Best Media Players for Linux
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Compare the Top Media Players for Linux as of November 2025
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What are Media Players for Linux?
Media players, also known as video players, are software applications that enable users to play a wide range of video, audio, image, and media file formats. Third party media players and video players typically offer a wider range of features and file format compatibility than default media players. Compare and read user reviews of the best Media Players for Linux currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
VLC Media Player
VideoLAN
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VideoLAN is open-source software. This means that if you have the skill and the desire to improve one of our products, your contributions are welcome.Starting Price: Free -
2
Amarok
Amarok
Amarok is a powerful music player for Linux, Unix, and Windows with an intuitive interface. It makes playing the music you love and discovering new music easier than ever before, and it looks good doing it! Much of where work has been invested in Amarok 2 is the Web services integration. Now Amarok can connect to various Web services and access the music directly, greatly expanding the potential number of songs at your fingertips. Thanks to the powerful API, adding additional services can be done with very little effort. Scrobble and listen to any Last.fm radio stream with fully featured Last.fm integration. Buy tracks from the integrated Magnatune store, and help support the music labels. Connect remotely to an Ampache music server and browse search, and playback media files. Find, subscribe, and download audio and video podcasts from all over the ultimate podcast directory. Listen to streaming audio books straight from the Librivox catalog.Starting Price: Free -
3
Deepin Movie
Deepin
Deepin Movie provides an intuitive easy-to-use operation interface and rich complete shortcuts. You can complete all play operations by keyboard, which will make you thoroughly get rid of the constraint of mouse clicks. Video files in various formats can be played through Deepin Movie, and you can use the streaming function to easily enjoy online video resources. Deepin Movie is a full-featured video player developed by Deepin Technology, which supports playing local and streaming media in multiple video formats. The newest beta version is based on git code and compiled by auto build program, the program may be in an unstable situation.Starting Price: Free -
4
Parole
XFCE
Parole is a modern simple media player based on the GStreamer framework and written to fit well in the Xfce desktop. Parole features playback of local media files, DVD/CD, and live streams. Parole is extensible via plugins, for a complete how to write a plugin for Parole see the Plugins API documentation and the plugins directory which contains some useful examples. Parole is a modern simple media player based on the GStreamer framework and written to fit well in the Xfce desktop. It is designed with simplicity, speed, and resource usage in mind. Parole features playback of local media files, including a video with subtitles support, audio CDs, DVDs, and live streams. Parole is completely free, meaning anyone can use it, redistribute and/or modify it under the GNU general public license. GStreamer Base plugins comprises the base functionality of GStreamer and are required for normal operation. GStreamer Good plugins comprises a set of high quality plug-ins under the LGPL license.Starting Price: Free -
5
Kaffeine
KDE
Kaffeine is a media player. What makes it different from the others is its excellent support of digital TV (DVB). Kaffeine has a user-friendly interface so that even first-time users can start immediately playing their movies, from DVD (including DVD menus, titles, chapters, etc.), VCD, or a file. Media player with support for digital television (DVB-C/S/S2/T, ATSC, CI/CAM) It is now possible to run Kaffeine from Docker without installing it on your machine by using Docker. You need to have Docker already installed and configured. By default, libVLC will try to use hardware acceleration on the machine with Kaffeine. As described in Kaffeine's documentation, xmltv files are now supported. Kaffeine's internal logic will map the channels obtained by the grabber into the channel names it has stored internally.Starting Price: Free -
6
Bomi
Bomi
A powerful and easy-to-use multimedia player. Bomi is a multimedia player formerly known as CMPlayer, which is aimed for easy usage but also provides various powerful features and convenience functions. Just install it and enjoy it! There will be already what you expect. If you don't like it, you can configure almost everything. Bomi is a graphical user interface(GUI) player based on mpv for Linux. By taking the advantage of MPV and GUI, Bomi provides various features. Bomi provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface(GUI). You can find all features in the context menu. All configurations can be done in a preferences dialog. Bomi records all playback history by default and provides a way to resume playback later. Bomi also tracks playback states such as selected audio/loaded subtitles etc. Bomi can generate a playlist based on the file name. Also, the last played playlist is saved and restored automatically.Starting Price: Free -
