RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

media player app, developed by

RealNetworks RealNetworks LLC is an American technology company and provider of Internet streaming media delivery software and services based in Seattle, Washington. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile enter ...

. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

realm, including

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

, MP4, QuickTime File Format, Windows Media format, and the proprietary

RealAudio RealAudio, also spelled Real Audio, is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelit ...

and

RealVideo RealVideo, also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary format, proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks — the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 15. RealV ...

formats. RealPlayer is also available for other

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

Palm OS Palm OS (also known as Garnet OS) is a discontinued mobile operating system initially developed by Palm, Inc., for personal digital assistants (PDAs) in 1996. Palm OS was designed for ease of use with a touchscreen-based graphical user interface. ...

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

, and

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

versions have been released. The program is powered by an underlying

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

media engine called

Helix A helix (; ) is a shape like a cylindrical coil spring or the thread of a machine screw. It is a type of smooth space curve with tangent lines at a constant angle to a fixed axis. Helices are important in biology, as the DNA molecule is for ...

History

The first version of RealPlayer was introduced on April 3, 1995 as "RealAudio Player" and was one of the first media players capable of

streaming media Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a Computer network, network for playback using a Media player (disambiguation), media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of Network packet, packets from a Server (computing), ...

over the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

. Then, version 4.01 of RealPlayer was included as a selectable Internet tool in

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the second operating system in the 9x line, as the successor to Windows 95. It was Software ...

's installation package. Subsequent versions of the software were titled "RealPlayer G2" (version 6) and "RealOne Player" (version 9), while free "Basic" versions as well as paid "Plus" versions, the latter with additional features, have also been offered. For the Windows OS, the RealPlayer version 9 subsumed the features of the separate program, RealJukebox. On December 4, 2001, the result of the merger between RealPlayer and RealJukebox led to the creation of a new brand, RealOne Player. The new name led to RealOne supporting more than 50 video formats. A second version was released in September 2002. In July 2008, the RealPlayer Music Store was replaced with the Rhapsody MP3 Store. RealPlayer 11 was released for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

in November 2007 and for

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

in May 2008. RealPlayer 15 was released on November 18, 2011. This version allowed users to transfer video, music, and photos between their computers and mobile devices, share links of videos and photos on sites such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

MySpace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

, and download videos from popular sites such as

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

and

Metacafe Metacafe was an Israeli video-sharing website, launched in July 2003. During the mid-2000s it was one of the largest video-sharing websites, though it eventually began to be superseded by YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion. On 28 August 2021, the pl ...

. RealPlayer was initially accessed by many users as a plugin to watch streaming video or listen to streaming audio (for example, most of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

's websites formerly employed the plugin); but in the early 21st century,

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a mostly discontinuedAlthough it is discontinued by Adobe Inc., for the Chinese market it is developed by Zhongcheng and for the international enterprise market it is developed by Ha ...

and subsequently

HTML video HTML video is a subject of the HTML specification as the standard way of playing video via the web. Introduced in HTML5, it is designed to partially replace the object element and the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Fla ...

became preferred options for this purpose.

Current status

In February 2016, RealNetworks released RealPlayer 18, which incorporated the features of the previous year's release of RealTimes, an app that makes multimedia montages from users' photographs and videos, backed up and accessible via

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles, suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may ...

storage. The Real.com Blog states that "RealPlayer with RealTimes (aka "RealPlayer" for short) will still include the legacy features, such as Downloader, Converter, and Web Videos. It will also still include our RealTimes features, such as Photos and RealTimes Stories, our automatic video collage feature." Note that as of 2018, the publisher only provides RealTime for use on a Mac and no longer publishes a media player called RealPlayer for macOS. As of January 2022, the www.real.com home page offers RealPlayer for Windows, Android, and iOS.

Features

Features of RealPlayer include a video download utility, a

web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

, visualizations (graphical animations or "light shows" that appear on the screen when playing music), equalizer and video controls (including Crossfade and

Gapless playback Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, such that relative time distances in the original audio source are preserved over track boundaries on playback. For this to be useful, other artifacts (than timing-related ...

in RealPlayer Plus), recording audio,

CD ripping Ripping is the extraction of digital content from a container, such as a CD, onto a new digital location. Originally, the term meant to rip music from Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was applied to ripping WAV or MP3 files from digital audio ...

