Windows Media Player (or simply Media Player) is a video and audio player developed in UWP by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

for

Windows 11 Windows 11 is a version of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released on October 5, 2021, as the successor to Windows 10 (2015). It is available as a free upgrade for devices running Windows 10 that meet the #System requirements, Windo ...

and subsequently

backported Backporting is the action of taking parts from a newer version of a software system or software component and porting them to an older version of the same software. It forms part of the maintenance step in a software development process, and it is ...

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

. It is the successor to Groove Music (previously Xbox Music), Microsoft Movies & TV, and the original

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

. It began rolling out to Windows 11 Insider channels in November 2021 and then to all users starting in January 2022. It was later released to Windows 10 users in January 2023.

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 A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

to a

media player Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...

. Other changes to the app include the album cover view being in fullscreen, and a refresh to the mini player. Accessibility has also been optimized in this new version, with some improved

keyboard shortcuts In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most Operating system, operating systems and Application software, applications come ...

and

hotkey In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most operating systems and applications come with a default set of keyboard shortcu ...

support for keyboard users and with other assistive technologies. Some features from the original Windows Media Player were initially not included, such as DLNA local streaming and the

ripping Ripping is the extraction of digital content from a container, such as a CD, onto a new digital location. Originally, the term meant to rip music from Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was applied to ripping WAV or MP3 files from digital audio ...

CDs CDS, CDs, Cds, etc. may refer to: Finance * Canadian Depository for Securities, Canadian post-trade financial services company * Certificate of deposit (CDs) * Counterfeit Deterrence System, developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence ...

. Ripping was eventually reintroduced in July 2022 for Windows 11, supporting the AAC, WMA, FLAC, and ALAC formats.

Supported formats

This is a list of known supported formats in Media Player on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

References

Windows 11 Microsoft Windows multimedia technology Windows media players Microsoft software 2022 software {{Windows-software-stub