7
Audacious
Audacious
Audacious is an open-source audio player. A descendant of XMMS, Audacious plays your music how you want it, without stealing away your computer’s resources from other tasks. Drag and drop folders and individual song files, search for artists and albums in your entire music library, or create and edit your own custom playlists. Listen to CDs or stream music from the Internet. Tweak the sound with the graphical equalizer or change the dynamic range with audio effects. Enjoy the modern Qt-themed interface or change things up with Winamp Classic skins. Use the plugins included with Audacious to fetch lyrics for your music, display a VU meter, and more. The new release includes several small improvements that have been made over the past year. This release brings the Qt UI to Windows and includes a variety of community contributions. Audacious runs on Linux, on BSD derivatives, and on Microsoft Windows.Starting Price: Free -
8
Music Player Daemon (MPD)
Music Player Daemon
Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music. Through plugins and libraries, it can play a variety of sound files while being controlled by its network protocol. An experimental Android build is available on Google Play. After installing and launching it, MPD will scan the music in your music directory and you can control it as usual with an MPD client. Each plugin usually needs a codec library, which you also need to install. Check the plugin reference for details about the required libraries. Even though it does not “feel” like a Windows application, MPD works well under Windows. Its build process follows the “Linux style” and may seem awkward for Windows people (who are not used to compiling their software, anyway). Audio outputs are devices that actually play the audio chunks produced by MPD. You can configure any number of audio output devices, but there must be at least one.Starting Price: Free -
9
Rage
Enlightenment
Rage is a video and audio player written using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL) with some interesting features. Rage is a simple video and audio player intended to be slick yet simplistic, much like Mplayer. Use the command line to play media files or just drag and drop them onto the Rage window to add them to a playlist. Run Rage with no command-line arguments to enter video browser mode. From here you can display a graphical overview of everything on your playlist by hitting the / key or just hovering your mouse over the right-hand side of the window. Rage also has a full set of key controls. It automatically searches for and displays album art when playing music if they aren't already cached. It even generates thumbnails for video timelines and allows you to preview clips by hovering your mouse over the position bar at the bottom of the window. Rage will cache any album covers it downloads for future use.Starting Price: Free -
10
Baka MPlayer
u8sand
Baka MPlayer is a free and open-source, cross-platform, libmpv-based multimedia player. Its simple design reflects the idea of an uncluttered and enjoyable environment for watching tv shows. Gesture seeking, smart playlist, dim desktop, hardware accelerated playback (vdpau, vaapi, vda). YouTube playback support (and others). Multilingual support (we are looking for translators!). Baka MPlayer was designed around the font called Noto Sans. Noto Sans was used because of its open-source nature and its broad support for Unicode characters. Having the correct font installed insures that what you see is what was intended. By default, Baka MPlayer will compile in English if no language is specified during compilation. For more configuration options see the configure source file or read the manual.Starting Price: Free -
11
Snappy
The GNOME Project
Snappy is an open-source media player that gathers the power and flexibility of GStreamer inside the comfort of a minimalistic clutter interface.Starting Price: Free -
12
Miro Player
Miro Player
It's very easy to switch from iTunes to Miro -- without any copying. Just point Miro to your music and video folders and those files will appear. If you don't like Miro (impossible!), nothing's changed. You'd have to be crazy to use a music player that doesn't sync to your phone. Miro is simply the best music and video player for Android phones and tablets. When two Miro's are on the same wifi network, they can stream and transfer music and videos to each other. It's the easiest way to watch a video or play music upstairs if the file is downstairs. Unlike some other media players (cough, cough), Miro is not trying to run your life! Not only is Miro 100% free and open-source, it's made by a non-profit organization. You don't need to be locked down by one corporation to have a great media experience.Starting Price: Free -