, and a

media converter A fiber media converter is a simple networking device that makes it possible to connect two dissimilar media types such as twisted pair with fiber optic cabling. They were introduced to the industry in the 1990s, and are important in interco ...

which allows converting files to a variety of common audio and video formats. * Photo and Video Sharing - users can post videos to

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

directly from the software, as well as share directly to friends and family via email or

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

messages.

Supported media formats

RealPlayer has used several data formats: *

RealMedia RealMedia is a proprietary multimedia container format (digital), container format created by RealNetworks with the filename extension . RealMedia is used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio, while also being used for Streaming media, st ...

formats:

(*.ra, *.rm),

(*.rv, *.rm, *.rmvb), RealMedia HD (*.rmhd), RealPix (*.rp), RealText (*.rt), RealMedia Shortcut (*.ram, *.rmm) *

Streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

: RealTime Streaming Protocol (rtsp://), Progressive Networks Streaming Protocols (pna://, pnm://),

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Windows Media Windows Media is a discontinued multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit (SDK) with several application programming interfaces (API) and a number of prebuilt technol ...

Streaming Protocol (mms://), Real Scalable Multicast (*.sdp),

Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL ()) is a World Wide Web Consortium recommended Extensible Markup Language (XML) markup language to describe multimedia presentations. It defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual tr ...

(*.smil, *.smi) * Audio:

(*.mp3, *.mp2, *.mp2, *.m3u),

CD Audio Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the '' Red Book'' technical specifications, which is why t ...

(*.cda),

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

(*.wav),

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

aacPlus High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding format for lossy data compression of digital audio as part of the MPEG-4 standards. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (AAC-LC) optimized for low-bitrate applications s ...

v1 (*.aac, *.m4a, *.m4b, *.mp4, *.acp, *.m4p),

Apple Lossless The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC, ), also known as Apple Lossless, or Apple Lossless Encoder (ALE), is an audio coding format, and its reference audio codec implementation, developed by Apple Inc., Apple for lossless data compression of digit ...

AIFF AIFF may refer to: * Audio Interchange File Format * All India Football Federation, the national governing body of Association football in India Film festivals * Addis International Film Festival, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia * Alexandria Internation ...

(*.aif, *.aiff), AU Audio Files (*.au),

Panasonic is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturer, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Japan. It was founded in 1918 as in Fukushima-ku, Osaka, Fukushima by Kōnosuke Matsushita. The company was incorporated in 1935 and renamed and c ...

AAC (*.acp) * Video:

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

(*.vob),

Video CD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The f ...

(*.dat),

MPEG The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by International Organization for Standardization, ISO and International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC that sets standards for media coding, includ ...

Video (*.mpg, *.mpeg, *.m2v, *.mpe etc.),

AVI Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram (given name), Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail (name), Abigail. People with the given name include: * Avi (author ...

(*.avi, *.divx),

MJPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPE ...

video playback from .avi files,

(*.wma, *.wmv etc.) (requires Windows Media Player 9/10),

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

(*.mov, *.qt) (QuickTime Player must be installed),

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), formerly Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American software, computer software company based in San Jose, California. It offers a wide range of programs from web design tools, photo manipulation and vector creation, through to ...

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * The Flash, several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Barry Allen ** Wally West, the first Kid Flash and third adult Flash ...

(*.swf) (Flash or Shockwave Player must be installed), Flash Video (*.flv). *

Playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

s (*.rpl, *.xpl, *.pls, *.m3u) * Graphics:

Bitmap In computing, a bitmap (also called raster) graphic is an image formed from rows of different colored pixels. A GIF is an example of a graphics image file that uses a bitmap. As a noun, the term "bitmap" is very often used to refer to a partic ...

