Are Here!

This post is about a release of the MetaSlider Gallery plugin. This is the quickest, easiest, and most stylish way to add a photo gallery to your WordPress site.

MetaSlider Gallery 2.38.0 makes galleries more useful for mixed media sites: you can now add uploaded videos to galleries and play them in the lightbox alongside your images.

---

Video galleries are here!

The headline feature in this release is video support. You can now add videos in the same way you build image galleries. Visitors can open the videos and watch them in the gallery lightbox without leaving the page.

In the Free version of MetaSlider Gallery, you can add videos from your Media Library and also from Livid.com.

In the Pro version of MetaSlider Gallery, you can add also videos from your YouTube and Vimeo.

MetaSlider Gallery uses a video’s cover art when available, or captures a poster from the video and saves it to your Media Library when needed.

---

Other updates and fixes

• Lighter video pages: The unused video.js library was removed, saving 633KB on pages that load video.
• Open with improvements: Carousel and Showcase layouts also gain a new “Open with” setting. This lets you choose whether a click on an image, icon or button opens the gallery window, which is especially helpful when you want a clearer call to action on interactive layouts.
• Clearer editor labels: Empty galleries now say “No images or videos added yet,” and Livid items are labelled “Livid.com” in the editor.
• Upgrade page refresh: The Free vs Pro comparison now includes video galleries and highlights Pro features such as Before & After, Likes, Download Sizes, Photo Metadata, Image Protection and Watermarking.
• Pro feature visibility: Free users will now see locked rows for Watermark, Photo Metadata and Likes, plus a locked Before & After layout tile.
• Email sign-up polish: The sign-up window is shorter, clearer and prefilled with the email address from your WordPress user account.
• Security hardening: Lightbox caption sanitization has been tightened for safer caption display.

---

Developer improvements

MetaSlider Gallery 2.38.0 also expands extension points for add-on developers, especially around custom gallery items, video providers and layouts.

• Gallery item extensions: ml_gallery_items, ml_gallery_pro_item_controls and ml_gallery_video_placeholder support custom item handling and per-item controls.
• Layout extensions: ml_gallery_layouts and ml_gallery_layout_fields let add-ons add layouts and layout-specific fields.
• External video support: Hooks such as ml_gallery_resolve_item, ml_gallery_is_video_item and ml_gallery_add_menu_items help add-ons integrate provider-backed videos.
• Frontend customization: The gallery data attribute and thumbnail caption extension points now receive more context from the current render.

This post provides an overview of the new features in this release of the MetaSlider Gallery plugin. The complete changelogs for both Free and Pro versions are available in our Docs area.