Popular Open Source Media Players
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A good media player should just play the file you give it, without hunting for missing codecs or nagging you with ads. Open source players have led on this for years — VLC in particular built its reputation on decoding almost anything with zero configuration, and the ecosystem now includes lighter, more specialized players too.
The players below range from VLC’s do-everything approach to mpv’s minimal, scriptable design, plus GTK/Qt-native players like Celluloid, Clapper, and Haruna built for Linux desktop environments, and IINA for a modern macOS-native experience.
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Popular Open Source Media Players
Celluloid
Simple GTK4 frontend for mpv
Celluloid (formerly GNOME MPV) is a simple GTK4 frontend for mpv, providing a clean GNOME-style interface over mpv's powerful playback engine.
Clapper
Modern GTK4 media player with GStreamer backend
Clapper is a free and open source GTK4 media player for Linux built for GNOME, using GStreamer as its backend with hardware-accelerated playback support.
Haruna
Qt-based media player built on mpv
Haruna is a free, open source Qt-based media player for Linux built on the mpv backend, with playlist management, YouTube support, and picture-in-picture.
IINA
The modern, native media player for macOS
IINA is a free, open source media player built natively for macOS on top of mpv, offering a modern Mac-native interface as an alternative to QuickTime Player.
mpv
A free and open source media player based on MPlayer and mplayer2
mpv is a free, open source, cross-platform media player with GPU-accelerated video playback, a minimalist on-screen controller, and scripting support.
VLC Media Player
Free and open source cross-platform multimedia player
VLC Media Player is a free, open source multimedia player by VideoLAN that plays almost every video and audio format on all major platforms.