VLC is bloated—these lightweight alternatives are faster and more powerful

Published Sep 12, 2026, 2:00 PM EDT Sydney Butler is a technology writer with over 20 years of experience as a freelance PC technician and system builder and over a decade as a professional writer. He's worked for more than a decade in user education. On How-To Geek, he writes commerce content, guides, opinions, and specializes in editing hardware and cutting edge technology articles. Sydney started working as a freelance computer technician around the age of 13, before which he was in charge of running the computer center for his school. (He also ran LAN gaming tournaments when the teachers weren't looking!) His interests include VR, PC, Mac, gaming, 3D printing, consumer electronics, the web, and privacy. He holds a Master of Arts degree in Research Psychology with a minor in media and technology studies. His masters dissertation examined the potential for social media to spread misinformation. Outside of How-To Geek, he hosts the Online Tech Tips YouTube Channel, and writes for Online Tech Tips, Switching to Mac, and Helpdesk Geek. Sydney also writes for Expert Reviews UK. He also has bylines at 9to5Mac, 9to5Google, 9to5Toys, Tom's Hardware, MakeTechEasier, and Laptop Mag. VLC will always have a place on any Windows, macOS, or Linux PC I own. It's been the Swiss Army knife of media players for decades at this point, and you'd be forgiven if you simply stopped looking once you found the one media player to rule them all. But, the world of software doesn't stand still, and in the world of FOSS (Free and Open-Source) software, there's always another fork in the road leading to a more refined, or at least more niche player that might better suit your needs. I'm not saying you need to give up on VLC, but it's worth having more than one option on the table. mpv The power user’s VLC alternative As much as I love VLC, it does sometimes feel like it has too many buttons. The underlying media engine VLC uses is powerful, but it probably doesn't need to expose so many features to average everyday users. The mpv app takes the opposite approach. If you open the player, you'll literally see nothing but a minimal rectangle with a prompt to drop a file in it to play the video. But that simplicity is pretty deceptive. Once a file starts playing, you'll get access to the normal set of playback controls everyone expects, but you can go so much deeper if you choose to. You could argue it's even more tweakable than VLC, and it does not skimp on the features. It supports hardware-accelerated decoding, HDR playback, color management, frame interpolation, advanced video scaling, custom shaders, audio filters, subtitle styling, and an enormous collection of command-line options. The real power of mpv is released when you make use of its scripting engine, and even if you don't write them yourself, you'll find community scripts to do all sorts of things. For example, add thumbnails or automatically select the right audio tracks and subtitles. The downside is mainly that the mouse controls are quite basic and there's not much in the way of menus. It's a keyboard-first design if you want more advanced functions, and you can customize your hotkeys from inside mpv's settings menu. MPC-BE A tiny Windows player that stays out of your way Before I got hooked on VLC like everyone else, my go-to media player on my old dual-core Athlon PC was Media Player Classic, which is an ancestor to Media Player Classic-Black Edition. The original MPC copied the look and feel of the old official Windows Media Player, so it looked familiar, but under the hood, it and its descendants today are a completely different, open-source beast. It's nostalgic and minimalist, but there's plenty going on under the surface. With the original MPC from back in the day, you had to download big codec packs and install them separately. Otherwise, the original MPC could barely play anything. Luckily, this modern iteration includes the decoders you need to play just about any format you're likely to encounter. On top of that, you get extensive subtitle controls, playlist support, thumbnail generation, video-frame capture, multiple rendering options, hardware acceleration, customizable keyboard commands, and support for network streams. It's also a pretty light app in terms of system resources. Opens in a snap and is the right player for low-end office PCs and laptops, if you ask me. But for it to make a difference, those machines would have to be quite old and low-end. Even though MPC-BE is open-source, it's only available for Windows, which is the biggest black mark against it. My colleague, Nick Lewis, used it as his main Windows media player, and has mostly good things to say about the experience. Screenbox It makes open-source playback look like a modern Windows app I recently wrote about how Screenbox is a perfect middle ground between VLC and the standard Windows Media Player. So you can have a read of that if you want a more in-depth breakdown. However, the key value proposition here is that Screenbox runs on the same media engine as VLC (LibVLCSharp), but presents a more user-friendly interface and doesn't surface features most people don't need. Sadly, like MPC-BE, Screenbox is Windows-only. However, since it's a UWP app, you can also use it on Xbox consoles! This significantly expands the media playback capabilities of the console. Unfortunately, if you're using macOS, Linux, Android, or any of the numerous platforms that aren't Windows, you're probably best off sticking with VLC. Still, mpv works on just about everything too, and SMplayer is a solid multi-platform honorable mention too. Any of these options will serve most people's technical media needs, despite the individual tastes of only a few. Of course, since they are all open-source, you could always fork your own tweaked version. Especially since all the cool kids are now vibe-coding.