{"slug": "mpv", "name": "mpv", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "Free, open-source, command-line-driven media player for video and audio across desktop platforms.", "recommenders": 12, "commenters": 18, "warners": 0, "score": 12.709, "rising": 1.05, "first": "2025-11-07", "latest": "2026-10-22", "why": "HN commenters recommend mpv as a hackable, scriptable player with broad feature support, often paired with yt-dlp and ffmpeg for local files and online video.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 14, "neutral": 8, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [2, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 2, 4, 1, 2, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Scriptable and hackable", "Pairs with yt-dlp"], "caveat": "macOS packaging", "short_quote": "MPV is amazingly hackable and has an IPC, you can nearly fully control it without touching it.", "icon": true, "domain": null, "github_repo": "github.com/mpv-player/mpv", "official_url": "https://mpv.io", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["mpv"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters recommend mpv as a hackable, scriptable player with broad feature support,", "cites": [{"id": 770224643, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPV is amazingly hackable and has an IPC, you can nearly fully control it without touching it.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "scriptable video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 797327744, "item_id": 49832984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832984", "by": "kelvinjps10", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "just downloading anything you want and using mpv with any extension you want", "excerpt": "I use the language immersion for learning languages. And with the streaming platforms you can't get cc captions in the original language. There is many foreign media thay is on the platform but not on your country, there is extension that are useful for making flashcards or small clips, but for some reason you can't watch whatever you want to watch in the original resolution if you're on the browser and if you use li", "context": "Linux user learning languages", "use_case": "watching downloaded video", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 801793953, "item_id": 50112122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112122", "by": "singron", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "mpv, which seems to have excellent support for everything you would want a player to do.", "excerpt": "I used jellyfin-mpv-shim. You select what to play from any ui and it starts playing in mpv, which seems to have excellent support for everything you would want a player to do.", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 733633184, "item_id": 45852074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852074", "by": "gyomu", "date": "2025-11-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So anyways, I switched to mpv.", "excerpt": "I used VLC until I looked for a backward frame step functionality. I then found this thread on the VLC forums where the maintainers explain (with bad attitude) why this functionality is technically impossible. Everyone points out that mpv supports it, but the maintainers double down and say they\u2019re Doing It Wrong and it shouldn\u2019t be possible. So anyways, I switched to mpv. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with backward frame step", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}]}, {"text": " often paired with yt-dlp and ffmpeg for local files and online video.", "cites": [{"id": 733913024, "item_id": 45869564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869564", "by": "Elfener", "date": "2025-11-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv.", "excerpt": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv. yt-dlp thankfully works, and this way, I can watch the video any way I want.", "context": "", "use_case": "watching YouTube videos", "switched_from": "YouTube web player", "story": "YouTube A/B testing removing playback speed controls"}, {"id": 789802065, "item_id": 49362629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362629", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv", "excerpt": "> Getting media to work on Linux is more complex than you may think. Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv Problem solved. > a lot less feasible for Linux distributions designed to be freely downloaded and redistributed. > [...] spent some time enabling third-party repositories to get multimedia codecs, you already know what it's like Well, this was quite easy on debian, but I abandoned being a slave to distributions. I compile f", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux"}, {"id": 796202417, "item_id": 49762651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762651", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For multimedia there are very few use cases not covered by ffmpeg and mpv.", "excerpt": "Indeed. I remember that back on my old win-days. I switched to linux in 2004 or so. All those old use cases kind of vanished or changed. Perhaps the subset of software is more limited on linux, since Microsoft also builds - and exploits - a platform for commercial success, but I see more and more linux-specific applications too, typically using qt5 or qt6. Which is interesting considering linux does not have a huge s", "context": "Linux user since 2004", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)"}, {"id": 783298116, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MPV+yt-dlp for videos", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "", "use_case": "playing videos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}]}, {"text": " The only caveat raised is that macOS users may need to wrap it in their own app bundle.", "cites": [{"id": 777897232, "item_id": 48618577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48618577", "by": "neop1x", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too.", "excerpt": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too. I just had to create an app bundle for it a very simple swift wrapper which just runs mpv command...", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "video playback on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Scriptable and hackable", "summary": "Commenters control mpv through IPC, extensions, config files and their own scripts or tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 770224643, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPV is amazingly hackable and has an IPC, you can nearly fully control it without touching it.