Zoom Player v23 beta 1 has been released

Zoom Player Beta
Published September 14th, 2026
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What's new in Zoom Player v23 beta 1:


 Legend :

"*"  = New
"+"  = Changed
"-"  = Fixed


New :
    * Introducing Zoom Player's external media engine!

      Zoom Player's external media engine provides a few key advantages:

      1. Allows you instantly play a new media even as the old media is still
         in the process of loading, making it ideal for Video Streaming where
         a network connection may be down and the time out takes too long when
         using the internal media engine.

      2. You're playing a corrupted or partially downloaded media file that
         freezes or crashes one of the parsing or decoding components. In this
         case Zoom Player's using the external media engine ensures Zoom
         Player's  user interface remains functional (will not freeze),
         allowing you to play something else without having to restart.

      Zoom Player's external media engine is currently disabled by default,
      but is fully customizable under "Adv. Options / Playback / Smart Play /
      Settings", allowing you to decide whether it will be used based on
      the media's file extension, a partial URL or when playing from
      Zoom Player's video streaming interfaces.

      In an upcoming release, I plan on converting the external engine to a
      64bit process, enabling AI based image up-scaling.

    * The Video Streaming Home Theater interface has been optimized to use
      the newer Microsoft DirectWrite font rendering technology resulting in
      sharper fonts, support for color Emoji and a faster, more responsive
      user interface.

    * The media scanner home theater interface has been redesigned with feature
      identical capabilities to the Media Library category interface but with
      full support for keyboard/mouse/remote only operations, making it ideal
      for setting up in a Home Theater environment.

    * The video streaming group manager now has a home theater version designed
      to work with either a mouse, keyboard or remote control, making it ideal
      for setting up in a Home Theater environment.

    * New setting that controls whether Zoom Player's Smart Play DirectShow
      graph building code falls back to letting Windows pick the correct
      DirectShow filter for URLs (streams). The existing fallback feature
      covered both local file where this setting was beneficial and URLs
      where it wasn't, I decided to split it into two settings and disable
      it for streams by default (Adv. Options / Playback / Smart Play).

    * New setting that disable Zoom Player's exit-warning when a video streaming
      subscription or EPG database is mid-download (Adv. Options / Playback /
      Video Streaming).

Changed :
    + The skinned right-click context menu is now procedurally skinned rather
      than using PixelArt, allowing the menu to scale dynamically based on the
      Windows DPI (scale) setting. I tried maintaining the same look.
      Old, skins that don't support the new system will cleanly fallback to the
      PixelArt menus.

    + With the introduction of the Home Theater Video Streaming group manager,
      I have reset the Home Theater Video Streaming's top-bar buttons to their
      default value. You can use the customize button to edit as-needed.

    + The control overlay's code positioning code has been rewritten to prevent
      the control overlay from remaining on-screen when switching to another
      application, appearing in between Zoom Player's window and another
      application and eliminating flickering.

    + YouTube's Closed Captions are now disabled by default.
        
Fixed :
    - The "Prevent mouse actions from moving or resizing the main window"
      setting did not work in some cases when used with the control overlay.

    - Setting the OSD Lock feature to a width of height of "0" would cause
      Zoom Player to crash. Now these values are ignored.

    - Adding the Video Streaming Group Manager wasn't possible through the
      control overlay setup or Home Theater Video Streaming interfaces.

    - Using a custom OSD Lock-Area with really low numbers could cause
      Zoom Player to crash.