(*.bmp),

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

Images (*.gif),

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

Images (*.jpeg, *.jpg), PNG (*.png)

Formats supported by optional plug-ins

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

A2B (*.a2b, *.mes) *

SVG (*.svg) * Audible Audio (*.aa)Audible software list
does not include RealPlayer plugin. * Object Video (*.obv) * Luidia

eBeam eBeam was an interactive whiteboard system developed by Luidia, Inc. that transformed any standard whiteboard or other surface into an interactive display and writing surface. Luidia's eBeam hardware and software products allowed text, image ...

(*.wbs) * Digital Bitcasting * Envivio (*.mp4) * EVEN Technologies PSI Video (*.psi, *.fxv) . * LearnKey RealCBT (*.lkv) * Liquid Audio (*.la, *.lmsff, .lqt, .lavs, .lar, .la1) * Netpodium Quickcast Image (*.npi) * LiveUpdate! Streaming

MIDI Musical Instrument Digital Interface (; MIDI) is an American-Japanese technical standard that describes a communication protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, ...

files (*.mid, *.midi, *.rmi) *

Camtasia Camtasia (; formerly Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac) is a software suite, created and published by TechSmith, for creating and recording video tutorials and presentations via screencast (screen recording), or via a direct recording plug-in ...

Video (*.camv) *

Ogg Ogg is a digital multimedia container format designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of digital multimedia. It is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and is free and open, unrestricted by software patents. Its name is ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

(*.ogg, *.ogm) * RichFX (*.vpg, *.wgs) * Mode2 CDs * MIMIO Broadcast (*.mbc) * BeHere iVideo 360° Movies (*.bhiv) * iPIX 360° Movies (*.ipx) * ScreenWatch (*.scw) * Vivo Video Files (*.viv) * MJuice Files (*.mjf) * Blue Matter (*.bmt, *.bma) * OZ.COM fluid3d *

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

EMMS (*.emm) * On2 VP5 (*.vp5)Google closes on On2 acquisition
, February 2010.
, February 2010. * On2 VP4 (*.vp4)Google closes on On2 acquisition
, February 2010. * On2 VP3 (*.vp3)Google closes on On2 acquisition
, February 2010. * ImagePower Motion

JPEG2000 JPEG 2000 (JP2) is an image compression standard and coding system. It was developed from 1997 to 2000 by a Joint Photographic Experts Group committee chaired by Touradj Ebrahimi (later the JPEG president), with the intention of superseding their ...

(*.jp2, *.avi) *

3GP 3GP (3GPP file format) is a digital multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services, largely based on MPEG-4 Part 12. A 3GP container may consist of H.263 or H.264 video ...

Mobile Phone Video Files (3gp) * AMR Narrow Band (*.amr) * AMR Wide Band (*.amr)

Plug-ins

RealPlayer has a wide variety of plug-ins. Some of the plug-ins are listed at the RealPlayer accessories page, but not all. ;Audio Enhancement :There are four audio "enhancers" available for the latest version of RealPlayer. DFX, iQfx,

Volume Logic Volume Logic was commercial software which added audio enhancement features to media players. Originally released by Octiv Inc. in 2004, it was the first plug-in for Apple's iTunes for Mac and Windows. In April 2005, the Octiv corporation was acq ...

, and Sanyo 3D Surround. Lake PLS, created by Lake Technologies, works only with RealJukebox, and has limited use. There are some registry tweaks which allow Lake PLS to work with RealPlayer 10. Lake PLS is still available on the RealPlayer website. ;RealPlayer Skin Creators :RealPlayer has had two skin creator plug-ins: SkinsEditor for RealJukebox -- an easy to use skins creator made by DeYoung software. The second application, RealJukebox Skins Converter, converts

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

skins into RealPlayer skins. ;Playback Plug-Ins :Please see section Formats supported by optional plug-ins :vTuner Plus is a radio tuner specially created for RealPlayer. ;Visualizations : *Annabelle the Sheep *Cosmic Belt *Fire *Audio Analyzer *Nebula The available visualizations from the RealNetworks site are: FrequencywurX, FyrewurX, FlamewurX, X Factor, Spectral View, FluxWave, Puddle, Paint Drops, Polka Dots, SticksterZ 1.0, Circle, TomTom On the Road, Real Logo, and Hubble Bubble. There are some more visualization plug-ins like SurrealFX by RealNetworks, G-Force and WhiteCap by SoundSpectrum and SticksterZ 1.1 by Eric Metois. ;Firefox Browser Download (Firefox Add-on) :RealPlayer has a browser download add-on for Firefox (currently v1.0) which allows users to download video from a video player window (pop-up menu above top-right side of video player). ;ScrobRealPlayer :an audioscrobbler plugin that connects RealPlayer with the Last.FM social music network.

