I just use vlc
this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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If I had a complaint about VLC, it would be that it needs MORE settings. If a video is picking the wrong default language, there's no way to set a new default, you're just SOL and have to swap it every time. It's amazing that people looked at VLC and said "You know what this needs, less features", and then you spend forever looking up keyboard shortcuts you'll never remember.
A few years ago, I found Kaffeine and was so surprised that I never saw a video player before with controls in a collapsible sidebar.
Old screenshot, but this is what it looks like when a video is playing:
It seems like a rather obvious idea, but I guess, it doesn't get copied much, because most video players don't have a ton of controls to begin with...
i use mpv btw
So do all of them
Only one out of four. Showtime, Totem and Light Video all use GStreamer.
Hyperbole
mpv is cool because it can run shaders, which at some point I found someone made a shader & script to run FSR over the videos played on mpv lol.
Interesting, how did that turn out?
It does anti-alias a bit, but not very noticable for moving images/videos. I just think it's cool. I think it's also limited to FSR 2.
It's less noticable maybe because video doesn't have 3D data like realtime games that can be used by FSR like scene normal or depth buffer.
VLC is the one and only.
I guess it's a weird thing to complain about, but I stopped using VLC because I couldn't find a way to change the icon theme. The monochrome dark ones it uses by default make all buttons completely blank with catppuccin...
mpv my beloved
For me, its ffplay
ffplay is nice, but mpv has yt-dlp integration, and supports addons (love me some nice sponsorblock integration)
I like how ffplay treats the entire video as a progress bar. I can right-click anywhere to do precision seeking.
It's also very extensible through bash and other ffmpeg tools. I have it set up as a script on my system that scans the video file first with ffprobe to get the mean audio level of the file, then adjust it based on the universal volume level I have set when it opens with the player, so nothing ends up too loud or too quiet.
Piping yt-dlp output into ffplay is pretty simple too, but I prefer caching downloads to my Video directory first rather than watching them directly from my RSS reader.
yt-dlp also has sponsorblock support, btw.
yt-dlp also has sponsorblock support, btw.
didn't know that, deff will check it out
My only problem it can't fully play high quality flacs, still using it tho
I don't really use my software. I just gawk and marvel at its beauty, its slick form factor, its beautiful rounded curves. /s
What are you, an Apple fan?!
They just said they only use GNU awk. π /j
I guess these exist because GTK makes it easy to build sleek apps that do the basic function well, but the road to a more serious app with all the features people generally expect takes a thousand more issues.
Then they switch to Qt and realize that VLC and Haruna (a mpv frontend) already cover the bases.
When I switched from Windows the biggest problem by far was finding a good replacement for MPC-HC. VLC just feels clunky and mpv itself is just a cli app, not what a fresh Linux user is looking for. I did end up settling on Haruna since it has options that get me closer to MPC-HC than any other player.
Now that I am more familiar with Wine I am curious if MPC-HC would hold up.
VLC Criticism
have you tried mpc-qt? i heard it's pretty good. mpc-hc (the windows program) hasn't been developed for 9 years now, i don't think it's a good idea..
nice, i'm glad it's still being developed. it seems like there's also another fork named mpc-be.
You linked a fork.
Yes? That's open source for you.
I remember the days where mplayer was the only one that could get through semi corrupt 800MB DivX'es with only minor audio sync problems.
Today, I use MPV to handle the most screwed video files
vlc for the win
In all seriousness though, Cine is pretty nice.