Summary: when I read people saying PotPlayer was the best video player for Windows I didn't expect it to actually be true, but it is. Without doubt it's the video player with the most features, and you can tell that just from looking at the size of its main menu.
First Impressions
Before running: I'm a bit wary of this since it's a freeware video player that's somehow not open source. Usually I'd assume this is a virus or something illegitimate, e.g. someone stolen the source code of an open source project and repackaged it to make it look like they wrote it themselves, but it does seem to have a Korean corporation behind it, a decade old history, and it has been recommended and written about elsewhere on the web. Besides, it does disclaim to use FFMpeg, and that it can be replaced, so it must be somebody who at least knows how licenses work. Its website does look very suspicious, nevertheless, because it has so little information about the project itself except for a download link.
After running: it seems there is a list of videos in Korean in this application, from the Internet. So they have been making everyone who downloads PotPlayer watch Korean videos online, and these have ads in Korean as well. This is some sleaziness I can trust. The application isn't a virus. It's an ad, which is a legitimate business model.
I do find it odd that the website has so little information, nevertheless. It seems there are two websites, [https://potplayer.daum.net/] (official website, according to the about dialog of the application) and [https://potplayer.info/]. The websited linked by the about dialog doesn't have a changelog, but the other website does, and according to the Wayback Machine it has existed since at least 2011. Perhaps most of the information is in Korean. I think it would help their credibility if they put more information about the project in the website of the project.
Supported Formats
I've tried opening a few different files in PotPlayer to check if it supports them.
| Format | Support |
|---|---|
| WAV | ✅ Yes. |
| MP3 | ✅ Yes. |
| FLAC | ✅ Yes. |
| OGG | ✅ Yes. |
| WMA | ✅ Yes. |
| AIFF | ✅ Yes. |
| MIDI | ✅ Yes. |
| Format | Support |
|---|---|
| AVI | ✅ Yes. |
| MP4 | ✅ Yes. |
| WebM | ✅ Yes. |
| MKV | ✅ Yes. |
| WMV | ✅ Yes. |
| MOV | ✅ Yes. |
| FLV | ✅ Yes. |
Main Interactions
Main Pane
✅ All behaviors can be customized through Preferences -> General -> Mouse.
❌ Left click: does nothing. ✅ But I can customize it to "Play / Pause playback" the way I like it so it's fine.
✅ Right click: displays main menu as context menu.
✅ Double click: pauses / unpauses.
✅ Middle click: enters full screen.
✅ Scroll wheel: changes volume.
Keyboard
✅ All behaviors can be customized through Options -> Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard.
✅ Spacebar: Play / pause.
✅ Left and Right Arrow Keys: seek backward and forward 5 seconds. Modifier keys: with Ctrl held it's 30 seconds, and with Shift held it's 1 minute.
Playlist
✅ Has sibling traversal. PotPlayer can play the next video in folder if your configure it. First, check Preferences -> Playback -> Load next/previous files in play folder. ⚠️ To go to the next file, RIGHT CLICK on the "next" button under the progress bar. If you left click on it it will just seek forward 5 seconds. This is unexpected behavior, but it's documented in the tooltip of the button, so I think it's okay.
✅ Playlist has its own window: by default, the playlist is a side pane. The side pane can be hidden by clicking on a button on the bottom bar. It's possible to detach the playlist by clicking on the tiny yellow triangle on top-right corner of the tab.
I was going to mark this as impossible to do because I couldn't drag the tab to detach it, nor was there an option in the context menu, or in the preferences dialog to do it, but then I found Dave's tip and it seems it’s actually possible, just not obvious at all.
- https://davescomputertips.com/streaming-with-potplayer/ (accessed 2025-04-21)
Looping
✅ Can loop a whole playlist. This can be done through the main menu: Playback -> Enable Playback -> Enable: Repeat Playlist. ⚠️ I expected this to appear as a button somewhere or at least in the context menu of the playlist pane, but it's only found in the main menu. After writing this, I finally found the button. It’s a tiny button that appears above the volume slider when you are playing music.
✅ Can loop a single file. Playback -> Enable Playback -> Enable: Repeat Playlist Item.
✅ Can loop a segment of a file. Through the menu Playback -> A-B Repeat. This is probably the longest A-B Repeat menu in the history of A-B Repeat menus.
Shuffling and Playback Order
✅ Can traverse the playlist in random order. Through Playback -> Use shuffle playback mode.
✅ Can shuffle the items of an existing playlist. Playback -> Playlist -> Sort by -> Randomly. For the record, this option in inside a submenu, inside another submenu, inside a third submenu, inside a dropdown menu. It's not every day I open four menus side by side like this.❌ The appearance of this menu item is a radio box, misleading the user into believing that you can't sort by randomly twice as it’s already enabled after you click on it for the first time. You can, in fact, click on this multiple times to re-shuffle the playlist.
✅Playlist has a view mode with thumbnails. There is even a menu item to reload the thumbnails.
✅ The playlist can be sorted by Title, Name, (file) Extension, Size, Duration, and Date. Both Ascending and Descending. ⚠️ No options for Artist or Album.
✅ Can modify order manually by clicking on arrow buttons.
Playback
✅ Has a progress bar.
✅ The time elapsed is displayed on the bottom bar together with the length. It's possible to replace time lapsed with time remaining by clicking on it.
✅ Can seek by clicking on the progress bar.
