Windows Media Player (or simply Media Player) is a video and audio player developed by Microsoft for Windows 11 and subsequently backported to Windows 10. It is the successor to Groove Music (previously Xbox Music), Microsoft Movies & TV, and the original Windows Media Player. It began rolling out to Windows 11 Insider channels in November 2021 and then to all users starting in January 2022.[1][2] It was later released to Windows 10 users in January 2023.[3]
 | |
 Media Player running on Windows 11 in Light mode | |
| Other names | Windows Media Player 14 |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Microsoft |
| Initial release | November 2021 |
| Stable release | 12.0.22621.457 (September 20, 2022) [±] |
| Preview release | Windows 11: 11.2212.31.0 |
| Operating system | Windows 10, Windows 11 |
| Predecessor | Groove Music Microsoft Movies & TV Windows Media Player |
Features
The new version of Windows Media Player (or Media Player) now includes support for video files, as part of Groove Music's rebranding from a music streaming service to a media player.[4] Other changes to the app include the album cover view being in fullscreen, and a refresh to the mini player.[5] Accessibility has also been optimized in this new version, with some improved keyboard shortcuts and hotkey support for keyboard users and with other assistive technologies.[6]
Some features from the original Windows Media Player were initially not included, such as DLNA local streaming and the ripping of CDs. Ripping was eventually reintroduced in July 2022 for Windows 11, supporting the AAC, WMA, FLAC, and ALAC formats.[7]
Supported formats
This is a list of known supported formats in Media Player on Windows 10 and Windows 11.[8][9][10]
| File Container | File Extension |
|---|---|
| MPEG-1 Audio Layer III MPEG-2 Audio Layer III | .mp3 |
| Free Lossless Audio Codec | .flac |
| Raw AAC stream Audio Data Interchange Format (ADIF) Audio Data Transport Stream (ADTS) | .aac, .adt, .adts |
| MPEG-4 audio-only file (AAC) | .m4a |
| Waveform Audio File Format | .wav |
| Windows Media Audio | .wma |
| Dolby AC-3 | .ac3 |
| 3GP and 3G2 | .3gp, .3g2 |
| Adaptive Multi-Rate | .amr |
| Matroska audio-only file | .mka |
| Ogg audio-only file (may contain various Xiph formats such as: Ogg FLAC, OggPCM, Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Opus)[11] | .oga |
| Ogg container (Vorbis) | .ogg |
| Ogg container (Opus) | .opus |
| File Container | File Extension | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MPEG-4 video Apple MPEG-4 video (MPEG-4 Part 2, H.264, H.265, AV1) | .mp4, .m4v | Dolby Vision, H.265 and AV1 playback requires installation of add-on from Microsoft Store. DTS Audio playback requires DTS Sound Unbound from Microsoft Store with DTS:X Decoder license. |
| QuickTime File Format | .mov | |
| Advanced Systems Format | .asf | |
| Audio Video Interleave | .avi | |
| Windows Media Video | .wmv | |
| BDAV MPEG-2 Transport Stream | .m2ts | |
| 3GP and 3G2 | .3g2, .3gp2, .3gpp | |
| Matroska video | .mkv | |
| WebM (VP8, VP9, AV1) | .webm | AV1 playback requires installation of add-on from Microsoft Store. |
| Ogg container (Theora) | .ogv |
| Streaming Protocol | URL Identifier |
|---|---|
| Shoutcast / Icecast (ICY) | — |
| HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)[12] | .m3u8 |
See also
- Groove Music – UWP-based music player; predecessor of Media Player for Windows 10 and Windows 11
- Microsoft Movies & TV – UWP-based video player and online store
- Windows Media Player – Win32-based "classic" media player app