It’s a bad habit, but I hate relying on an operating system’s default video player. Windows 11 has one, I’m sure, but I don’t use it. In the past, I’ve used a variety of video players, such as SMPlayer and VLC Media Player. But, I decided I wanted something lighter, and less complicated. VLC Media Player is my fallback video/audio player, but I wondered, maybe there was something better? Or, to be honest, different?

Enter MPV

mpv is a free (as in freedom), open source, and cross-platform media player. It also works at the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. Source: https://mpv.io/

This is a minimalist type of media player, and looks fantastic on Windows. Even the playlist for playing multiple audio files appears on the screen, then disappears once the audio starts to play. Give it a spin. In the meantime, here’s what it looks like per one of the pics on their website:

Complete simplicity.