An improved version of the (very sleek) Clapper video player is available to download.
I’ve written about this GStreamer-based GTK media player before, but it was a while ago and I haven’t mentioned it since. It’s picked up some new features in the intervening period, including experimental (and entirely opt-in) Pipewire support.
The latest version of Clapper, version 0.5, introduces a ‘new and improved GSrreamer video sink’. This switch introduces performance improvements and lays groundwork for future performance in the future, and handles overlay of subtitles.
If Clapper’s old sink worked well for you (and you find the new one doesn’t) you can switch to the legacy sink using an environment variable.
Clapper has removed its built-in support for YouTube playback, opting to shift the workload to a GStreamer plugin. Not wanting to upend users who used it Clapper, when installed from Flathub, comes with a plugin that can handle YouTube playback as well as that from a few other websites.
Additionally, networking now uses libsoup3, and supports D-Bus launching.
Get Clapper 0.5.1
Clapper is free, open source software designed for GNOME desktops (it’s a libadwaita app).
You’ll find the latest version of Clapper on Flathub, which supports installation on most modern Linux distributions (including Ubuntu).
Those on Arch-based distros can install Clapper from the AUR.