mpv on linux, vlc whenever i’m on windows.

no particular reason, just habit.

Count me in on the minimalist interface preference gang. I’ve been using it for probably more than a decade. Less nowadays that I watch content on my TV through my media center server, but on the off occurrence that I need to watch a file on my computer, mpv is my boo.

MPV, better colors , faster , lighter and has everything I need and nothing I dont

I use MPV, mostly because I like the simplicity of the on-screen interface.

But both are great players. No issues with VLC and it is a go-to if I ever have a file I can’t play otherwise (which is a vanishingly rare occurrence).

MPV>VLC

While they’re technically the same type of software, it’s still sort of like comparing apples to oranges.

VLC is your kitchen skink media players that comes bundled with basically everything possible.

mpv is more of a minimalist media player that let’s the user add the features themselves using add-ons.

Me personally prefer mpv since it’s minimal in every regard. I have turned of the OSC, and I use the keyboard for everything. I don’t use a lot of extras, but the ones I have, is add-ons I couldn’t probably live without, like yt-dlp and SponsorBlock (for YouTube).

I even use mpv as my music player with playlist that I manage using Neovim and the tool echo (to add new tracks to my playlists).

VLC has been disintegrating on Wayland, mpv became the default

I always went with VLC until something got messed up with new laptops nVidia drivers. For whatever reason VLC could not properly use dedicated GPU acceleration with open drivers.

That’s when I tried out MPV. I like it, I like the minimalism, I like the CLI. It’s been working great so far.

For someone more technical MPV, for anyone else I’d still recommend VLC.

For basic functionality both are great, but if I want to customise its settings VLC far more friendly.

MPV for what I read it is very powerful for customising everything but everything is hidden behind scripts.

VLC seems to be the gold standard. If you want to play something, it will. That should be more than enough for common users.

MPV, I can add custom scripts like cutting black bars for ultrawide monitors. And I like how customizable it is.

mpv. I like the minimalist UI. I have it configured to show no titlebar, just the video, and open by default in the corner of my screen at up to half the width of my display. It’s easy to customize with keyboard shortcuts, and by default it has sensible shortcuts for nearly everything. It’s easy to make videos with hardcoded letterboxing fit my full screen. It handles HDR and even Dolby videos (use gpu-next if you aren’t already). I can set default brightness/contrast/gamma settings, and then adjust them during playback if necessary with a single keystroke. I can adjust playback speed with a single keystroke. I can fix the aspect ratio of warped videos, again with a single keystroke.

As for VLC, well, it’s fine, really, and I’m not in the best position to say since it’s been a very long time since I used it regularly. So my experience is likely outdated. But back then, I found the UI a bit much, putting playlists front-and-center when I really just wanted to play individual files 99.99% of the time. It had too much going on besides the video. The GUI is great for discoverability but the more time I spend using something, the more I appreciate command-line usage and simple text-based config files.

VLC is my go-to recommendation for beginners, because everything is in the GUI, but mpv suits me better.

Functionally, both are similar. A few times over the years, one has adopted a critical feature a little bit before the other, like hardware acceleration for some specific codec, but for most videos they both do the job just fine.

MPV. I like the minimalism. and everything I need is under the hood in MPV.

Nowadays I only really use Jellyfin, but before that I exclusively used mpv. As for why, I just felt it worked a bit better (not sure if it has to do with codecs) and I liked how it suited terminal based workflows.

I watch quite a bit of anime and a lot of subtitles seem to be in a format that includes advanced features such as stretching/shrinking text, rotation, karaoke effects and what have you. I think the sub format is actually called .ass or .ssa, but don’t quote me on that.

Anywho, I tried watching some random anime a few years back and was using VLC at the time. VLC detected the subtitles, but couldn’t do anything outside of just displaying them. It couldn’t do the advanced effects. So, I switched to MPV which just worked and have been using it ever since. As I said, this was a few years back and VLC probably can do advanced subtitles at this point, but eh. I’m too used to MPV now.