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "scriptable video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 797327744, "item_id": 49832984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832984", "by": "kelvinjps10", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "just downloading anything you want and using mpv with any extension you want", "excerpt": "I use the language immersion for learning languages. And with the streaming platforms you can't get cc captions in the original language. There is many foreign media thay is on the platform but not on your country, there is extension that are useful for making flashcards or small clips, but for some reason you can't watch whatever you want to watch in the original resolution if you're on the browser and if you use li", "context": "Linux user learning languages", "use_case": "watching downloaded video", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 779950401, "item_id": 48746900, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746900", "by": "pedrosousa", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It uses Radio Browser for the station directory and mpv for playback.", "excerpt": "I built `onda` because I wanted to listen to radio and choose my own bitrate. Why a TUI? I spend my time in the terminal. This is light and easy to navigate. It uses Radio Browser for the station directory and mpv for playback. Streams directly from the broadcaster. Features: - `[` and `]` switch between bitrates in the current station. - home view with currently playing, favorites and popular. - Search by station na", "context": "", "use_case": "audio playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Onda, an internet radio TUI with stream quality selection"}]}, {"label": "Pairs with yt-dlp", "summary": "Commenters combine it with yt-dlp and ffmpeg to play downloaded and online video.", "quotes": [{"id": 733913024, "item_id": 45869564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869564", "by": "Elfener", "date": "2025-11-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv.", "excerpt": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv. yt-dlp thankfully works, and this way, I can watch the video any way I want.", "context": "", "use_case": "watching YouTube videos", "switched_from": "YouTube web player", "story": "YouTube A/B testing removing playback speed controls"}, {"id": 789802065, "item_id": 49362629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362629", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv", "excerpt": "> Getting media to work on Linux is more complex than you may think. Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv Problem solved. > a lot less feasible for Linux distributions designed to be freely downloaded and redistributed. > [...] spent some time enabling third-party repositories to get multimedia codecs, you already know what it's like Well, this was quite easy on debian, but I abandoned being a slave to distributions. I compile f", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux"}, {"id": 783298116, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MPV+yt-dlp for videos", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "", "use_case": "playing videos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}]}, {"label": "Broad feature support", "summary": "Commenters cite backward frame stepping, Vulkan video decoding and global audio offset.", "quotes": [{"id": 733633184, "item_id": 45852074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852074", "by": "gyomu", "date": "2025-11-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So anyways, I switched to mpv.", "excerpt": "I used VLC until I looked for a backward frame step functionality. I then found this thread on the VLC forums where the maintainers explain (with bad attitude) why this functionality is technically impossible. Everyone points out that mpv supports it, but the maintainers double down and say they\u2019re Doing It Wrong and it shouldn\u2019t be possible. So anyways, I switched to mpv. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with backward frame step", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}, {"id": 783688880, "item_id": 48980555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48980555", "by": "temp0826", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "have been using vulkan video decoding via mpv for a while now and it seems fine with little or no performance hits", "excerpt": "Cool, have been using vulkan video decoding via mpv for a while now and it seems fine with little or no performance hits. Glad it's made its way here as getting hardware decoding to actually work in ff has felt like a house of cards (more options are welcome). Does something need to be done to enable/switch to it?", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with Vulkan decoding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding"}, {"id": 791719073, "item_id": 49482442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482442", "by": "downloadram", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPV .conf can set audio offset globally to sync everything nicely", "excerpt": "i use EE on my parents tv (minipc connected