Windows 11 Media Player: A Practical Guide

Media Player is pre-installed on Windows 11, so there is usually nothing to download. Open the Start menu and type Media Player. If your old music collection lived in the Groove Music app, it migrates over automatically — the same library and playlists show up here.

Play a local music or video file

The fastest way to play something is to let Windows do it for you: double-click any supported audio or video file in File Explorer and it opens in Media Player. To play from inside the app instead:

1. Open Media Player from Start.
2. Use the left-hand navigation to pick Music library or Video library.
3. Click any track, album or clip to start playback. Transport controls (play/pause, next, previous, shuffle, repeat and a volume slider) sit along the bottom.

For video, the player fills the window and hides the controls until you move the mouse; press F11 or the full-screen button for a distraction-free view, and Space to play or pause.

Build your library from your own folders

Media Player only shows what it has been told to watch. By default it monitors your Music and Videos folders, but most people keep media elsewhere too. To add those locations:

1. In Media Player, click the gear (Settings) icon, usually near the bottom-left.
2. Find the library options for Music and Video — there is an add folder control for each.
3. Browse to a folder you want included and confirm. Media Player scans it and folds its contents into the library.

From then on, anything you drop into a watched folder appears automatically. Because the label text can shift slightly between Windows 11 builds, look for the wording around "Music library folders" or "add a folder" rather than a fixed menu name.

Make playlists

A playlist is a saved running order you can play in one click. To create one:

1. Open the Play lists section in the left navigation and choose New playlist (the + control).
2. Give it a name.
3. Add songs by right-clicking a track, album or artist and choosing Add to → your playlist, or by dragging items onto the playlist name.
4. Reorder tracks by dragging them within the playlist; remove one with its right-click menu.

Playlists are a good way to gather a party set, a focus mix or an audiobook's chapters in order. The modern app centres on manually built playlists rather than the rules-based "auto-playlists" of the old Windows Media Player — if you relied on those, that is one workflow the legacy player still does better.

Fix metadata and album art

The album and artist views only look as good as the tags inside your files — artist, album, track number, genre and year. When tags disagree, one album splits into several or piles up under "Unknown Artist". To correct them:

1. Right-click an album or a selected group of tracks and choose Edit (or the details option).
2. Make the Album and Album artist fields match exactly across every track on the release — this is what keeps a record together instead of fragmenting it.
3. Set correct track numbers so the album plays in order, and keep genre spellings consistent.
4. To fix cover art, use the right-click album info / artwork option to let the app look it up, or paste your own square image where the app allows it.

Embedding art in the files (or saving a square folder.jpg in the album's own folder) is the most durable fix, because the artwork then travels with the music rather than living only in the app's cache.

Rip a CD to your library

Media Player rips audio CDs directly on Windows 11 — no separate app required. Decide on the format and quality before you rip, because the settings apply to new rips, not to tracks already in your library.

1. Insert an audio CD and open Media Player. The disc appears in the left navigation.
2. Click the three-dots (…) menu and choose Rip settings to pick a format and quality. If a disc does not offer to rip, start and then stop playback and select Rip CD again.
3. Tick the tracks you want, then choose Rip CD.

Format choices typically include MP3 (widest compatibility), AAC (efficient compression), FLAC and ALAC (lossless, full quality, larger files) and WAV (uncompressed). Ripped music lands in your Music folder, organised into per-artist and per-album subfolders. If you want an exact, archival copy, choose a lossless format; if you want small files that play anywhere, MP3 or AAC at a moderate bitrate is the safe pick.

Video playback — and trimming clips

Media Player is a capable video player: it browses your Video library, remembers where you left off, and handles common formats. What it does not do is edit. There is no trim, crop or split inside Media Player.

To shorten a clip on Windows 11, use a tool that ships with the OS:

1. In File Explorer, right-click the video and choose Open with → Clipchamp or Photos.
2. In Clipchamp, drop the clip on the timeline and drag the handles on either side to shorten it, as Microsoft's Clipchamp documentation puts it, then Export. In Photos, use its built-in Trim control and save a copy.

On Windows 10 the equivalent trim tool lives in the Photos app's video editor rather than Clipchamp, but the idea is identical: trim in the photo/video app, then play the result back in Media Player.

How it relates to the old Windows Media Player and Groove

Three names cause most of the confusion, so here is the lineage in plain terms:

• Media Player — the modern Windows 11 app described in this guide. It replaced Groove Music and now covers both music and video.
• Groove Music — the previous Windows 10-era music app. It is gone; its libraries and playlists were migrated into the modern Media Player.
• Windows Media Player Legacy — the classic version 12 interface, kept for compatibility. On Windows 11 it is an optional feature rather than a default app, and Microsoft's own page for it says so plainly, while pointing you at the modern Media Player app for newer video features.

If you want the classic player for a workflow the modern app lacks (auto-playlists, CD burning, certain plug-ins), turn it on from Settings:

1. Open Settings and go to System > Optional features.
2. Choose Add an optional feature, search for Windows Media Player Legacy, and install it.
3. Launch it from Start by typing Windows Media Player Legacy. Both players can coexist.

Want more like this? Browse the full Windows Now how-to guides, or step back in time through the windows-now.com archive for how these tasks were handled on Vista and Windows 7. For the original Media Player 11 walkthrough this page modernises, see Kristan Kenney's tips.