While Windows 11 Dev Channel Insiders were probably disappointed with this earlier announcement from Microsoft, there"s some good news though for those flighting the Beta Channel builds. The company announced that the newly redesigned Windows Media Player is arriving on the Beta Channel.
Here"s what the new Windows Media Player looks like:
The new Media Player was released to Dev Channel Insiders last year in November and it"s good to see the app finally arriving on the Beta Channel. Microsoft probably feels most of the issues it had in the Dev Channel phase have been ironed out. For example, some of these issues were related to playing content stored in network locations, and a few others like editing metadata or UI components not respecting app theme preferences.
The new Media Player is meant to replace Groove Music, as the latter never really took off quite as well the classic Media Player did. You can read about its features in this original Dev Channel release post since it does not look like any more new features were added, as the company"s announcement only says:
We have released the new Media Player for Windows 11 to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel.
In case you are wondering how you can get the new Media Player on a non-Insider Windows 11 build, here"s a guide for that.