Watching TV and films on computers running Linux is commonplace. Most Linux distributions ship at least one media player. But there are lots of high quality alternatives out there.
Wondering which media player we recommend? Here’s our verdict on mpv frontends. To avoid bamboozling readers, we’ve kept the number of featured media players to a sizeable number.
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.
Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. All the frontends are published under an open source license.
Click the links in the table below to learn more about each frontend.
| mpv front-ends | |
|---|---|
| Haruna | Admirable media player and a capable front-end for mpv |
| Kawaii-Player | Player, media library manager and portable media server |
| SMPlayer | Media player with built-in codecs |
| uosc | Minimalist proximity-based UI for mpv |
| MPC-QT | Clone of Media Player Classic |
| Celluloid | Simple GTK+ frontend for mpv |
| Memento | mpv-based video player for studying Japanese |
| xt7-player-mpv | (In)complete graphical interface to mpv, focused on usability |
| Deepin Movie | Billed as a full featured video player |
| MoonPlayer | Built using Qt and uses libmpv ffmpeg, and youtube-dl |
| Kylin Video | mpv and MPlayer front-ends using Qt |
| Baka MPlayer | Simple design reflects the idea for an uncluttered and enjoyable environment |
This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.
If you don’t want a frontend to mpv, we cover our favorite media players in this article.
Linux has tons of quality open source audio players which we cover separately in these articles: Graphical Music Players and Terminal-Based Music Players.
We don’t include media centers in this article as they are covered in this roundup: Best Free and Open Source Media Centers.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Know a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |
smplayer is the best, IMO.
SMPlayer is a front-end for MPlayer not mpv.
SMPlayer supports MPV
Our anti-spam system stops all external links in Comments by default.
SMPlayer is already featured in our media players roundup scoring a credible 7.5 out of 10. But equally it’s true that SMPlayer does support mpv. And it has for some years. We will look at updating the article accordingly. Thanks Vedun.
I had problems using mpv as the engine with SMPlayer. Might be something to do with my GNOME desktop and distro, but there are others who have similar issues.
It seems you’ve only written a review for Haruna. Why???
Because we have finite resources.
Please, add MPC-QT.
Agreed, MPC-QT is now included in this roundup.