Showtime
GNOME's video player, with simple playback controls, subtitles, multiple audio tracks and screenshots.
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About Showtime
Showtime, listed in GNOME as Video Player, is a straightforward video player for the GNOME desktop. Playback controls fade out while you watch, and it covers fullscreen, adjustable playback speed, multiple language and subtitle tracks, and taking screenshots.
It is maintained by Laura Kramolis and installed from Flathub. Version 50.0 was released in March 2026. It suits people who want a clean player that fits the GNOME desktop rather than one with many settings.
Strengths
- Minimal interface with controls that fade out during playback
- Subtitle and audio track selection, and playback speed control
- Built to match the GNOME desktop
Limitations
- Linux only
- Deliberately few advanced options compared with larger players
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source as part of GNOME.
- License
- GPL-3.0
- Developer
- The GNOME Project
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- GNOME desktop users who want a simple, distraction-free video player
- Categories
- Media players, Video editing
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Showtime
Compare allSoftware that can replace Showtime for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Clapper
A GNOME media player built on GStreamer and GTK4, designed for simplicity and ease of use.
Clapper is another simple GNOME video player on GStreamer and GTK4, so format support depends on which GStreamer plugins are installed.
Celluloid
A simple GTK front end for the mpv video player on Linux.
Celluloid is a GTK front end for mpv on Linux that uses existing mpv configuration and keybindings, with advanced tuning done in mpv config files.
VLC media player
A free player that opens almost any video or audio file, disc or stream without installing a codec pack.
VLC is an open-source player that opens almost any format without codec packs and runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS, with advanced options buried in preferences.
Dragon Player
A simple KDE video player that plays video files and streams with minimal controls.
Dragon Player is a minimal KDE video player with subtitle and track selection, so it suits Plasma rather than GNOME while staying deliberately simple.
Haruna
An open-source KDE video player built on libmpv with automatic playlists and configurable shortcuts.
Haruna is a libmpv-based video player designed around KDE, adding automatic folder playlists, seek bar previews and online video playback through yt-dlp.
Parole
A lightweight GStreamer-based media player written to fit the Xfce desktop.
Parole is a lightweight GStreamer player made for Xfce that also plays DVDs, CDs and live streams and can be extended through plugins.
mpv
A minimal, scriptable media player with high quality video output and no real interface to get in the way.
mpv is a cross-platform, scriptable player with high quality video output and hardware decoding, but it has almost no graphical interface and relies on hand-edited config files.
SMPlayer
A front end for mpv and MPlayer that remembers where you stopped in every file you have ever opened.
SMPlayer is a cross-platform front end for mpv and MPlayer that remembers position, audio track and subtitles per file, with a dated Qt interface.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Decibels
A minimal GNOME audio player that opens and plays individual audio files without a music library.
Amberol
A simple GNOME music player for local files that plays music and nothing else.
Syncplay
Keep video playback synchronized across a group.
IINA
The mpv engine wrapped in a macOS app that actually looks and behaves like a macOS app.
mpv.net
A Windows media player built on mpv, adding a modern graphical interface and themes.
Video Speed Controller
A browser extension that adds keyboard shortcuts to speed up, slow down and rewind HTML5 video.
