MPV
MPV is an open-source command line media player.
Installation
With nix-shell
nix-shell -p mpv
With NixOS
environment.systemPackages = [
pkgs.mpv
];
With Home Manager
home.packages = [
pkgs.mpv
];
Configuration
With Home Manager
Basic
programs.mpv.enable = true;
Advanced
programs.mpv = {
enable = true;
package = (
pkgs.mpv-unwrapped.wrapper {
scripts = with pkgs.mpvScripts; [
uosc
sponsorblock
];
mpv = pkgs.mpv-unwrapped.override {
waylandSupport = true;
};
}
);
config = {
profile = "high-quality";
ytdl-format = "bestvideo+bestaudio";
cache-default = 4000000;
};
};
Tips and Tricks
Where to get scripts
To find more scripts run this in a terminal:
nix search nixpkgs mpvScripts
The scripts are also defined in the following Nixpkgs directory.
Where to find override options and using umpv
The package override options are defined in the following Nixpkgs directory. This includes a commonly used first party script called umpv which allows additional files to be appended to the playlist of an open instance. In the nix derivation of mpv, the umpv script is bundled into the program and can be ran from the command line with `umpv foo.ogg`. Note that umpv can only be ran with the name of the file being opened and cannot be ran with additional arguments or flags.
Also note that commands cannot be passed to mpv using socat when mpv is ran using the umpv python wrapper. For example, if you try to pause umpv with echo '{"command": ["cycle", "pause"]}' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket, it will result in an error similar to the following:
2025/05/07 22:49:15 socat[115919] E GOPEN: /tmp/mpvsocket: Connection refused
Troubleshooting
Error, unknown format
If you get the following sort of error, note that MPV currently uses the small ffmpeg version (ffmpeg_5) instead of the full version (ffmpeg_5-full).
$ mpv --log-file=foo.log av://v4l2:/dev/video5
[lavf] Unknown lavf format v4l2
Failed to recognize file format.
Exiting... (Errors when loading file)
To address this problem, you can use the following package configuration for ffmpeg.
programs.mpv = {
enable = true;
package = (
pkgs.mpv-unwrapped.wrapper {
mpv = pkgs.mpv-unwrapped.override {
ffmpeg = pkgs.ffmpeg-full;
};
}
);
};