Those testing Ubuntu 26.04 daily builds or monthly snapshots may have noticed that Showtime, GNOME’s spiffy new video player, is not preinstalled in the ‘extended selection’, despite being announced as a replacement for Totem.
It’s especially confusing since Resources system monitor, announced as a software swap the same time as Showtime, has been on the ISO for a while.
Credits need not roll on hope yet, as Showtime could be making its debut soon. Its latest package upload to the resolute archives includes a change that goes some way to explaining why it’s not been present sooner. It reads:
“Depend on gstreamer1.0-plugins-extra instead of gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad. Ubuntu splits out functionality from gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad that is critical for the desktop, to allow shipping it in main without the more questionable parts of -bad“.
Translation? The new version no longer makes packages affected by (potential) patent, licensing or copyright concerns in certain jurisdictions a hard dependency. That’s a no since to shop Showtime, those would need to be on the ISO too.
Showtime, pictured, is a solid replacement to the aged Totem
Between this v50-beta update, a main inclusion request (MIR) to put Showtime in Ubuntu’s main repo (where packages that ship on the ISO need to be) and a task to update the Ubuntu seed (list of packages that form the ISO) to remove Totem and add Showtime.
Well, it seems Showtime will show up in time for the final stable release of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS on April 23, 2026.
If you’re running Ubuntu 25.10 or 26.04 and you want to try Showtime, you don’t need to wait for any updates. Pop open your Terminal and run sudo apt install showtime to fetch it and its dependencies.
Those on earlier versions of Ubuntu can install Showtime from Flathub.
Any long-standing fans of Totem out there don’t need to fret as the aged player remains available on the resolute repos on new installs, and it won’t be removed on 24.04 systems that upgrade to 26.04.
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