How to install MPV Media Player on Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint 20?

MPV is a free multi-platform media player. It is based on MPlayer and mplayer2, as well as supports a range of video file formats, subtitle types, and audio and video codecs.

We can install MPV on Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint 20 from the standard repository, PPA repository, and snap.

The installation procedure of the MPV media player is the same on Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint.

Install MPV media player from the standard repository

The MPV media player is included in Ubuntu 20.04 and Linux Mint 20 standard repositories.

Before installing MPV media player from standard repository, update the apt repository using the command:

$ sudo apt update

Install MPV from the standard repository using the command below:

$ sudo apt install mpv

Press ‘y’ to continue MPV installation.

Once the MPV media player is installed, verify the installation with the appended command:

$ mpv --version

The output confirms the MPV installation.

Install MPV media player from PPA repository

First, add the MPV PPA repository using the given command:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests

Next, update the apt cache and install the MPV media player using the commands below:

$ sudo apt update

$ sudo apt install mpv

Type the given-below command to verify the installation:

$ mpv --version

The output shows that MPV version 0.33.0 is installed on my Ubuntu 20.04 through PPA. The PPA repositories maintain the latest version of software applications. Therefore, the latest version of MPV is installed through it.

Install MPV media player via snap

Snap is an application manager and comes pre-installed on Ubuntu 20.04.

Note: However, in the case of Linux Mint 20, the snap application manager is disabled by default. To enable the snap, we need to remove the nosnap.pref file using the appended command:

$ sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences.d/nosnap.pref

Next, update the apt cache by typing the command:

sudo apt update

Now, install the snap application manager using the given command below:

$ sudo apt install snapd

Once the snap is installed, type the below-given command to install MPV media player:

$ sudo snap install mpv-nilsboy

After the successful installation, verify the installation with this command:

$ snap info mpv-nilsboy

Launch and use MPV

Upon successful installation of MPV media player from any described method, open the Application Menu and search MPV.

Open the application and drag the file or link to enjoy the MPV media player.

Wrapping up

MPV is a popular media player with a minimalistic user interface. This article explains MPV media player installation on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and Linux Mint 20.