Discover Showtime, the promising new video player from GNOME

We enjoy a cinematic lineup of epic Linux video players, like VLC And MPlayer as a big name comes A-list appeal – but get that popcorn ready because a potential new star is on the scene.

Streaming has become the preferred way to watch video content these days, but there’s still room for a versatile, user-friendly, offline media player, even if it’s just for infrequent use, like previewing a clip to upload online for others to stream. .

Ubuntu comes with Totem (a.k.a Videos) as the default video player because it is also GNOME’s default video player.

But upstream, the role seeks to be recast.

Showtime – A sequel to Totem?

GNOME developers are working on a nascent replacement for Totem.

Totem saw its last major update in 2022, making it appear unmaintained. Additionally, the UI still uses GTK3 and has not yet been ported to GTK4 (which will require an overhaul). All in all, there’s quite a bit of work to be done and yet apparently no one has stayed behind the scenes to direct it.

Hence the creation of a standalone suite (if you will), called Show time.

Show time uses the GStreamer framework to manage video and audio playback. It makes full use of GTK4/libadwaita to deliver a modern and immersive user interface that also seamlessly adapts to different screen sizes, including mobiles and tablets.

Right away, Show time is part of the GNOME Incubator program.

In the Incubator, projects are refined and fine-tuned in collaboration with GNOME contributors, designers, and project managers to meet strict criteria, such as following GNOME design guidelines, integrating well, and delivering an experience high quality user.

Incubator projects can graduate to become part of the GNOME Core software suite. If Show time makes the cut, he will join the former students as Magnifying glass (image viewer) and Instant (camera app).

Show time The tagline is “distraction-free viewing” and it lives up to its name. When you play a video, the window is borderless and the player and window controls are overlaid on the canvas. These controls disappear after a few seconds to allow the content to shine.

If you tried Instantthe new GNOME camera app that replaced Cheese in extended installations of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS you will be familiar with this approach. The same will be true for users of the GTK4 video player Flying.

Indeed, Show time use libraries Flying Version 0.6 introduced earlier this year.

Show time also remembers your location between sessions so you can close it, reopen it, and pick up where you left off. It also has options to move forward/backward in 10-second increments, take a screenshot, open the currently playing video in the file manager, and view subtitles.

It is likely that more features will be added to Show time in the coming months (although GNOME apps will focus on core features, i.e. don’t expect UPnP support, wacky CRT video filters, etc.) and interface user refined – what is shown above is just a rough cut.

How to test Showtime video player 🍿

Want a preview screening of Show time before its future premiere? You can, just keep in mind that this is development software. As a work in progress, it may contain bugs, performance issues, and other quirks that affect playback (and your enjoyment).

You can retrieve the source from the Show time Gitlab and compile the application by hand. But you don’t need to put in this effort because it’s easy to install GNOME nightly apps on Ubuntu using Flatpak.

Obviously you need to install Flatpak on Ubuntu first as it is not included by default. It’s a simple apt install flatpak and you’re done.

Next, run this command to add the official GNOME Nightly Flatpak repository to your system:-

flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo

Finally, run this command to install the Show time nighttime construction: –

flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gnome.Showtime.Devel

Because GNOME Nightly apps use the GNOME Nightly runtime, the first app you install from this repository will need to extract it. The Flatpak CLI is upfront about what additional packages are required, their download size, etc.

After that, you are ready; launch Show time From the application launcher, open a video file and see if you like it.

You will notice that the application icon and the title bar of the application window (when visible) have a “warning strip” style stripe. This reminds you that you are using a development version and not a stable version.

Let me know how you get on!