mpv-player/mpv

Overview

mpv is a free media player built around a command-line interface. It plays a wide range of media containers, audio and video codecs, and subtitle formats, and it is derived from the MPlayer/mplayer2 codebase (README). Its main audience is users who prefer keyboard-driven playback, scripting, and configuration over a traditional GUI, plus developers who embed libmpv in their own applications. A Lua-based on-screen controller and youtube-dl integration are available, with Lua required for both (compilation notes).

Getting started

Packaged builds are the normal entry point. Semi-official builds and third-party packages are listed on the installation page. For a supported platform, install the package, then open a file from the terminal:

mpv video.mkv

Playback starts in its own window; keyboard shortcuts control playback, seeking, subtitles, and audio tracks. For display, sound-device, and playback behavior, consult the manual.

To build from source, install Meson and the development libraries (FFmpeg libraries, libass, libplacebo, zlib, and platform-specific graphics/audio headers), then run (build instructions):

meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson install -C build

Full-feature builds need a long dependency list; the mpv-build wrapper compiles FFmpeg and libass first. Windows-specific steps are documented separately (Windows compilation).

System requirements and limits

Supported systems are current Linux distributions, Windows 10 1607 or later, and macOS 10.15 or later. A reasonably capable CPU and GPU are expected: hardware decoding is off by default and must be enabled with --hwdec, and low-power GPUs may show tearing or stutter, where --profile=fast is suggested (system requirements). Older hardware and unsupported operating systems are not deliberately broken but are not guaranteed to work.

Releases are cut roughly once or twice a year and only the latest release is supported; distributions are expected to patch bugs themselves (release policy). Default licensing is GPLv2 or later; building with -Dgpl=false yields LGPLv2.1 or later (license details).

HotRepo's take

On the 2026-11-06 all-language daily GitHub ranking, mpv reached position 4 while adding 36 stars that day, a sign that a long-established command-line player still draws daily attention. The strongest reader discussion came from the January 2022 Hacker News thread "Command Line Video Player," where users described using mpv for multi-display and multi-audio setups via shell aliases and cheap wireless keyboards (trabant00), and one user reported switching from VLC on macOS after audio-lag and crash issues and finding mpv stable (pdimitar). Those are individual experiences from older versions, not endorsements of current builds. The thread also shows the wider ecosystem: IINA on macOS (guessmyname) and GUI frontends such as mpv.net on Windows (Ezhik), which matters for users who want mpv's engine without learning its configuration language.