Session Replay is evolving for scale, speed, and smarter insights

Modern product teams don’t just need more data. They need clarity at scale.

Session Replay has become an essential tool for understanding user behavior, bridging the gap between what users do and why they do it. Yet as products grow, so does complexity: more sessions, more platforms, more tools in the stack, and higher expectations for speed and insight.

In 2026, we’re focused on evolving Session Replay to meet that reality and making it easier to adopt, faster to learn from, and more powerful in day-to-day workflows. Here’s what’s new so far this year, and how it’s helping teams move from watching sessions to understanding behavior at scale.

Many teams today build cross-platform mobile apps using React Native, but until recently, that created a gap in replay visibility.

Session Replay now supports React Native apps, bringing parity across web, iOS, Android, and React Native. Teams can watch real user sessions across their entire product surface, without blind spots or workarounds.

For mobile teams, this means fewer gaps in understanding user experience and fewer tradeoffs when choosing a framework.

For teams using mParticle as their customer data platform, enabling Session Replay shouldn’t require re-instrumenting analytics from scratch.

With Session Replay support for mParticle on web, teams can capture replays alongside their existing event pipelines. Replay data stays connected to governed analytics context, reducing friction and making adoption simpler for CDP-first stacks.

As Session Replay usage scales, the challenge often isn’t finding replays…it’s knowing which ones are worth watching.

Playlists help teams group session replays into common behaviors or patterns they care about most. Instead of scrubbing through sessions one by one, teams can start with a playlist that represents a specific behavior, then jump into a few key replays for deeper context.

Today, playlists are created by defining filters or events. This makes it easier to move from “I hope I find something” to “I know where to look,” while laying the groundwork for even smarter automation ahead.

Adjusting Session Replay settings used to require engineering help, even for simple changes like updating data masking rules or sampling rates.

Now, teams can manage these settings directly in the UI. Sampling controls are fully self-serve, making it easier to move quickly, increase visibility when investigating issues, all without touching code or pulling engineers away from other high-value work.

Traditional heatmaps show where users click. But clicks alone don’t tell you whether users actually convert.

Goal Mode help teams visualize engagement patterns tied to a conversion goal they define, like a purchase, sign-up, or activation event. Instead of optimizing for surface-level interactions, teams can see which page elements are actually driving outcomes that matter.

This shifts optimization from “what gets attention” to “what drives results.”

Understanding a user’s experience often requires stitching together events, charts, and replays, which can be slow and manual. 

Session Replay is now integrated with the Mixpanel Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing teams to analyze replays using natural language. Ask questions like:

MCP combines governed event data with replay context to deliver faster, more complete answers. This lays the foundation for AI-assisted analysis that doesn’t just summarize activity, but helps teams understand patterns across sessions with confidence.

Together, these updates make Session Replay easier to adopt, easier to use, and more powerful at scale. Teams can:

These updates represent just the beginning of what we’re building for Session Replay in 2026.

As the year continues, we’re focused on making our Session Replay even smarter, more scalable, and tightly integrated into how teams understand and improve their products. 

If you’re already using Session Replay, there’s more to explore. And if you’re just getting started, now’s a great time to see how it can help your team move faster with more clarity. Explore Session Replay in Mixpanel today and get a smarter understanding of your users and their behavior.