13
MPlayer
MPlayer
MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies. Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, and DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low-level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.Starting Price: Free -
14
Haruna
KDE
The playlist is automatically populated with files from the same folder as the file opened for playback. The playlist can be opened by moving the mouse to the left or right side of the player (depending on user set up, right by default), with a shortcut (P by default) or through a button if opening with the mouse is disabled. The playlist can also overlay the video or push/resize it. Most actions in Haruna can be triggered with a keyboard shortcut that can be configured by the user. Assign actions to mouse buttons: left, middle, right single and double clicks, as well as scroll up and down.Starting Price: Free -
15
TagSpaces
TagSpaces UG
TagSpaces is privacy aware, cross-platform file browser with note-taking capabilities. It helps you organize your files and folders with tags and colors. Free downloads are available for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android. With the built-in advanced markdown editor, you can create notes that can include tables, todo-lists, math formulas, or diagrams. TagSpaces can connect to any folder on your hard drive and provide a convenient way to browse its content. You have the ability to add labels called tags to any file or folder. Using tags along the folder hierarchy allows you to have cross-references in the folders. The built-in search allows you to find files with any combination of tags. On top of that in the Pro version, you can add descriptions and geo-tags to files and folders. The Pro version gives you the ability to turn every folder to a Kanban board, which can be useful in many ways. With the TagSpaces Web Clipper, you can collect web pages and bookmarks from the Web.Starting Price: $39 per year -
16
Plexamp
Plexamp
Experience your music collection as you’ve never seen it before, with our UltraBlur backgrounds, over a dozen hypnotic visualizers, and four visual themes to satisfy every taste. Radios built from your library and your cooler friends' collections. Travel through time, pick a style or mood, or listen album-by-album like the purist you are. Use the Mix Builder to explore and craft your perfect blend. Explore your personal charts and see what you were into last Fall or your top albums from the 60s. Grab a few hours of your favorite playlist or stations with just a few taps. Download a custom mix or artist radio for the plane. Simple but powerful offline support for when you’re in the woods or run out of cellular data. Loudness leveling, true gapless playback, Sweet Fades™, soft transitions, a configurable preamp, custom EQ profiles, and more. Perfection for golden ears, buttery smooth touches for the rest of us. Custom pre-caching so your music keeps playing.Starting Price: Free -
17
Clapper
Flathub
Simple and modern GNOME media player. Clapper is a GNOME media player built using GJS with GTK4 toolkit. The media player is using GStreamer as a media backend and renders everything via OpenGL. The player works natively on both Xorg and Wayland. It also supports hardware acceleration through VA-API on AMD/Intel GPUs, NVDEC on NVIDIA, and V4L2 on mobile devices. The media player has an adaptive GUI. When viewing videos in "windowed mode", Clapper will use mostly unmodified GTK widgets to match your OS look nicely. When the player enters "fullscreen mode" all GUI elements will become darker, bigger, and semi-transparent for your viewing comfort. It also has a "floating mode" which displays only video on top of all other windows for a PiP-like viewing experience. Mobile-friendly transitions are also supported. We improved the GL/GLES context automatic selection. Additionally, it also has a few patches, thus some functionalities work better (or are only available) in Flatpak version.Starting Price: Free -
18
Kodi
Kodi
Kodi puts your smart TV to shame. Kodi plays almost every kind of media you can find and looks great while doing it! Here are just a few things Kodi excels at: Your music collection has never looked this good! Support for almost every format, playlist, party mix and more. So much better than a pile of DVDs on a shelf. Kodi brings your movie collection to life with artwork, cast, genres and more. Perfect for binge-watching or the occasional catch-up on your favorite show. Kodi keeps all your tv organized like nothing else. Kodi allows you to watch and record live TV all from an easy-to-use interface. It works with a number of popular backends including MediaPortal, MythTV, NextPVR, Tvheadend and many more. Kodi isn't just for passive entertainment media. You can also play games on Kodi. Pick from a large number of emulators, or even play a stand-alone game. There's even extensive support for game controllers.Starting Price: Free -