to offline 4koled) to address the \"movie too quiet then way too loud\" for them but there is a cost, latency fortunately its not large enough to notice unless you already know (i.e. problem for me but not for thee) AND fortunately MPV .conf can set audio offset globally to sync everything nicely, so its not bothering them; but i disable it if im going to play games where i n", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "EasyEffects can improve laptop speaker sound quality"}]}, {"label": "Replaces other players", "summary": "Users switched to it from VLC, the YouTube web player and Jellyfin's playback.", "quotes": [{"id": 733633184, "item_id": 45852074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852074", "by": "gyomu", "date": "2025-11-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So anyways, I switched to mpv.", "excerpt": "I used VLC until I looked for a backward frame step functionality. I then found this thread on the VLC forums where the maintainers explain (with bad attitude) why this functionality is technically impossible. Everyone points out that mpv supports it, but the maintainers double down and say they\u2019re Doing It Wrong and it shouldn\u2019t be possible. So anyways, I switched to mpv. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with backward frame step", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}, {"id": 733913024, "item_id": 45869564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869564", "by": "Elfener", "date": "2025-11-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv.", "excerpt": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv. yt-dlp thankfully works, and this way, I can watch the video any way I want.", "context": "", "use_case": "watching YouTube videos", "switched_from": "YouTube web player", "story": "YouTube A/B testing removing playback speed controls"}, {"id": 783801633, "item_id": 48987602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987602", "by": "sgc", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I wound up just mounting my remote drives and playing in my local mpv.", "excerpt": "I have a problem that it constantly tries to re-encode video that could be played perfectly fine in their player or the mpv shim. I wound up just mounting my remote drives and playing in my local mpv. I don't really use it because of that. Unfortunate because otherwise I love a lot of things about it.", "context": "", "use_case": "local video playback", "switched_from": "Jellyfin", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}]}, {"label": "Runs on netbooks", "summary": "Commenters use it on old netbooks alongside other CLI and TUI tools.", "quotes": [{"id": 783302770, "item_id": 48956423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956423", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf.", "excerpt": "HP mini there, with ZRAM it's really fast. I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf. The OS I use it's hyperbola GNU/Linux, A bit outdated but most modern stuff it's compiled from source. For gaming I have mednafen, frotz, pcsxr, Flare RPG (git), GearHead 1 and 2 and a few more. Oh, and Scummvm with games from Blade Runner to Ultima I-IV, Technobabylon, Virtuaverse, The Longest Journey,", "context": "HP Mini netbook user", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 783298116, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MPV+yt-dlp for videos", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "", "use_case": "playing videos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 803135557, "item_id": 50195972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50195972", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "same with MupDF, sxiv for images and MPV", "excerpt": "I love Unix and C, and I use Hyperbola GNU/LInux daily, but if the current AI stance on security is like the one frmo cyberpunk movies, keeping my N270 based netbook with hbola just barely connected (or with NPF rules with just I2PD and YGG networks enabled) and getting mail/usenet in batch mode will be the norm, because my biggie AMD64 Intel NUC machine for sure will be more and more Rust bound, at least for work/se", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rust Style Guide"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "macOS packaging", "summary": "One macOS user had to write a simple Swift wrapper to create an app bundle.", "quotes": [{"id": 777897232, "item_id": 48618577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48618577", "by": "neop1x", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too.", "excerpt": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too. I just had to create an app bundle for it a very simple swift wrapper which just runs mpv command...", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "video playback on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}]}], "who": [{"by": "kelvinjps10", "context": "Linux user learning languages", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832984", "date": "2026-09-24"}, {"by": "shevy-java", "context": "Linux user since 2004", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762651", "date": "2026-09-19"}, {"by": "OroPla", "context": "prefers CLI tools and local media", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49610170", "date": "2026-09-08"}, {"by": "anthk", "context": "HP Mini netbook user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956423", "date": "2026-07-18"}, {"by": "neop1x", "context": "macOS user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48618577", "date": "2026-06-21"}], "tags": ["for Linux users", "for terminal users", "for macOS users", "for old hardware", "for language learners"], "use_cases": ["media playback", "watching downloaded video", "media playback on linux", "video playback", "recording radio streams", "local video playback"], "compared": [{"slug": "ffmpeg", "name": "ffmpeg", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "jellyfin", "name": "Jellyfin", "co": 2, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "yt-dlp", "name": "yt-dlp", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "vlc", "name": "VLC", "co": 1, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "dillo", "name": "Dillo", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48907063", "title": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50186010", "title": "Rust Style Guide", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50109715", "title": "What I self-host", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49831774", "title": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49749724", "title": "Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604861", "title": "Jellyfin 12.0", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 4}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 2}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803135557, "item_id": 50195972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50195972", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "same with MupDF, sxiv for images and MPV", "excerpt": "I love Unix and C, and I use Hyperbola GNU/LInux daily, but if the current AI stance on security is like the one frmo cyberpunk movies, keeping my N270 based netbook with hbola just barely connected (or with NPF rules with just I2PD and YGG networks enabled) and getting mail/usenet in batch mode will be the norm, because my biggie AMD64 Intel NUC machine for sure will be more and more Rust bound, at least for work/se", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Rust Style Guide"}, {"id": 801793953, "item_id": 50112122, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50112122", "by": "singron", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "mpv, which seems to have excellent support for everything you would want a player to do.", "excerpt": "I used jellyfin-mpv-shim. You select what to play from any ui and it starts playing in mpv, which seems to have excellent support for everything you would want a player to do.", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 797327744, "item_id": 49832984, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49832984", "by": "kelvinjps10", "date": "2026-09-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "just downloading anything you want and using mpv with any extension you want", "excerpt": "I use the language immersion for learning languages. And with the streaming platforms you can't get cc captions in the original language. There is many foreign media thay is on the platform but not on your country, there is extension that are useful for making flashcards or small clips, but for some reason you can't watch whatever you want to watch in the original resolution if you're on the browser and if you use li", "context": "Linux user learning languages", "use_case": "watching downloaded video", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 796202417, "item_id": 49762651, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49762651", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-09-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "For multimedia there are very few use cases not covered by ffmpeg and mpv.", "excerpt": "Indeed. I remember that back on my old win-days. I switched to linux in 2004 or so. All those old use cases kind of vanished or changed. Perhaps the subset of software is more limited on linux, since Microsoft also builds - and exploits - a platform for commercial success, but I see more and more linux-specific applications too, typically using qt5 or qt6. Which is interesting considering linux does not have a huge s", "context": "Linux user since 2004", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Warez: The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy (2021)"}, {"id": 793762720, "item_id": 49610170, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49610170", "by": "OroPla", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "though, mpv can likely handle it", "excerpt": "By using a bunch of CLI tools and self-written scripts. I don't use streaming (though, mpv can likely handle it). Prefer to have all media I use locally. Don't watch video on my phone, either.", "context": "prefers CLI tools and local media", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Jellyfin 12.0"}, {"id": 791719073, "item_id": 49482442, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49482442", "by": "downloadram", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPV .conf can set audio offset globally to sync everything nicely", "excerpt": "i use EE on my parents tv (minipc connected to offline 4koled) to address the \"movie too quiet then way too loud\" for them but there is a cost, latency fortunately its not large enough to notice unless you already know (i.e. problem for me but not for thee) AND fortunately MPV .conf can set audio offset globally to sync everything nicely, so its not bothering them; but i disable it if im going to play games where i n", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "EasyEffects can improve laptop speaker sound quality"}, {"id": 789802065, "item_id": 49362629, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49362629", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv", "excerpt": "> Getting media to work on Linux is more complex than you may think. Not at all: ffmpeg + mpv Problem solved. > a lot less feasible for Linux distributions designed to be freely downloaded and redistributed. > [...] spent some time enabling third-party repositories to get multimedia codecs, you already know what it's like Well, this was quite easy on debian, but I abandoned being a slave to distributions. I compile f", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "A 25-year-old video patent just expired, ending a legal headache for Linux"}, {"id": 786670753, "item_id": 