✅ Has a windowed minimal interface. ❌ It's activated by clicking on the maximize/restore button? What? This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. As a workaround, you can still maximize by double clicking on the titlebar.
Casting
❌ Can't cast to a smart TV using Chromecast. The term "casting" and "broadcast" can be found through the app, but it's likely this is about livestreaming, as PotPlayer was originally called "aum Live" and remains related to KakaoTV.
Full screen
✅ Can go full screen.
✅ Pressing the Esc key leaves full screen mode.
✅ The interface is hidden while in full screen. It reappears only when you move the mouse cursor to one of the edges of the screen. Ideally the interface should reappear when you move the mouse at all, but I guess this is good enough.
Speeds and Frames
✅ Can play at different speeds through Playback -> Speed. ✅ Ranges from 0.2x to 12x.
✅ Can go to the next frame of a paused video. Playback -> Jump to -> Next frame.
✅ Can go to the previous frame of a paused video.
✅ Can also jump to keyframes.
✅ Can save the current frame of the video with Video -> Video Capture. It can capture the source frame, the screen frame (post-processed), and even consecutive frames. And it can even record video. Why is a video player capable of recording video? I don't know, but it can do that.
Audio
✅ Has a volume control.
✅ Clicking on the speakers quickly mutes and unmutes the audio.
✅ A volume slider can be clicked on to set the volume at any time with one click.
Music Playback
✅ Has an equalizer. To use it click on the cog button at the bottom bar. A dialog will appear. Click on the audio tab and enable the equalizer. There are also several equalizer presets available that you can quickly select.
✅ Has visualizations. Few, but it does have them. It seems to use Windows Media Player visualizations. The menu item to download more opens a Microsoft article that reads "This article has been retired." Besides WMP, it has a sound spectrum, which is something, I guess, and a "floating ball" visualization. This "floating ball" isn't even a visualization. It's a screensaver. It's just circles moving at constant speed diagonally bouncing off the edges of the main pane. They don't seem to react to sound in any way whatsoever. I've never felt more disappointed with a visualization in my life.
✅ Can display the cover picture of a music album.
Video Audio Playback
✅ Can switch between languages in videos with multiple audio streams. Audio -> Select Audio Stream.
Subtitle Support
✅ Can display embedded subtitles. Subtitles -> Add/Select subtitles.
✅ Can load subtitles from a file. Subtitles -> Add/Select Subtitles -> Load Subtitle.... The open file dialog lists the following supported extensions: ,smt, .srt, .sub, .psb, .ssa, .ass, .txt, .idx, .usf, .xss, .ssf, .rt, .sup, .lrc, .vtt, .sbv, .xml, .ttml, .ytt, .md, and .json.
✅ Can retime the subtitles. Press the comma (,) and dot (.) keys to move backward and forward by 500 milliseconds, respectively.
An impressive number of other subtitle features, including using online translation services to translate subtitles, search for subtitles on platforms such as OpenSubtitles, and generate subtitles from audio using an AI model?! Are you kidding me? It downloads Whisper AI from OpenAI and runs it locally? Wow. That's impressive. That's extremely impressive. I thought I was jumping on a rundown pirate ship. It's a shiny and sparkling spaceship. I'm sorry for doubting you, PotPlayer.
File Properties
✅ Has a dialog for file properties that includes the title, performer (artist), album, genre, date, codecs of a file and other information, accessible through Playback/system information.
Other Observations
❌: Doesn’t have a menubar. Instead it has a top-left button that displays the main menu, which is organized typical menubar fashion, implying it was once a menubar. The complexity of submenus in PotPlayer likely stems from the fact it was originally supposed to be a horizontal menubar that became a “vertical dropdown menubar.”
✅ As a general guideline, I like to think that the quality of a software is directly proportional to the number of menu items it has. The smaller the menubar, the less the application can do. In this sense, PotPlayer is absolutely glorious in that it has an immense menu. I'm pleasantly surprised at how ridiculously immense this menu is, not just in breadth but also in depth. That said, even to me having 10 separate menu items for setting and moving the positions of A-B markers for segment looping feels a bit too much. In general, dropdown menus close when you click them, so actions that are expected to be repeated multiple times, such as "Move point A 0,1 sec backward" shouldn't be in dropdown menus. Some applications I've reviewed in the past masterfully worked around this by cancelling the default behavior of dropdown menus, forcing them to persist even after an item has been clicked on. This isn't the case with PotPlayer. The menu disappears. If users really need this level of control over A-B loops, perhaps a separate dialog for editing A-B points would make more sense along with menu items for the basic functionality of just setting A and B. The same could be same about many similar menu items found in the application, e.g. "Decrease Brightness by 1%," "Decrease Top Margin (of Frame Size)" could be separate dialogs for adjusting brightness and contrast, and for adjusting margins. Well, to be fair, for brightness and contrast a dialog DOES exist, it's in the cog, but the menu items for them weren't removed, so that didn't really solve anything. The only reason I can imagine to have this many menu items if there is some policy that everything that should have a keyboard shortcut should be a menu item.
✅ Every keyboard shortcut can be customized in the preferences dialog.
PotPlayer is an incredible piece of software and it's impossible not to recommend it. It checks pretty much every checkmark you can think of. Its only drawback is that its VOD pane is in practice an ad for the Korean KakaoTV, but you can easily remove the VOD pane by detaching its tab and then closing it, so that's not really an issue at all. Without doubt this is the free Windows video player with the most features I've reviewed so far.