New media players can be installed now On Windows

The name Windows Media Player should be familiar to many, if not all, Windows users. The media playback program from the times of Windows 7 was buried and discontinued with Windows 10. But the media player is coming back soon and will replace Groove Music. If you want to try it out, you can do it with a trick, also in the stable channel of Windows 11.

Not just in the dev channel

Microsoft activated the Media Player for Windows 11 last November, but only as part of the Insider Preview and then only if you were or are in the Dev channel. That is understandable because after all, this is not yet finished software.

Nevertheless, many will be curious to see how the new media player looks and feels – and this is now also possible for users outside of the dev channel. Because a user on Reddit has discovered (via Ghacks) that the app can now also be installed in the current Windows 11 version (21H2; Build 22000.376). It should be noted, however, that the media player replaces the previous Groove Music app, so if you use the latter regularly and don’t want to take the risk of not yet finished software, you should keep your hands off the following steps.

And this is how you install the new media player in Windows 11:

• You visit the site store.rg-adguard.net
• Copy the following link to the clipboard: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/groove-music/9wzdncrfj3pt
• Now click on the hook and generate a whole series of links that are displayed below.
• Add this to the central bar and select “Fast” instead of “RP” in the menu on the right.
• The best thing to do is to search for the following file name in the browser, which is 35 MB in size: Microsoft.ZuneMusic_11.2111.54.0_neutral_ ~ _8wekyb3d8bbwe.msixbundle
• The best way to do this is to right-click and download it using “Save link as”. It is possible or even likely that the download will be blocked, so you should manually enable and allow this, for example in Chrome in the download overview and by clicking on Keep.
• The downloaded installation package is to be installed by double-clicking, after which the new media player (as a preview) can be used instead of Groove Music.