MPV Media Player Guide

This guide demonstrates how i setup my MPV will all the Configs, Scripts & Keybindings.

Why MPV

Like most people, my first real media player was VLC. It was the go-to recommendation: free, open-source, played almost anything, and worked across platforms. But over time, I started noticing cracks. The biggest issue for me was the UI. It hadn’t really changed since the version I used as a kid, and with Windows 11’s modern design language, it felt increasingly out of place. That alone was manageable until I switched to a laptop with an OLED screen. Suddenly, I was hooked on pure black and dark-mode interfaces, and VLC became an eyesore. I tried to fix it. I searched for a decent dark VLC skin but couldn’t find one. I even installed the beta branch that had a redesigned UI with dark mode support. Unfortunately, it was sluggish and borderline unusable, so I rolled back to the stable release. Then the performance issues started to bother me: slow opening and closing times, occasional jittery playback on high-quality videos, lag when scrubbing through the timeline, and no thumbnail previews. That’s when I finally decided to look for a better player—and that search led me to MPV.

At first, I was disappointed. MPV’s default UI felt primitive, almost too barebones, and I continued my hunt for alternatives. But nothing else stood out. Eventually, I gave up and stuck with what I had. Then, one day while browsing r/unixporn ​ I came across someone’s MPV setup. It looked nothing like the plain MPV I had tried before. Curious, I checked out their dotfiles and discovered that MPV was fully configurable through its own config files. Not long after, I stumbled upon stax76/awesome-mpv ​ which is a curated list of scripts, OSC, forks, shaders & other tools build by the community for MPV. I have spent countless hours tweaking scripts, keybinds, and settings, slowly turning MPV into exactly the player I wanted. And I couldn’t be happier without it.

Amazing mpv forks

MPV itself is great, but the ecosystem around it makes it even more exciting:

• IINA ​(macOS) - A beautifully designed MPV frontend that feels like a native Mac app.
• Celluloid ​(Linux) - A clean GTK frontend with all the power of MPV under the hood.
• Mpv Easy Player ​ (Windows) - A mpv fork with clean UI.
• mpc-qt/MPC-QT ​(Windows) - Media Player Classic reimplemented with Qt and libmpv.

Showcase

Script Breakdown

• autoload ​ - This script automatically loads playlist entries before and after the currently played file.
• autosub ​ - This script uses Subliminal to download subtitles.
• blackout ​ - Turns the screen completely black and pauses on a button press.
• delete_file ​ - This script is used to delete files.
• mpv-menu-plugin ​ - Configurable context menu for mpv on Windows, with additional support for native file dialog and clipboard.
• ModernZ ​ - A fork of ModernX, with built-in support for interactive menus & better UI customization.
• pause-when-minimize ​ - This script pauses playback when minimizing the window, and resumes playback.
• playlistmanager ​ - This script allows you to see and interact with your playlist in an intuitive way.
• thumbfast ​ - High-performance on-the-fly thumbnailer script for mpv.
• mpv-pointer-event ​ - Mouse/Touch input event detection for mpv.
• touch-gestures ​ - Touch gestures for mpv.
• mpv-gallery-view (Playlist View) ​ - Playlist grid view.
• mpv-gallery-view (Contact Sheet) ​ - Contact sheet view.

Fonts

Preferred font for subtitles

• Google Fonts - Space Grotesk ​
• Google Fonts - Atkinson Hyperlegible ​

OSC Fonts

• ModernZ/Material Design Iconic ​ - Material Design Icons used for ModernZ OSC
• microsoft/fluentui-system-icons ​ - A modified version by Github/Xurdejl ​

Installing (Windows)

Prerequisites mpv ​, And optionally: git ​ & python3 (pip) ​

1. Get the config

   • Clone the repository into %APPDATA% folder.

     git clone https://github.com/ThunderE75/mpv-scripts %APPDATA%\mpv

   • OR ThunderE75/mpv > Download ZIP ​ & extract the files into the %APPDATA% folder.

2. Optional Download pip/Subliminal ​ for autosub ​

   pip install subliminal

Key Bindings

Miscellaneous Script Keybindings

Playlist Management

Subtitle Keybinds

Bulk Delete Files

Files will be deleted only upon exit more info.

Common Default Keybinds

Reference: ThunderE75/mpv ​