In the 15 years I have used vlc there has only been one file it couldn't play and so I have had no need to try another player.

Ever since VLC came on the scene it has been my go-to. Just a really functional player that plays almost anything I throw at it, and I like the UI well enough. For now I have no reason to use anything else. I'm not hating on other players, but VLC works for me.

I use VLC. I have no real reason for choosing it other than knowing it since I was a kid, and it doing the job I need perfectly fine so far

mpv. I like the minimalist UI. I have it configured to show no titlebar, just the video, and open by default in the corner of my screen at up to half the width of my display. It's easy to customize with keyboard shortcuts, and by default it has sensible shortcuts for nearly everything. It's easy to make videos with hardcoded letterboxing fit my full screen. It handles HDR and even Dolby videos (use gpu-next if you aren't already). I can set default brightness/contrast/gamma settings, and then adjust them during playback if necessary with a single keystroke. I can adjust playback speed with a single keystroke. I can fix the aspect ratio of warped videos, again with a single keystroke.

As for VLC, well, it's fine, really, and I'm not in the best position to say since it's been a very long time since I used it regularly. So my experience is likely outdated. But back then, I found the UI a bit much, putting playlists front-and-center when I really just wanted to play individual files 99.99% of the time. It had too much going on besides the video. The GUI is great for discoverability but the more time I spend using something, the more I appreciate command-line usage and simple text-based config files.

VLC is my go-to recommendation for beginners, because everything is in the GUI, but mpv suits me better.

Functionally, both are similar. A few times over the years, one has adopted a critical feature a little bit before the other, like hardware acceleration for some specific codec, but for most videos they both do the job just fine.

mpv for about 6 years now. Like VLC it plays pretty much anything I need to, but it feels snappier

VLC seems to be the gold standard. If you want to play something, it will. That should be more than enough for common users.

VLC has been disintegrating on Wayland, mpv became the default

Switched to mpv a decade ago. Love the minimal UI and how snappy it is. Used VLC or MPC-HC on Windows. Moved to linux and used SMplayer or VLC until mpv came around.

Why not both?

edit: wtf are these replies :D

edit2: also to clarify my original comment was meant as both are good. For example you can't easily install MPV on Bazzite and VLC does as good of a job. I do tend to use MPV over VLC but I don't ever crave the other one as I have at least one of those available. I did run into few videos that I had issues running with MPV and vice-versa but those are rare and specific cases. Always the other player did the job so I also can't say that both are perfect.

MPV, better colors , faster , lighter and has everything I need and nothing I dont

Count me in on the minimalist interface preference gang. I've been using it for probably more than a decade. Less nowadays that I watch content on my TV through my media center server, but on the off occurrence that I need to watch a file on my computer, mpv is my boo.

MPV. I like the minimalism. and everything I need is under the hood in MPV.

@thakur0
VideoLAN (VLC) it plays media that MPV can't and has a wide range of direct-from-the-hardware streaming results. I'll look a closer look at MPV, take it a bit more seriously and see if it's upgraded to meet my needs.

I use VLC on my PC, but MVP on my phone, because it has better zoom. But to be fair, I rarely use it on my phone.

MPV, I can add custom scripts like cutting black bars for ultrawide monitors. And I like how customizable it is.

I always went with VLC until something got messed up with new laptops nVidia drivers. For whatever reason VLC could not properly use dedicated GPU acceleration with open drivers.

That's when I tried out MPV. I like it, I like the minimalism, I like the CLI. It's been working great so far.

For someone more technical MPV, for anyone else I'd still recommend VLC.

Despite MPV being simpler VLC usually has less problems to play something than MPV. I don't really like VLC's interface, but I DO like how powerful it is without having to read any manuals.

MPV>VLC

I use MPV, mostly because I like the simplicity of the on-screen interface.

But both are great players. No issues with VLC and it is a go-to if I ever have a file I can't play otherwise (which is a vanishingly rare occurrence).

While they're technically the same type of software, it's still sort of like comparing apples to oranges.

VLC is your kitchen skink media players that comes bundled with basically everything possible.

mpv is more of a minimalist media player that let's the user add the features themselves using add-ons.

Me personally prefer mpv since it's minimal in every regard. I have turned of the OSC, and I use the keyboard for everything. I don't use a lot of extras, but the ones I have, is add-ons I couldn't probably live without, like yt-dlp and SponsorBlock (for YouTube).

I even use mpv as my music player with playlist that I manage using Neovim and the tool echo (to add new tracks to my playlists).

mpv, very easy to configure and use

i use mpc-be on m$win because of occasional glitch with mpv though, might be my system's issue

Fun fact: VLC still supports Android 4.2 (Nov, 2012) which i use to play local media on my old tablet(4.4) through f-droid. Works well with old formats.

On PC, I use MPV because I've gotten used to its command line and shortcuts.

I switched to MPV when I got an HDR display because VLC won’t play HDR on my setup. I still use VLC for the lectures I leave on while working though.

I used VLC for years and years but mainly on Windows. When I moved to Linux exclusively for my personal machines a few years ago, I started using MPV just because that's what was installed. I play all videos from a bash command line that launches gamescope to get HDR support for videos that support it (currently stuck on Nvidia). Works really well.

Mpv cause you can use keyboard shortcuts from the terminal.

Thanks to this I can ssh from the phone, connect to my tmux mpv session, and use that as remote control.

vlc for watching.
mpv for listening.

For basic functionality both are great, but if I want to customise its settings VLC far more friendly.

MPV for what I read it is very powerful for customising everything but everything is hidden behind scripts.

While VLC is great, I have had cases where it failed me regarding hardware accelerated decoding. mpv has never let me down with this.

Nowadays I only really use Jellyfin, but before that I exclusively used mpv. As for why, I just felt it worked a bit better (not sure if it has to do with codecs) and I liked how it suited terminal based workflows.