RealPlayer was initially accessed by many users as a plugin to watch streaming video or listen to streaming audio (for example, most of the BBC's websites formerly employed the plugin) but in the early 21st century, Adobe Flash and subsequently HTML5 video became preferred options for this purpose. This version allowed users to transfer video, music, and photos between their computers and mobile devices, share links of videos and photos on sites such as Facebook and MySpace, and download videos from popular sites such as YouTube and Metacafe. RealPlayer 15 was released on November 18, 2011. RealPlayer 11 was released for Microsoft Windows in November 2007 and for Mac OS X in May 2008. For the Windows OS, the RealPlayer version 9 subsumed the features of the separate program, RealJukebox. Subsequent versions of the software were titled 'RealPlayer G2' (version 6) and 'RealOne Player' (version 9), while free 'Basic' versions as well as paid 'Plus' versions, the latter with additional features, have also been offered. Then, version 4.01 of RealPlayer was included as a selectable Internet tool in Windows 98's installation package. The first version of RealPlayer was introduced on Apas 'RealAudio Player' and was one of the first media players capable of streaming media over the Internet. The program is powered by an underlying open-source media engine called Helix.

RealPlayer is also available for other operating systems Linux, Unix, Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian versions have been released.

The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm, including MP3, MP4, QuickTime File Format, Windows Media format, and the proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats. RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris, Android, BeOS, Symbian, and Palm OSĮnglish, Chinese ( Simplified and Traditional), German, French, Korean, Italian, Japanese, and Portuguese

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