Bug Report — video.play() overridden by Vidstack state machine causing autoplay failure

[DnyaneshwarWantace]

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name: Bug Report — video.play() overridden by Vidstack state machine causing autoplay failure
about: Bug

Related Problem:

When calling hls.on(Hls.Events.MANIFEST_PARSED, () => { video.play() }) on the native video element inside onProviderChange / provider.onInstance(), Vidstack resets the video back to paused state after its internal initialization completes, cancelling the autoplay call.

Describe:

Vidstack wraps the native <video> element in its own state machine that tracks paused/playing internally. When HLS.js fires MANIFEST_PARSED and we call video.play() directly on the native element, Vidstack's internal state still says paused: true. Vidstack then calls video.pause() to sync the real element back to its internal state, immediately cancelling our autoplay.

Why it is inconsistent:

• Fast-loading content — MANIFEST_PARSED fires after Vidstack finishes initializing, so there is no conflict and autoplay works.
• Slow-loading content — MANIFEST_PARSED fires while Vidstack is still mid-initialization. Its state machine is in a transitional state and actively resets the video to paused after our play() call.

The autoPlay prop does not reliably prevent this either — the same race condition applies.

Alternatives:

We tried the following workarounds, none of which consistently solved the issue:

• Using the onCanPlay prop instead of MANIFEST_PARSED
• Mute → play() → unmute trick to bypass browser autoplay policy
• Delaying play() with setTimeout
• Listening to Vidstack's own onProviderChange and canPlay events

All of these still failed for slow-loading content because Vidstack's state machine fires after MANIFEST_PARSED regardless of when play() is called.

Anything Else?

This issue forced us to remove Vidstack entirely and replace it with raw HLS.js + a plain <video> element, which removed the conflict completely and fixed autoplay 100% of the time. We would prefer to use Vidstack but cannot until this state machine conflict is resolved.

Expected behavior: If autoPlay is set, or if video.play() is called during MANIFEST_PARSED, Vidstack should not override the playing state during or after its own initialization.