A new version of Clapper, a GTK4-based video player for Linux desktop has been released — the first major update in nearly 2 years.
I first wrote about Clapper back in 2021 having been seduced over by its slick user interface (a superficial reason to like a media player, I know), its use of GStreamer, and a small but focused feature set that wasn’t trying to distract me with features I’d never need.
Subsequent updates to the app refined and expanded those selling points further and player remained my preferred video player, despite the lack of any major update since 2022.
Well, now the app is back — and the changelog suggests it was worth waiting for.
Clapper 0.6: What’s New? 🍿
Clapper’s code has been rewritten and split out into pair of new libraries (clapper, a playback library; clapperGTK, a GTK integration library), with a GUI on top.
The developer says this approach makes future development easier and enables others to leverage Clapper’s libraries in their own apps.
As part of this foundational switch the way playback operates in the app has changed, with it adopting “media queue” support. And a number of queue mode behaviours are available to select: No progression, Consecutive, Repeat item, Carousel, and Shuffle.
Another nice touch: the queue list uses the necessary APIs to show (where able) proper media titles for each queue items rather than, as in some other players, the raw file name or stream URL (if playing a stream, because Clapper supports those as well as local video/music files).
The media queue in Clapper 0.6 integrates nicely with MPRIS (MPRIS integration in general is said to be much improved in this version) meaning prev/next actions can be triggered using keyboard media keys, which is a useful (literal) touch.
It’s also possible to see detailed info on media files playing. Clicking the new info-dot icon at the top of the screen opens a pop-over. This shows a slew of attributes regarding codec, encoding, resolution, bitrate, whether hardware acceleration is being used, etc.
Clapper 0.6 changes at-a-glance:
- Revamped user-interface
- Player operates using playback queue
- Various new status/info overlays
- New video buffering animation
- Missing GStreamer plugin notifications
- Video chapters show in seek bar on hover
- Improved MPRIS support
- Expanded WebSocket server functionality
- Maximum volume amplification level raised to 200%
- Speed and queue progression modes are restored on launch
See the Github release notes for (a lot) more detail on this release.
Otherwise, to install Clapper 0.6 on Ubuntu (as well as most other Linux distributions) to try out the changes firsthand, yeet yourself in the direction of Flathub.
• Get Clapper on Flathub
Thanks Scotty_Trees