Supported platforms for RealPlayer

Windows

RealPlayer SP includes audio CD burning capabilities, DVR-style playback buffering, multimedia search, Internet radio, a jukebox-style file library, an embedded web browser (using Microsoft Internet Explorer), and the ability to convert and transfer media to a wide range of devices. This includes music players such as

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

and

Zune Zune was a brand of digital media products and services that was marketed by Microsoft from November 2006 until it was discontinued in June 2012. Zune consisted of a line of portable media players, a music subscription service known as Zune Music ...

, smartphones such as

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

, portable gaming devices such as

Sony PSP The PlayStation Portable (PSP) is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 12, 2004, in North America on March 24, 2005, and in PAL regions on September 1, 2005, ...

, and console gaming systems such as

Xbox 360 The Xbox 360 is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. As the successor to the Xbox (console), original Xbox, it is the second console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was officially unveiled on MTV on May 12, 2005, with detail ...

PS3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE). It is the successor to the PlayStation 2, and both are part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. The PS3 was first released on ...

, and

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 for most other regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major home game console, f ...

. Since version 11, RealPlayer SP has gained Flash Video support, DVD, SVCD, VCD burning (120-minute), and video recording (DRM is supported). As of 2008, RealPlayer Enterprise is a licensed product for enterprise applications which can be customized and remotely administered by RealPlayer Enterprise Manager. The free ''Realplayer Enterprise Education Edition'' has been removed. Both versions of Realplayer Enterprise are lightweight, ad-free versions of RealPlayer, missing most consumer features and most plug-in support. The RealSched.exe update reminder can be disabled in two steps, and it is not reinstalled upon running the player.

macOS

While RealPlayer for macOS had been distributed (for free) in the past, no macOS version of RealPlayer is available for download from the Real site. The last stable release included Real's Helix playback engine for RealAudio and RealVideo, a 10-band equalizer and video adjustment controls, and a full-screen, resizable "theater mode" for video playback, as well as many features found in its Windows counterpart. Since the release of version 10 on January 7, 2004, RealPlayer had become much more closely integrated with macOS including features such as: * QuickTime playback support (including full-screen viewing which Apple only introduced to its own basic

QuickTime Player QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

in 2007) * An integrated Web browser based on Apple's

WebKit WebKit is a browser engine primarily used in Apple's Safari web browser, as well as all web browsers on iOS and iPadOS. WebKit is also used by the PlayStation consoles starting with the PS3, the Tizen mobile operating systems, the Amazon K ...

framework, resulting in RealPlayer and

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

sharing cookies. * Support for Bonjour to share Internet favorites. * Cocoa user interface. All available versions of RealPlayer for macOS are 32-bit, thus the program can only run up to

macOS Mojave macOS Mojave ( ; version 10.14) is the fifteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. Mojave was announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 4, 2018, and was released to the ...

due to 32-bit app support being dropped in Catalina.

Linux/Unix

RealPlayer for Linux/Unix was developed separately from the Windows and Mac versions. The client is based on the open-source Helix Player which can be found at th
Helix Community Website
. It supports Windows Media 7/8, RealAudio/Video, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis. The interface depends on the current

GTK+ GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and proprietary s ...

theme.

Android

The Android version of RealPlayer is currently available as a free download from the Google Play Store. It supports Real Audio, Real Video, MP3, 3GP, AMR, and other media formats.

Symbian

The Symbian version of RealPlayer allows mobile phones to play Real Audio, Real Video, MP3, 3GP, AMR, and other media formats. It is provided as

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

. In newer Symbian devices it can also be used to stream both audio and video content in the form of MP3 (music) and 3GP (videos).

