- Astro Weekly
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- Astro Weekly #96
Astro Weekly #96
Astro 5.13 ships experimental features, making your site dynamic with live webmentions, showing Spotify Now Playing in Astro
Nathan Lawson
August 17, 2025
Hello, Astronauts!
The summer lull is officially over — Astro 5.13 has landed with new experimental features to make life as an Astronaut that little bit simpler.
Elsewhere, the community is sharing ways to make your site more dynamic with Astro live content collections and Spotify’s web API.
There’s plenty to explore, so let’s dive in! 🚀
What’s new with Astro 🗞️
Fresh features, updates, and announcements. The latest from Astro HQ!
Sitemaps on the map
Astro 5.13 simplifies environment variables 🍀
Astro 5.13 introduces a new experimental flag for import.meta.env, plus support for Chrome DevTools workspace, multi-sitemaps, and more.
Here’s what’s new in Astro 5.13:
🧪 Static import.meta.env (experimental): A simpler, more predictable way to handle env vars, aligning with Vite. This will become the default in Astro 6.0.
🛠️ Chrome DevTools workspace support (experimental): Save CSS and code tweaks straight from your browser back into your local project.
🗺️ Multiple sitemaps: Add external sitemaps to your Astro sitemap index — perfect for multi-framework sites on the same domain.
🚨 Hosted error pages (experimental): Load prerendered error pages from a specified host, ideal for proxies and container setups.
📊 Astro DB enums: New enum support for text columns, improving type safety in your DB definitions.
☁️ Cloudflare KV local support: Use Cloudflare Workers KV in local dev, or connect to production data during development.
To upgrade, run npx @astrojs/upgrade, or check the full Astro 5.13 release post for more details.
Astro Boosters 🚀
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Astro Community 🧑🚀
Spotlight on what’s shining in the Astroverse.
Mentions incoming
Fetch webmentions with live content collections 📡
Dave Freeman shows how to use Astro’s live content collections — introduced back in Astro 5.10 — to pull in and display webmentions on blog posts.
By building a custom loader, Dave’s setup lets posts dynamically fetch and display mentions at runtime instead of being locked in at build time.
Now Playing: ASTROWORLD
Display your Spotify “Now Playing” in Astro 🎵
Tommy Palmer demonstrates how to add a Now Playing section to your Astro site using Spotify’s web API and a Svelte component.
From authorization to rendering live track data with Astro’s Islands Architecture, it’s a practical guide for showing visitors what you’re listening to in real time.
Spotted in the Astroverse 🪐
A few standout posts from the community that grabbed my attention!
If you have something awesome you’d like to share with the Astro community, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X
Blazing-fast Astro themes ⚡
A clean, minimal blog template
Feather is the ultimate Astro blog template for authors and writers seeking a seamless blend of beautiful design and powerful SEO.
With elegant typography, a focus on readability, and flawless Core Web Vitals, it’s built to elevate your content and your search ranking.
Astro on X 🛰️
Tuning in to the Astro frequency on X!
Astro appreciation post.
This framework is criminally underrated.
Been building all my static and content-heavy sites with it and the DX is unmatched.
Zero-JS by default, partial hydration when you need it, and it plays nice with React.
It just works and it's fast.
— Shayan (@ImSh4yy)
7:39 PM • Aug 14, 2025
Direct link for web version:
https://x.com/ImSh4yy/status/1956078170219929688
Astro Boosters 🚀
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Astro Showcase 🤩
Fresh from the launchpad: Astro sites worth a look!
That’s all we have time for this week!
If you’re building something cool with Astro or have some wisdom of your own to share, let’s hear it! Drop me a line at [email protected] or send a DM on X.
Until next time, Astronauts.
– Nathan 🧑🚀