[Feedback] Aurora Media Player — a GTK4/libadwaita media player built in Rust
Hi everyone!
I’ve been working on Aurora Media Player, a modern media player for GNOME built with Rust, GTK4, libadwaita, and mpv. I’d love to get feedback
from the community!
Install it from the Snap Store:
sudo snap install aurora-media-player
What it does:
- Plays video and audio in all common formats (mp4, mkv, mp3, flac, and more)
- Hardware-accelerated decoding via VA-API
- URL playback — YouTube, Twitch, or any direct media URL (yt-dlp is bundled, no extra setup needed)
- File playlist with drag-and-drop reordering
- URL playlists — save and reload named playlists
- Podcast/audio-only mode with metadata display (artist, album, track)
- Fullscreen with auto-hiding controls
- MPRIS support — media keys, taskbar and lock screen integration
- Session restore — remembers last file and position
- Light / Dark / Follow system theme
Tech stack:
Built in Rust with GTK4 + libadwaita, mpv OpenGL rendering via GLArea (Wayland-native, strict confinement compatible).
What I’m looking for:
- Does the Snap install and run correctly on your system?
- Any crashes, freezes, or unexpected behavior?
- UI/UX feedback — anything that feels off or could be improved?
- Feature requests you’d consider essential for a daily-driver media player?
Thanks in advance — any feedback is very welcome!
Source: github.com/daniacosta-dev/aurora-media-player
3 Likes
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Installation & Performance: Installed and running smoothly. I’ve tested it with several downloaded videos in various formats and resolutions. The option to load videos directly from YouTube is not working for me.
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Performance & Bugs: Video playback seems solid. I’m not enough of an expert to compare it technically with other players, but I haven’t encountered any issues there. However, I did find a bug in the UI when opening dropdown menus in floating mode. I’m attaching a GIF so you can see it for yourself: basically, even if you are navigating a menu, the context menu closes automatically after two or three seconds.
https://s13.gifyu.com/images/bmUVP.gif
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UI/UX: Perhaps the playback buttons should be more centered when using the floating menu.
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Feature Requests: To be honest, I only use native players for personal videos or to take specific screenshots of trailers. This app fulfills both tasks perfectly; in fact, I really like that the capture/screenshot button is clearly visible. And of course, having the app available in my native language (Spanish) is always appreciated.
Congrats on the app! It looks quite good and could definitely be a solid alternative.
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I like that 
Thanks for your work!
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Hi Yasirel, thank you so much for the detailed feedback and for taking the time to test it, really appreciated!
YouTube not working: The app uses yt-dlp under the hood to resolve YouTube URLs. I’ve tested it myself from the Snap Store version and it works on my end, so it might be something specific to your setup. Could you share a bit more detail?
- What URL did you try? (e.g. a regular watch URL, a short youtu.be link, a playlist…)
- Did you get any error message or did it just not respond?
- Are you on a restricted network (proxy, VPN, firewall)?
- Which Linux distro/system/version do you use?
Dropdown menus closing in floating mode: Fixed! The auto-hide timer was dismissing the control bar while navigating a dropdown. The bar now stays visible whenever a popover is open.
Spanish translation: Since you mentioned it — v0.1.1 includes full Spanish translation with live switching, no restart needed. You can switch between English and Spanish directly from Settings.
Playback buttons more centered in floating mode: It was a design decision but noted, I’ll review it.
Screenshot button and general feedback: Really glad those are working well for you, and thanks again for the thorough review!
The update is already on the Snap Store, you should receive it automatically.
I’m using Ubuntu 25.10. I don’t have any special configurations active; it’s just a Ubuntu standar installation. But I can test it on my other devices this Friday or Saturday and get back to you
Regarding the YouTube issue: when I opened the app just now, it let me load only one video, but when I tried again later, it stopped working. I get the message: “Could not open the media source.” I’ve tried short links, regular URLs, and playlists. These aren’t age-restricted videos; in fact, I can download them directly from the terminal using the yt-dlp snap. For what it’s worth, when I went back to YouTube in my browser, it asked for a CAPTCHA because it detected too much traffic from my network—I’m not sure if that’s related.
On another note, for more feedback: it would be great if “Podcast” mode could fetch the thumbnail from the file or the YouTube URL. For example, I’m currently using a GNOME extension called Dynamic Music Pill that pulls the cover art from whatever is playing in Amberol, Spotify, Firefox, etc. With Aurora, it just shows a generic image I have assigned to the extension.
Everything else is great, thanks a lot for the Spanish support!
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I don’t know if it’s because of the new update or because my computer woke up in a better mood, but it actually played YouTube videos today. I forgot to report one small thing yesterday: the report icon isn’t loading/working in my installation.
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Great news! I was looking into it and couldn’t find any way to force the use of the captcha it was asking for in the code, which makes me think it was a YouTube issue directly related to your IP address, but that’s just a hypothesis.
On another note, the new update adds support for creating your own custom theme and adding thumbnail and artist information via MPRIS.
Thank you so much for all your reports; they’re incredibly helpful!
