mpv

mpv is a free, open-source media player that runs from the command line. It plays a wide range of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. It is based on the MPlayer project, via the intermediate mplayer2 project. It runs on Linux, Windows 10 1607 or later, and macOS 10.15 or later.

The main video output renders and scales video with shaders instead of GPU fixed-function hardware. Hardware decoding is not enabled by default and must be turned on with the --hwdec option. On low-power GPUs that show tearing or stutter, the README recommends --profile=fast. A legacy output such as --vo=xv exists on Linux, but it is not recommended or supported. Optional components include Lua for the OSC pseudo-GUI and youtube-dl integration, libass for OSD and text subtitles, and uchardet for subtitle charset detection.

mpv has a client C API, user scripts, and configurable key and OSC bindings. It is aimed at users who want a scriptable player and at developers who embed or extend it. It is built with meson. Optional build helpers include a libplacebo subproject and the mpv-build wrapper, which compiles FFmpeg and libass statically into the player. Releases are cut once or twice a year as 0.X.0 versions, and only the latest release is supported. The license is GPLv2 or later by default, or LGPLv2.1 or later with -Dgpl=false.

Installation

# via Build from source (meson)
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson install -C build