19
mpv
mpv
mpv is a free (as in freedom) media player for the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. mpv has an OpenGL, Vulkan, and D3D11 based video output that is capable of many features loved by videophiles, such as video scaling with popular high quality algorithms, color management, frame timing, interpolation, HDR, and more. mpv can leverage most hardware decoding APIs on all platforms. Hardware decoding can be enabled at runtime on demand. A straightforward C API was designed from the ground up to make mpv usable as a library and facilitate easy integration into other applications.Starting Price: Free -
20
SMPlayer
SMPlayer
SMPlayer is a free media player for Windows and Linux with built-in codecs that can play virtually all video and audio formats. It doesn't need any external codecs. Just install SMPlayer and you'll be able to play all formats without the hassle to find and install codec packs. One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave but don't worry, when you open that movie again it will be resumed at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, and volume. SMPlayer is a graphical user interface (GUI) for the award-winning MPlayer, which is capable of playing almost all known video and audio formats. But apart from providing access for the most common and useful options of MPlayer, SMPlayer adds other interesting features like the possibility to play Youtube videos or download subtitles.Starting Price: Free -
21
GNOME Videos
GNOME
Also known as Totem, Videos is a movie player designed for GNOME. Features plugin support. Included as core application since GNOME 2.10 release. All your videos are automatically gathered, all you need is to pick and play one. Several video channels can be accessed directly and simply via Videos. The simple interface of Videos let you focus on what is really important: your watching experience. Fluendo for sponsoring Ronald Bultje and Tim-Philipp Müller's work on GStreamer backend. Collabora for sponsoring Tim-Philipp Müller's work on GStreamer backend.Starting Price: Free -
22
Strawberry
Strawberry
Strawberry is a music player and music collection organizer. It is aimed at music collectors and audiophiles. With Strawberry, you can play and manage your digital music collection, or stream your favorite radio. Strawberry is free software released under GPL. The source code is available on GitHub. Strawberry is a fork of Clementine. It's written in C++ using the Qt toolkit and GStreamer. Strawberry is compatible with both Qt versions 5 and 6. Strawberry is free software, both free as in freedom and as cost, but is depends on donations from our users. There are few developers, and most of the development is done by one person. Strawberry has become very popular over the past few years with hundred of users. Maintaining the application, running all the services, providing releases and dealing with bugs and technical issues is a time-consuming job. -
23
Dragon Player
Dragon Player
Dragon Player is a multimedia player where the focus is on simplicity, instead of features. Dragon Player does one thing, and only one thing, which is playing multimedia files. Its simple interface is designed not to get in your way and instead empower you to simply play multimedia files. Due to using Solid and Phonon DragonPlayer is independent of any multimedia framework or hardware abstraction layer. -
24
Clementine
Clementine
Clementine is a modern music player and library organizer. Clementine is a multiplatform music player. It is inspired by Amarok 1.4, focusing on a fast and easy-to-use interface for searching and playing your music. Search and play your local music library. Listen to internet radio from Spotify, Grooveshark, SomaFM, Magnatune, Jamendo, SKY.fm, Digitally Imported, JAZZRADIO.com, Soundcloud, Icecast, and Subsonic servers. Search and play songs you've uploaded to Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Create smart playlists and dynamic playlists. Tabbed playlists, import and export M3U, XSPF, PLS, and ASX. CUE sheet support, play audio CDs, visualizations from projectM. Lyrics and artist biographies and photos. Transcode music into MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, FLAC, or AAC. Edit tags on MP3 and OGG files, and organize your music. Fetch missing tags from MusicBrainz. Discover and download podcasts. Download missing album cover art from Last.fm and Amazon.Starting Price: Free -
25
JRiver Media Center
JRiver Media Center
JRiver builds networked media solutions for end users and corporate partners. Products include streaming, downloading, and subscription of audio and video content, unparalleled portable device support, P2P, DLNA, and DRM. JRiver also publishes Windows to Unix/Linux network connectivity software, with over two million users in 50 countries. The company markets its ICE product line through worldwide distribution.Starting Price: $59.98 one-time payment
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