Windows 11’s new Media Player plays both videotape and audio, and it replaces Groove entirely for thelatter.However, dangle tight, If you are flowing Windows 11 and have not seen the makeshift Media Player app yet. It’s advancing in an update. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to offer the Pictures & Television app, which also plays videotape and services the movie and Television show content available in the Microsoft Store. These two apps are not your only options for media players in Windows, and relatively honestly, knowing which one you need can be confusing. Do not worry! We will tell you then which apps you need for distant purposes and also offer a deep look at the new Media Player app.
How to Get New Windows 11 Media Player
The new Media Player app arrived between the big periodic Windows “ point updates” — those with names like 22H2. It’s a durability of Microsoft’s one- time claim that Windows has come a service rather than a set interpretation of software. I ’m all for that. It also means that some druggies admit the update before others, so if you ’re still seeing Groove, give it some time.
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You wo n’t ascertain Microsoft’s makeshift Media Player listed among the apps in the Microsoft Store — it presently still appears as Groove there. Some spots have narrated that you can get the new app by streamlining that store entry, but it came out in my system as part of a commonplace Windows update.
Introducing Windows new Three (or Four) Media Players

Media players carried in Windows own taken numerous casts over the times. The introductory Windows Media Player has breathed about in one fashion or another since 1991. The Pictures & Television app, also attainable in Windows 11, lets you watch vids kept locally or online as well as shows you can buy or rent in the Microsoft Store. Groove — which is being replaced — plays music stored locally or in the pall. The tired- feeling Windows Media Player that approached with Windows 7 has been dangling around in Windows for further than a decade. and it’s accessible in Windows 11, too.
In the new scheme of effects, if you class “ Groove” into the Windows hunt box, the substitutive Media Player pops up, and if you class “ Windows Media Player,” the ancient one presents itself. That’s right, Windows 11 includes three apps (four if you count Groove before it gets replaced) that recreate videotape lines and two that play audio. The apps differ in how you ’d use them, still.
Playing Music in Windows 11’s New Media Player
As adverted, the new Media instrumentalist app isn’t in the Microsoft Store. The only road to get it’s by streamlining Windows. Once it appears, Groove will be gone, and any playlists you held in that app will now show up in Media Player.
Windows 11 Media Player app interface
The new Media Player app derisions five mode dials below a hunt box niche, Music, Video, Play Queue, and Playlists. The Home runner shows any lately played media. The buttons’ functions are fairly egregious, but you can expand them into card accessories with the three- line hamburger card at the top — if you widen the app’s window, these menus expand, too.
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In the Home view, you can open specific media lines as well as urls for streaming media. This works for both videotape aqueducts ( then’s an illustration) and audio aqueducts. It’s not, still, for streaming YouTube or Vimeo vids (you can do that in CyberLink’s PowerDVD). See the Streaming Music and Radio section below for further on streaming audio in Media Player.
What Does New Media Player Support?

The new player supports all standard audio train formats — including lossless FLAC and open- source formats like Ogg Vorbis. I was also suitable to play both5.1 and 7.1 compass sound samples.
How you can Add Music to the Media Player
You do n’t open sound lines in the Music section, though you can in the Home section. Rather, then you tell the app which flyers to watch (the Music brochure makes the utmost sense) and any audio lines in those flyers appear in the Media Playerinterface.However, you can find the music train using Train Explorer and open it with Media Player, If you just want to play a specific music train that is not in a watched brochure.
As with any good music player, the new Windows Media Player gives you choices for how to music from your roster and playlists, including equivocation, straight play through, and reprise.
Equalizer in Windows 11 Media Player app
A Speed regulator lets you change the playback speed. An equalizer is for conforming audio situations at different frequence ranges for both audio and videotape playbacks. I love that the equalizer can move bordering sliders automatically to avoid unforeseen drop-offs. Indeed more useful are the equalizer’s presets, which optimize the sound for playback on laptop, headphones, auto speakers, movable speakers, and to boost the bass. The laptop setting actually bettered the sound for me. Note that the music stops shortly when you acclimate and close the equalizer.
You can skip ago 10 seconds or ahead 30 seconds using the on- filmdom levers or Ctrl- left arrow and Ctrl-right arrow. I was surprised that the big fun button did n’t react to tapping on my contact film, still.
Right- clicking on a track in the playlist opens some options, similar as setting the track to play next, adding it to your line or a playlist (I will explain how they are different in a moment), showing its parcels or artist, and opening its metadata to edit it. The Play line is simply the list of melodies or vids lined up for playing next, you can add to this line by right- clicking on any media entry, choosing Add to> Play line.
Add to playlist in Windows 11 Media Player
Playlists are batches of tracks that you deliver and can play at any moment. You produce one simply by tapping the New Playlist dial in the Playlist view that exhibitions when you choose the nethermost icon on the leftism. Add songs to playlist the same way you add them to your line. You can elect multiple songs to add in the Music archive view, and you can add whole compendiums and artist sets from there, too.
Album art in Windows 11 Media Player
When you ’re playing a song, tapping its reader cover in the lower left changes the app display to a full image view with a picture supplied in the reader. The program can recoup reader and artist images from online sources, just as utmost other music players do.
Miniplayer mode tucks the application into a little box toward the side of your screen. You can resize this to a veritably small square showing nothing further than the artist image with pause, play, and skip buttons onhover.However, you also see the square reader cover art on the leftism, If you enlarge theMini-player kindly. The little player is generally on top of different windows, for consistently accessible admittance to those controls
The Parcels view shows you all the metadata — title, reader, time, track, length, artists, kidney, as well as the the train format and bit rate. Note the illustration below is a lossless FLAC train, which sounds fantastic. Also note that the train lives in OneDrive, so you could pierce it from any internet- connected device.
Streaming the Music & the Radio in New Windows

Not only can you produce your own playlists in the app, but you can open online streaming playlists — which includes numerous internet radio aqueducts. I tried it with SomaFM, which publishes. pls and. m3u train download links for its aqueducts. It would be nifty if Microsoft included an internet radio- chancing point in the app, but I happed upon an excellent tool for chancing similar aqueducts The Radio Stream URL search machine.
Playing Videotape in the Windows 11’s New Media Player
As with audio, Media Player supports all major (and a bunch of minor) videotape formats and codecs (55 at present), including open source bones like MKV and OGV. The same note about adding flyers rather than opening lines holds true for videotape, though your videotape flyers are separate from your audio flyers.
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I was suitable to play indeed an 8K videotape train shot on my Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra in the new app, while the old Windows Media Player said that it encountered an error when trying to play it. One limitation I ran into, still, was that the new Media Player was unfit to render a 360- degree clip, which the Pictures & Television app could do.
All the same controls mentioned over for audio also work for videotape changing the speed, skipping ahead and back, the equalizer, viewing train parcels, and making playlists and a play line. The videotape player adds a couple of videotape-only features, still, including Drone to Fill for removing letterboxing and closed caption support for vids that contain that data.