Potplayer is a powerful media player for Windows

The Korean logo for Potplayer (2017)

Potplayer is a media player for Windows, but I would dare say it’s mostly known for its ability to play video rather than audio. Let’s dive in and see what makes this software worth checking out.

A little background info on Potplayer

The logo for Kakao, an internet company formed from the merger of Daum Communications and Kakao in 2010.

Potplayer is developed by Kakao, a major internet company based in South Korea. The software is offered free of charge with no advertisements as long as users uncheck a box for offers during installation. It comes in both 32 and 64 bit and currently works on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 10.

PotPlayer’s UI is decent

A screenshot of the main UI for Potplayer running on Windows 10 with no theme modifications.

There is no shortage of video players for Windows, but there are personal preferences when it comes to the UI, the styling, etc. PotPlayer uses a simple black theme by default with square buttons which are bigger and easier to see than the plain design of VLC.

A vast amount of features

A screenshot of the preferences window in Potplayer.
There are so many settings, but you don’t have to touch them if you’re fine with defaults

While Potplayer at first glance may look like a simple multimedia player, it has an overwhelming number of options and features if you click the wrong button or go to the settings menu. While most casual users may not need to configure anything out of the box, more advanced users will be more than happy to discover they can tweak playback settings to their heart’s content.

One feature in particular that I find useful is the ability to quickly search online and get subtitles for a particular movie file. It even has the ability to display multiple subtitles in different languages for studying or in my personal case, English/Japanese for my wife and I when watching a German film.

Final Thoughts

I highly recommend Potplayer to those that want a simple out of the box experience with a nice interface. Taste in media player software differs from person to person, so while it may not be for everyone, the media player is well known due it its relatively stable development, great subtitle support, and backing by a major company.

Link: Download it!

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