49166922, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49166922", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "1) one, via mpv, and", "excerpt": "Seems Michael Niedermayer wrote that manually, without AI. Good for him. :P ffmpeg is great, I think nobody disputes this. I use it in two ways mostly: 1) one, via mpv, and 2) two, as conversion tool primarily ffmpeg also has many really powerful filters, but these are very confusing to use IMO and not elegant at all. I'd wish we could use some kind of simple meta-language or so, in part similar to virtualdub/avisynt", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "FFmpeg 9.0"}, {"id": 786090752, "item_id": 49130672, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49130672", "by": "matheusmoreira", "date": "2026-07-31", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Normal files you get to play using mpv.", "excerpt": "> I think the services part they really dislike is just the part where your credit card gets charged when you click the buy or rent button. You think wrong. My Steam account has 300+ games on it. I pay for several streaming services. I have a physical media collection that even includes a copy of windows vista, to my eternal regret. > Doing all of the piracy stuff with VPNs and navigating torrent sites and getting a ", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty-five years ago it was cryptography, today it's model weights"}, {"id": 784193760, "item_id": 49012110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49012110", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-07-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I'd just use mpv and record the stream into a local file, as-is.", "excerpt": "> Despite not being the best medium for music, I find cassettes to be a really impressive piece of technology particularly due to how easy it is to write content to them. I like old tech too and in the 1990s I recorded a lot of audio stuff straight from the radio, but nowadays with USB everywhere I just would not use tapes anymore. I just find USB sticks so much more convenient. I kind of transitioned into the digita", "context": "", "use_case": "recording radio streams", "switched_from": "", "story": "I tried to record music onto a cassette tape using modern tech"}, {"id": 783801633, "item_id": 48987602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48987602", "by": "sgc", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I wound up just mounting my remote drives and playing in my local mpv.", "excerpt": "I have a problem that it constantly tries to re-encode video that could be played perfectly fine in their player or the mpv shim. I wound up just mounting my remote drives and playing in my local mpv. I don't really use it because of that. Unfortunate because otherwise I love a lot of things about it.", "context": "", "use_case": "local video playback", "switched_from": "Jellyfin", "story": "Jellyfin founder Andrew leaves team"}, {"id": 783688880, "item_id": 48980555, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48980555", "by": "temp0826", "date": "2026-07-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "have been using vulkan video decoding via mpv for a while now and it seems fine with little or no performance hits", "excerpt": "Cool, have been using vulkan video decoding via mpv for a while now and it seems fine with little or no performance hits. Glad it's made its way here as getting hardware decoding to actually work in ff has felt like a house of cards (more options are welcome). Does something need to be done to enable/switch to it?", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with Vulkan decoding", "switched_from": "", "story": "Firefox Merges Support for Vulkan Video Decoding"}, {"id": 783302770, "item_id": 48956423, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956423", "by": "anthk", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf.", "excerpt": "HP mini there, with ZRAM it's really fast. I use Flubox+UXTerm+a bunch of CLI/TUI tools among mpv, nsxiv and mupdf. The OS I use it's hyperbola GNU/Linux, A bit outdated but most modern stuff it's compiled from source. For gaming I have mednafen, frotz, pcsxr, Flare RPG (git), GearHead 1 and 2 and a few more. Oh, and Scummvm with games from Blade Runner to Ultima I-IV, Technobabylon, Virtuaverse, The Longest Journey,", "context": "HP Mini netbook user", "use_case": "media playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 783298116, "item_id": 48956132, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48956132", "by": "MayeulC", "date": "2026-07-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "MPV+yt-dlp for videos", "excerpt": "I still use my Samsung n130, though I went with Alpine after Arch dropped support for 32 bit (there were a few pain points with Arch 32 in the early days, I tried guix but it was too slow and guix uses a lot of RAM during updates). It works decently, is sufficient for ssh-ing into other hosts. Though web browsing is a pain. I used to mostly use Dillo and elinks, MPV+yt-dlp for videos. Unfortunately I left it sit for ", "context": "", "use_case": "playing videos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Reviving a 15-year-old netbook with Arch Linux"}, {"id": 779950401, "item_id": 48746900, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48746900", "by": "pedrosousa", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "It uses Radio Browser for the station directory and mpv for playback.", "excerpt": "I built `onda` because I wanted to listen to radio and choose my own bitrate. Why a TUI? I spend my time in the terminal. This is light and easy to navigate. It uses Radio Browser for the station directory and mpv for playback. Streams directly from the broadcaster. Features: - `[` and `]` switch between bitrates in the current station. - home view with currently playing, favorites and popular. - Search by station na", "context": "", "use_case": "audio playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Onda, an