We enjoy a cinematic lineup of epic Linux video players, with the likes of VLC and MPlayer serving as big-name, A-list draws — but ready that popcorn 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 a place for a versatile, user-friendly, offline-first media player, even if only for infrequent use, like previewing a clip to be uploaded online for others to stream.
Ubuntu ships with Totem (aka Videos) as its default video player by virtue of the fact it’s also the GNOME default video player.
But upstream, the role is looking to be recast.
Showtime – A Sequel to Totem?
GNOME devs are working on a budding replacement to Totem.
Totem saw its last major update in 2022, which gives the feeling it’s unmaintained. Plus, the UI still uses GTK3 and is yet to be ported to GTK4 (which will necessitate a redesign). In all, a fair bit of work to be done yet, seemingly, no-one sat behind the scenes to direct it.
Hence the creation of a standalone sequel (if you will), called Showtime.
Showtime uses the GStreamer framework to handle video and audio playback. It makes full use of GTK4/libadwaita to deliver a modern and immersive UI which also seamlessly adapts to different screen sizes, including mobile and tablet.
Right now, Showtime is part the GNOME Incubator programme.
In the Incubator, projects are honed and refined in collaboration with GNOME contributors, designers, and project leads to meet strict set criteria, like following GNOME design guidelines, integrating well, and offering a high-quality user-experience.
Incubator projects can graduate to become part of the GNOME Core software ensemble. If Showtime makes the cut it’ll join alumni like Loupe (image viewer) and Snapshot (camera app).
Showtime’s tagline is ‘watch without distraction,’ and it lives up to the name. When you play a video the window is borderless, and both player and window controls are overlaid on the canvas. These controls fade away after a few seconds to allow content to shine.
If you’ve tried Snapshot, the new GNOME camera app that replaced Cheese in expanded installs of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, you’ll be familiar with this approach. So too will users of GTK4 video player Clapper.
Indeed, Showtime makes use of the libraries Clapper 0.6 release introduced earlier this year.
Showtime also remembers your position between sessions so you can close it, reopen, and pick up where you left off. It also has options to skip forward/back in 10s increments, take a screenshot, open the playing video in the file manager, and show subtitles.
It’s likely that more features will be added to Showtime in the coming months (though GNOME apps focus on essential functionality, i.e., don’t expect UPnP support, wacky CRT video filters, etc) and the UI refined — what’s shown above is a rough cut.
How to Test Showtime Video Player 🍿
Fancy an early screening of Showtime ahead its future premiere? You can, just keep in mind it is development software. As a work-in-progress, it may contain bugs, performance issues, and other quirks which affect playback (and your enjoyment).
Update: Showtime is now available to install from Flathub, so the GNOME Nightly repo mentioned below is no longer required (unless you want to test-drive nightly builds, of course).
You can grab the source for from the Showtime Gitlab and compile the app by hand. But you don’t need to do go that effort, as it’s easy to install GNOME nightly apps on Ubuntu using Flatpak.
Obviously you do need to first install Flatpak on Ubuntu as it’s not included out-of-the-box. This is a simple apt install flatpak and you’re done.
Then, run this command to add the official GNOME Nightly Flatpak repo 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 Showtime nightly build: –
flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gnome.Showtime.Devel
Since GNOME Nightly apps use the GNOME Nightly runtime the first app you install from this repo will need to pull that in. The Flatpak CLI is upfront about what additional packages are required, their download size, and so on .
After that, you’re set; launch Showtime from the app launcher, open a video file, and see if you like it.
You’ll notice both the app icon and the window title bar in the app (when it’s visible) have ‘warning tape’ style banding on them. This reminds you that you’re using a development build, not a stable release.
Let me know how you get on!