Q2 2026: Vonage Developer Recap

It’s been a busy second quarter of the year, but then again, every time we write a retrospective, that is pretty much always the case! Not one for standing still, there’s a plethora of innovative releases to recap, including areas around:

• Video API

• Voice API

• Messages API

• Network-powered solutions for security

So, join the Developer Experience team to look at new ways you can build and integrate your applications using Vonage as we go into a bit more depth with new products and features.

The Big Updates: Video

Video has seen the most features rolled out across Vonage, so let’s dive into them.

New Video and Audio Connector SDKs and Pipecat Transport for AI Apps

Previously, developers who wanted AI to access raw media in a Vonage Video session had to use the complex Linux C++ SDK.  The new Video Connector SDK and Pipecat Transport eliminate this complexity by using Python instead. With the new SDK, you can:

• Use AI to join a backend session

• Subscribe to participant streams

• Receive PCM audio and raw video through callbacks

Similarly, at the launch of the Video Connector, we also announced a companion Audio Connector SDK. The Audio Connector handles WebSockets for you, so audio can now be seamlessly connected within Vonage Video to AI services.

Pairing this with Pipecat Transport unlocks plenty of new features, such as video avatars, sentiment and/or emotional detection, multi-model agents, and real-time translations for video features. With audio, you can use Pipecat Transport to integrate audio AI services such as AWS Nova Sonic, Deepgram, and OpenAI.

All of this is without touching WebRTC and only in Python. As someone who has always looked at C++ and thought I was looking at science fiction, it makes me particularly happy.

Video API 2.34: Network Insights and Expanded Browser Support

The new Video API release sees a welcome introduction of real-time network conditions for both publishers and subscribers. There are now five levels of network health that can be read in by a new event, networkConditionChanged(). This allows for a much better experience for subscribers, who are now given the ability to determine whether degrading network health is coming from the publisher or in local traffic.

Some feature parity has also been released, so now the background blur features will work in Safari and Firefox, as well as the existing working functionality in all Chromium-based browsers. The API features have shipped in SDKs for JavaScript, Windows, and Linux. iOS and Android.

Native VERA 1.1 Release: Meeting Controls and Screen Sharing

VERA stands for Vonage Example Reference Application, and is a set of demo applications that show implementations of features for a better Video developer experience. In Native VERA, advanced meeting controls have now been added in 1.1. The following features are now demonstrated per platform:

Android

• Pin participant

• Mute participant

• Speaking-on-mute detection

• Redesigned captions and noise suppression implementations

iOS

• All of the Android features described above

• Screen-sharing using ReplayKit

Remember, these are intended as examples for production-grade applications, so the amount of reference you get out of the box is significantly larger.

React Native SDK 2.33.0 Release: Publisher Degradation Preference

We thrive on feedback from developers, so one of the most-requested features for the Video React Native SDK has been the ability to use Publisher Degradation Performance.

Using this feature now allows developers to choose how to change video quality when restrictions are introduced by CPU or by poor network health. How you want your app to respond to these restrictions will vary depending on your use case; a healthcare app, for instance, would possibly not want to sacrifice high-quality image transmission, or motion in a sports stream would always need as smooth motion as can be achieved. You might also want to consider how to allocate resources if you are on something low-powered, like an IoT (Internet of Things) device.

With the major feature also come the usual bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements in TypeScript, as well as some new types to harden the code. You’ll want to check the release notes before upgrading.

Security and Network-Powered Capabilities

Zero-Tap Verification for WhatsApp

Our Verify API has continued to evolve with the exciting introduction of Zero-Tap Verification, as tech security moves towards a more passwordless world. Android users now have the ability to implement automatic reading of One-Time Passwords (OTP) without end users having to leave your application.

As Always: More Vonage Announcements

The Vonage API Power for Kiro Launches

We’re always looking into new ways to harness the power of AI, and this quarter has seen us Introduce the Vonage API Power For Kiro, Vonage being the first Cloud Communications Platform to do so as a bonus exclusive. Using the Kiro AI platform, you now have full access to Vonage’s entire suite of products: Voice, Messaging, Network-Powered solutions, and Video with frictionless IDE integration. This launch is part of an ongoing series of collaborations as part of our partnership with AWS, which has seen Vonage’s products also launched on the AWS Marketplace.

The Vonage Email API Is Now In Open Beta

As part of the Messages API, we’ve just announced that the Email channel is now in Open Beta, and available to use for managed customers that request it. This means more options for developers, removing the need for external services when handling things such as campaign Emails and the option to have a fallback that uses it or falls onto another channel.

Community

As always, we’re out and about connecting and talking to developers about Vonage, or what you are working on and excited about. Here’s a brief roundup of Q2’s events:

Office Hours

Vonage has launched Office Hours, a laid-back session that anyone who is building with Vonage APIs, or wants to get started or walk through debugging, can attend. You can have a look at our upcoming scheduled sessions in the launch blog post. 

Vonage At NY Tech Week

Vonage headed to NY Tech Week and saw talks from our very own Benjamin Aronov and Autumn Moss Penaloza. Our startup scheme is proving to be a hit: as part of NY Tech Week, we hosted over 100 startup founders and technologists, where a panel of Vonage and AWS team members discussed the future of AI, scaling up successfully, and what is needed to support early-stage teams.

Laravel London @ Vonage London

An ongoing partnership with Laravel London (and the Laravel community itself) saw us hosting in our London offices, with talks from Matilde W. Enevoldsen, Dan Johnson, Freek Van Der Herten and James Brooks in the past quarter.

Claude Code Central London @ Vonage London

Another of our regular series in London, the CCCL meetup regularly sees us welcome many developer guests to our London offices, with over 1000 registrations and a healthy turnout. Doing our bit for the community!

Latinas In Tech @ Vonage London

Another of our regulars at the London office, headed up by our very own Amanda Cavallaro as part of a new partnership with Latinas in Tech. Amanda spoke on starting out with Agentic AI use with MCP servers in Claude and Gemini, plus a little Hackathon to boot!

Liz Takes over The Bay Area

It’s kind of exhausting trying to keep up with the amount of local meetups in The Bay Area that our own Liz Acosta is currently attending and speaking at. Whilst we cannot list them all for fear of running out of article space (which might break the CSS), she spoke at SF Python hosted by Sentry on June 17th and PyLadies SF on June 25th, both on Pydantic. Keep your eyes open if you are based around there, and you’re sure to bump into her soon!

Coming Up

We never stand still, so as we continue to roll out more network-powered features across our product suite and continuously improve our AI and Developer Experience, keep up to date with us on the blog. While the team heads off to work on these, it’s back to experimenting with Laravel for me, until next time!