internet radio TUI with stream quality selection"}, {"id": 778331110, "item_id": 48645694, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48645694", "by": "unmanageduck", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Video/audio player: Mpv", "excerpt": "Package manager: Nix(alternative to homebrew) https://nixos.org/download/#nix-install-macos Package management: Nix-darwin https://github.com/nix-darwin/nix-darwin Browsers: - Librewolf https://librewolf.net - Tor https://www.torproject.org - Orion https://orionbrowser.com Video downloader: Yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp Video/audio player: Mpv https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv Video editor: LosslessCut http", "context": "", "use_case": "media player", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 777897232, "item_id": 48618577, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48618577", "by": "neop1x", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too.", "excerpt": "I have been using mpv on MacOS too. I just had to create an app bundle for it a very simple swift wrapper which just runs mpv command...", "context": "macOS user", "use_case": "video playback on macOS", "switched_from": "", "story": "Windows 11 New Media Player Uses 3.5x More RAM, Charges for Popular Video Codecs"}, {"id": 770224643, "item_id": 48139040, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48139040", "by": "iLemming", "date": "2026-05-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "MPV is amazingly hackable and has an IPC, you can nearly fully control it without touching it.", "excerpt": "> what the other parts are Of course I can't explain in detail in a single comment everything I listed, besides, that's just a subset of things I do through Emacs. Sometimes I want to kick off a process in the external terminal - long-lived processes are better handled that way. Kitty has remote protocol. I needed bidirectionally - being able to pipe into and from an arbitrary Emacs buffer to and from the terminal, s", "context": "", "use_case": "scriptable video playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Emacsification of Software"}, {"id": 759994096, "item_id": 47499631, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47499631", "by": "shevy-java", "date": "2026-03-24", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and video", "excerpt": "Winamp was pretty cool. When I switched to Linux, many years ago, I wanted to have winamp too. I think I used bmp for a while until it died; before that xmms but that one also sort of died. Meanwhile some other GUI showed up, I forgot the name. I kind of gave up on winamp, mostly because my use cases shifted. I went to mplayer, then mpv, and now I am too used to using mpv for literally anything related to audio and v", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "audio and video playback", "switched_from": "mplayer", "story": "A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp"}, {"id": 756883699, "item_id": 47305231, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47305231", "by": "dv35z", "date": "2026-03-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Using Cron and Mpv to shuffle-play activity-specific folders of MP3s", "excerpt": "(1) PROJECT \"AFFIRMATOR\" - Start each day out right with chill jazz wake-up music, then life-success wisdom (Earl Nightingale, Tony Robbins, etc). In the evening, fun latin cooking music plays, and then lo-fi chill tunes. At night, your personalized vocalized affirmations & goals plays, and then drift to sleep with meditation music. Tech details: I found that used, small form-factor Dell Optiplexes are great for prod", "context": "", "use_case": "scheduled music playback", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)"}, {"id": 746312177, "item_id": 46644511, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46644511", "by": "mid-kid", "date": "2026-01-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "a remote with access to all of the MPV shortcuts", "excerpt": "~\u20ac25, Moondrop Chu 2 headphones. Really good quality for the price, with a bit of care have lasted me for ~3 years now. When one side was going quieter, I could unscrew and clean it. The clear plastic cord is yellowing now unfortunately, will try to buy a new one. ~\u20ac80, Anbernic RG35XXSP: Handheld games console that runs (mostly) open source linux distros. Reinvigorated my retro gaming on the go when the OG consoles ", "context": "", "use_case": "media playback on TV", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What are your best purchases under $100?"}, {"id": 733913024, "item_id": 45869564, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869564", "by": "Elfener", "date": "2025-11-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv.", "excerpt": "I've switched to watching youtube videos using mpv. yt-dlp thankfully works, and this way, I can watch the video any way I want.", "context": "", "use_case": "watching YouTube videos", "switched_from": "YouTube web player", "story": "YouTube A/B testing removing playback speed controls"}, {"id": 733633184, "item_id": 45852074, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45852074", "by": "gyomu", "date": "2025-11-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "So anyways, I switched to mpv.", "excerpt": "I used VLC until I looked for a backward frame step functionality. I then found this thread on the VLC forums where the maintainers explain (with bad attitude) why this functionality is technically impossible. Everyone points out that mpv supports it, but the maintainers double down and say they\u2019re Doing It Wrong and it shouldn\u2019t be possible. So anyways, I switched to mpv. https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=2", "context": "", "use_case": "video playback with backward frame step", "switched_from": "VLC", "story": "VLC's Jean-Baptiste Kempf Receives the European SFS Award 2025"}]}