Out of the box, Windows 11 comes with a fairly solid media player, which is aptly called Media Player, or Windows Media Player. These days, the Windows Media Player is very different from the one you may remember back in the Windows XP or Windows 7 era, and it's better in some ways and worse in others.
Ultimately, though, it's not a perfect solution, and many people prefer using open-source software that is completely free. Open-source solutions have the added benefit of total transparency as to what's in the code, in addition to allowing everyone to contribute new developments, which helps keep these programs up to date with the latest standards.
As such, if you want to replace Windows Media Player with an open-source solution, there are a few options out there for you. So let's look at some of best ones.
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Audacious
For managing your audio library
One of the the things that the old Windows Media Player did better than the current one was managing your library of songs, and if audio is your primary use case, the Audacious is a great alternative solution.
Audacious is a very simple and straightforward app, especially in its default mode which has a very barebones UI. But you can dive into the program's settings and enable a more complex UI mode that provides a good, if somewhat basic library management system. You can import your whole collection by pointing to the folders where your songs are, and they'll be categorized by genre and artist to make them easier to find. You can also create as many playlists as you'd like to listen to the songs you care about.
Playback-wise, you can apply effects to your audio files on the fly and change various options, but at the end of the day, this is a fairly basic, but capable audio player. It also supports internet streams as long as the format is compatible.
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Audacious
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MPV
Minimalist media player
If you want a more fully featured media player, MPV may be the one for you. This is an extremely barebones video player UI-wise, but that means it's extremely lightweight, and it does its job just fine. While there isn't much of a UI to speak of, you can drag and drop files to play them easily, and you can also do that for subtitles if needed.
The media player UI is tiny and makes it easy to focus on the video playing, which might be a plus if you just want a simple tool that does the job quickly. It's meant to mostly be used in the command line, which is why the UI side of it is so minimal, but that may be a plus.
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MPV
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SMPLayer
Putting an UI on top of MPV
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Moving up the ranks, we have SMPlayer, another open-source solution that actually uses MPV as a base. MPV is meant to be used in the command line, so SMPlayer builds all the necessary components on top to make it more usable as a GUI for the general user.
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SMPlayer is a pretty complete solution too, though the UI may feel a bit childish and old-school. It can play video and audio without issues since it uses MPV as its media engine (you can also use Mplayer, if you prefer), and it supports things like dual subtitle tracks, internet streams, and more. It also touts support for basically every audio and video format and codec that matters, so whatever you want to play, you should be good to go.
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Clementine
Taking music playback to the next level
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Back on the audio library side of things, another popular solution is Clementine, which is a more robust offering than Audacious. Clementine offers a more complete UI right out of the box, and it has a lot better organization. It immediately loads up all your tracks under the right artist, with an easy-to-navigate list on the left side of the screen. It also automatically creates random playlists and some based on your most (and least) played songs, so you have a few options for enjoying your library right from the get-go.
Of course, you're free to create and manage your playlists as you see fit, and Clementine also supports a lot of internet services for pulling your music from them.
What's more, it also integrates with a wide range of radio services, so you can listen to radio stations all over the world easily. I checked the Portuguese list and it populated with dozens of radio stations, though a lot of them didn't actually play. That was just one service, though, so there are plenty of other options for streaming internet music.
Clementine is a completely free app, and it's so popular that there's even a fork of it called Strawberry, though if you're a Windows user, you'll have to pay up to get access to that one.
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Clementine
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MPC-HC
One of the greats
Now we're getting into the top dogs here, and MPC-HC is one you've probably heard of. It's a complete, but lightweight media player solution that does everything it needs to do, and nothing it doesn't. It supports just about every video and audio codec you can think of, and it gets frequent updates to ensure just that.
As you'd expect, it also supports subtitles, looping a section of a video, and even saving your last position during playback, so you can easily pick up where you left off during a long movie. It also supports streaming from YouTube and other websites thanks to optional integration with yt-dlp.
There's only so much you can say about a media player, but MPC-HC is one of the greats, and it's been recommended for years.
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MPC-HC
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VLC Media Player
The king of media players
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We couldn't have a list of media players without mentioning VLC. In fact, VLC is such an established name that it barely matters whether this is a list focused on open-source software or not. It's simply one of the best, most popular, and most compatible video players out there, with plenty of features to boot.
First off, VLC supports just about any kind of video, audio, and subtitle file, so whatever format you have your movies in, it should be able to play it. Not to mention it supports DVD playback, which Windows Media Player doesn't offer with a special add-on pack. Of course, internet streams are supported, too, including webcams, and you can record these streams to save offline, too.
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One of the cool features I didn't know about until recently is that VLC can even go online to search for subtitles for your movies, so if you don't know where to find the right subtitles, you can just let VLC do it for you.
This is an app that's been a juggernaut among media players for well over a decade, and it's still the best option to this day.
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VLC
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Don't limit yourself to the Windows tools
No matter which of these options you end up going with, there are some great alternatives to Windows Media Player out there, and if you want to play music and movies without running into any problems, all of these are great solutions. Personally, I just recommend VLC for everything, it's the ideal player for any kind of movie or video you want to watch, and it goes above and beyond to make things easier for users. The other options are great, too, though.
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