Phonon-qt6-mpv removed from the repos

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If you are using KDE/Plasma or a Qt-based media player, you may have phonon-qt6-mpv installed. It has been removed from the Arch repos. The supported replacement is phonon-qt6-vlc.

To switch, you can use the command:

sudo pacman -S phonon-qt6-vlc

Now you can remove the other one:

sudo pacman -R phonon-qt6-mpv

It is worth noting that this will also install vlc if you don’t have it already.

It is an option to stay on phonon-qt6-mpv which should be available in the AUR. However, be aware that it isn’t officially supported and does have some limitations.

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Updated.

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Wow, I noticed that today…didn’t research it.
I don’t want to use VLC to play videos in Dolphin. :frowning:

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You can continue to use the mpv version if you want to. It was never a supported backend.

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Really? How’d it get there then (if you know) :slight_smile:
Yes, I know I installed it..but it was available to install was my point.

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It was in the repos for a short while.

( Like pretty short - a few months. )

Before and afterwards (now) it has been in the AUR.

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I don’t know why the maintainer decided to add it to the repos. Ultimately, I don’t think there needs to be a relationship between it being supported and being in the repos.

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Yeah, probably true ;0

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Would it be possible for you to share the reasons. Would like to know if VLC should be avoided. I was working under the assumption that VLC is the gold standard in Video playback, nothing comes close in terms of formats supported and efficiency.
Not challenging your views or saying that they are wrong. Just wanna know. :smiley:

Also doesn’t Dolphin default to MPV and will not use VLC to play video previews?

Wasn’t mpv the default application for playing of audio and videos for QT based systems? If I am not wrong even Haruna requires it.
And if mpv was never a supported backend, then what was?

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VLC is larger and less efficient by comparison .. it also has less sane defaults for HW-accel .. and honestly, just playback in general.

I dont think so .. and funny enough .. I thought this was one of the things explicitly broken when using the mpv phonon. Certainly crashes dolphin for me here (but I dont use the feature).

I dont think so?
Haruna does use it however.

VLC. This has been true since before Plasma 6.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/KDE#Phonon

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it looks like i dont have thephonon-qt6-mpv installed?

pacman -Qs phonon
local/phonon-qt6 4.12.0-4
    The multimedia framework by KDE
local/phonon-qt6-vlc 0.12.0-2
    Phonon VLC backend for Qt6

sooo, I dont have to bother with it, right?

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Right! You don’t have the problem.

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ok cool!
the funny thing is, I have mpv, haruna and vlc installed (i dont know why, i also cant remember i ever installed the first 2) but i dont have this package, which is why it confused me that i dont seem to have it :sweat_smile:
But thanks for your quick answer!

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This is normal if you installed before a few months ago.

Haruna is the default media player we install with a KDE desktop selection in the installer. It has a dependency of mpv. vlc gets pulled in by phonon-qt6-vlc which in turn gets pulled in by dolphin.

The only people likely to have this issue are those who installed during the period where phonon-qt6-mpv was in the repos.

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Thanks @dalto

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While I’m no expert at this, the reason I use mpv is that VLC can’t reproduce .ass subtitles as well as mpv. Actually, if you meet a typesetted subtitle, VLC may even lag or skip subtitles completely.

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VLC has an option to provide the cache/buffer values. That helps when the mobile network is being a bit jittery. The same cannot be said of mpv.

Also mpv support for plugins is rudimentary.

My two cents on mpv.

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My cold dead hands…

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Looks like in 25.08 KDE will be removing the hard dependency on Phonon for Dolphin and Gwenview.
archlinux/packaging/packages/phonon-mpv

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