Hakone is a free and open source media player for Windows, macOS and Linux. It pairs a redesigned, modern interface with a playback engine that handles almost any file, disc, stream or device.
Hakone is in beta. Download it from hakone.org or the Releases page.
| Library sidebar | Video settings and seek preview |
|---|---|
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| Episodes | Home |
|---|---|
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- A player that stays out of the way: floating controls, a compact mode, and a layout you can rearrange and save as presets.
- Your library: browse local folders, music, series and podcasts, resume where you left off, and see your saved progress as you browse.
- Subtitles and metadata: search for subtitles online, match episodes and artwork, and correct what the player identified.
- Add-ons: extend the player with episode guides, metadata providers, media sources, themes and visualizers from the Hakone add-on registry.
- Plays almost everything: local files, discs, network streams and capture devices, with conversion and streaming built in.
- Your look: light and dark themes, accent colours, and the interface in many languages.
| Platform | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Windows | Windows 10 (1809 or later) or Windows 11, x64 |
| macOS | Apple Silicon or Intel |
| Linux | x86_64, glibc 2.35 or later (Ubuntu 22.04 or equivalent) |
Get the latest build from hakone.org or the Releases page.
Add-ons are sandboxed packages that the player runs in a separate process, with only the permissions you accept. Hakone ships with a few add-ons turned on, and you can find more on addons.hakone.org.
To write your own, start with contrib-addons/README.md and the add-on SDK.
Release packaging and the 1.0.0-beta.N version scheme are described in
doc/RELEASING.md.
Hakone is developed at github.com/hakone-org/hakone. Report bugs and request features in the issue tracker, and send changes as pull requests.
The interface is written in C++ and QML on Qt and lives in modules/gui/qt. Most of the engine is C, with some C++, Objective-C, assembly and Rust.
Help is welcome with code, packaging, documentation, design, translations and support.
Hakone is based on VLC media player, made by the volunteers of the VideoLAN community. Hakone uses VLC's engine, libVLC, and keeps its name and API.
The redesigned interface is adapted from VLC Redesign by Juxtopposed, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). The original design is available on Figma Community, with a video walkthrough. This implementation modifies the design for the player's native interface, including responsive layouts, interactive controls, settings organization, and integration with playback and media library features. The design credit and CC BY 4.0 notice apply to the original design; the software licenses are described below.
The interface uses Inter by Rasmus Andersson and contributors. The bundled fonts use the SIL Open Font License 1.1.
Hakone is released under the GPLv2 (or later) license. On some platforms it is de facto GPLv3, because of the licenses of its dependencies.
libVLC, the engine, is released under the LGPLv2 (or later) license.
Hakone is a modified version of VLC media player, and VLC's copyright and license notices still apply. See COPYING, COPYING.LIB, AUTHORS and THANKS.
bin/ - Hakone executables.
compat/ - Compatibility library for systems missing
essential functions.
contrib/ - Scripts that fetch and build external libraries.
contrib-addons/ - Bundled add-ons and the add-on SDK.
doc/ - Build guides and other documentation.
extras/package - Packaging and release tooling.
extras/tools/ - Scripts that fetch and build required build tools.
include/ - Header files.
lib/ - libVLC source code.
modules/ - Plugins and modules. Most of the code is here.
The Hakone interface is in modules/gui/qt.
po/ - Translations.
share/ - Icons, desktop files and other resources.
src/ - libvlccore source code.
test/ - Tests.