Palm

RealPlayer 1.6.1 (US) or RealPlayer 1.6.0 (worldwide) is available for free for PalmOne-made

5 devices, such as the

Palm Tungsten The Tungsten series was Palm, Inc.'s line of business-class Palm OS-based Personal digital assistant, PDAs. Details The Tungsten series was introduced in October 2002, created as a "prosumer" line priced at $199 to $300 to compete with the po ...

or Zire series. It is also compatible with RealPlayer Music Store tracks. However, they will neither install nor run on non-PalmOne-made devices like Sony's Clie line of PDAs. Realplayer for Palm OS does not support later Palm smartphones such as the treo 700p, 755p, or Centro, although the treo 600 and 650 are listed as supported devices.

Related products

RealJukebox was a

media player Media player may refer to: *Digital media player, home appliances that play digital media *Media player software, software that plays digital media *Portable media player, portable hardware that plays digital media *Windows Media Player Windo ...

that allowed users to play and manage their digital music on

hard drives A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

CDs CDS, CDs, Cds, etc. may refer to: Finance * Canadian Depository for Securities, Canadian post-trade financial services company * Certificate of deposit (CDs) * Counterfeit Deterrence System, developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence ...

and

online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity, and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as "on lin ...

. It was first released in May 1999. By late 2001, the functions of RealJukebox, RealPlayer and GoldPass (a subscription

webcast A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, webca ...

service) had been integrated into Real's newly released all-in-one media player, RealOne Player.

Reception

Past versions of RealPlayer have been criticized for containing

adware Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue by automatically displaying Online advertising, online advertisements in the user interface or on a screen presented during the installatio ...

and

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is any malware that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user by violating their privacy, endangering their device's securit ...

such as

Comet Cursor Comet Cursor was a software program written by Comet Systems. It allowed users of the Microsoft Windows operating system to change the appearance of their mouse cursor and to allow websites to use customized cursors for visitors. The product i ...

. In 1999 security researcher Richard M. Smith dissected some of RealJukebox's

network traffic Network traffic or data traffic is the amount of data moving across a network at a given point of time. Network data in computer networks is mostly encapsulated in network packets, which provide the load in the network. Network traffic is the main ...

and discovered that it was sending a unique identifier with information about the music titles to which its users were listening. RealNetworks issued a patch, and the spyware was removed in version 1.02. Their download page stated RealJukebox included privacy enhancements and supplied the link to their updated privacy policy.
link defunct, excluded from web.archive.org --> ''

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online-only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tec ...

'' magazine named RealPlayer (1999 Version) as number 2 in its 2006 list "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time", writing that RealPlayer "had a disturbing way of making itself a little too much at home on your PC--installing itself as the default media player, taking liberties with your Windows Registry, popping up annoying 'messages' that were really just advertisements, and so on." In 2007, it placed RealPlayer, versions 1996–2004, at number 5 in its list ''The 20 Most Annoying Tech Products''.

US-CERT The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) was a team under the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the Department of Homeland Security. On February 24, 2023, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Age ...

has issued multiple security advisories reporting defects which allowed remote sites to use RealPlayer to execute attack code.

Real Alternative

Real Alternative is a codec which allows RealMedia files to be played without the installation of the RealPlayer software. In 2010, RealNetworks sued Hilbrand Edskes, a 26-year-old Dutch webmaster, for providing a

hyperlink In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference providing direct access to Data (computing), data by a user (computing), user's point and click, clicking or touchscreen, tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to ...

to the Real Alternative codec on his website, alleging that Real Alternative is a

reverse engineered Reverse engineering (also known as backwards engineering or back engineering) is a process or method through which one attempts to understand through deductive reasoning how a previously made device, process, system, or piece of software accompl ...

codec and therefore illegal. In November 2011, RealNetworks' case against Edskes was dismissed and RealNetworks was ordered to pay him €48,000 in damages. The case, however, cost Edskes €66,000 in legal fees. The case was reopened in 2013, when RealNetworks claimed to possess further proof showing that Edskes was involved in uploading Real Alternative.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Realplayer 1995 software Freeware Linux media players Macintosh media players MacOS media players Palm OS software Symbian software Windows media players Android (operating system) software

Player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who i ...