uosc

Feature-rich minimalist proximity-based UI for MPV player.

Features:

• UI elements hide and show based on their proximity to cursor instead of every time mouse moves. This provides 100% control over when you see the UI and when you don't. Click on the preview above to see it in action.
• When timeline is unused, it can minimize itself into a small discrete progress bar.
• Build your own context menu with nesting support by editing your input.conf file.
• Configurable controls bar.
• Fast and efficient thumbnails with thumbfast integration.
• UIs for:
  • Selecting subtitle/audio/video track.
  • Downloading subtitles from Open Subtitles.
  • Loading external subtitles.
  • Selecting stream quality.
  • Quick directory and playlist navigation.
• All menus are instantly searchable. Just start typing.
• Mouse scroll wheel does multiple things depending on what is the cursor hovering over:
  • Timeline: seek by timeline_step seconds per scroll.
  • Volume bar: change volume by volume_step per scroll.
  • Speed bar: change speed by speed_step per scroll.
  • Just hovering video with no UI widget below cursor: your configured wheel bindings from input.conf.
• Right click on volume or speed elements to reset them.
• Transforming chapters into timeline ranges (the red portion of the timeline in the preview).
• A lot of useful options and commands to bind keys to.
• API for 3rd party scripts to extend, or use uosc to render their menus.

Changelog.

Install

1. These commands will install or update uosc and place a default uosc.conf file into script-opts if it doesn't exist already.

   Windows

   Optional, needed to run a remote script the first time if not enabled already:

   Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser

   Run:

   irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tomasklaen/uosc/HEAD/installers/windows.ps1 | iex

   NOTE: If this command is run in an mpv installation directory with portable_config, it'll install there instead of AppData.

   NOTE2: The downloaded archive might trigger false positives in some antiviruses. This is explained in FAQ below.

   Linux & macOS

   Requires curl and unzip.

   /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tomasklaen/uosc/HEAD/installers/unix.sh)"

   On Linux, we try to detect what package manager variant of the config location you're using, with precedent being:

   ~/.var/app/io.mpv.Mpv     (flatpak)
   ~/snap/mpv
   ~/snap/mpv-wayland
   ~/.config/mpv
   

   To install into any of these locations, make sure the ones above it don't exist.

   Manual

   1. Download & extract uosc.zip into your mpv config directory. (See the documentation of mpv config locations.)

   2. If you don't have it already, download & extract uosc.conf into script-opts inside your mpv config directory. It contains all of uosc options along with their default values and documentation.

2. OPTIONAL: mpv.conf tweaks to better integrate with uosc:

   # uosc provides seeking & volume indicators (via flash-timeline and flash-volume commands)
   # if you decide to use them, you don't need osd-bar
   osd-bar=no
   
   # uosc will draw its own window controls and border if you disable window border
   border=no
   

3. OPTIONAL: To have thumbnails in timeline, install thumbfast. No other step necessary, uosc integrates with it seamlessly.

4. OPTIONAL: If the UI feels sluggish/slow while playing video, you can remedy this a bit by placing this in your mpv.conf:

   video-sync=display-resample
   

   Though this does come at the cost of a little bit higher CPU/GPU load.

   What is going on?

   uosc places performance as one of its top priorities, but it might feel a bit sluggish because during a video playback, the UI rendering frequency is chained to its frame rate. To test this, you can pause the video which will switch refresh rate to be closer or match the frequency of your monitor, and the UI should feel smoother. This is mpv limitation, and not much we can do about it on our side.

Build instructions

To build ziggy (our utility binary) yourself, run:

tools/build ziggy

Which will run the tools/build(.ps1) script that builds it for each platform. It requires go to be installed. Source code is in src/ziggy.

Options

All of the available uosc options with their default values are documented in uosc.conf file (download).

To change the font, uosc respects the mpv's osd-font configuration.

Navigation

These bindings are active when any uosc menu is open (main menu, playlist, load/select subtitles,...):

• up, down - Select previous/next item.
• enter - Activate item or submenu.
• bs (backspace) - Activate parent menu.
• esc - Close menu.
• wheel_up, wheel_down - Scroll menu.
• pgup, pgdwn, home, end - Self explanatory.
• ctrl+f or \ - In case menu_type_to_search config option is disabled, these two trigger the menu search instead.
• ctrl+backspace - Delete search query by word.
• shift+backspace - Clear search query.
• Holding alt while activating an item should prevent closing the menu (this is just a guideline, not all menus behave this way).

Each menu can also add its own shortcuts and bindings for special actions on items/menu, such as del to delete a playlist item, ctrl+up/down/pgup/pgdwn/home/end to move it around, etc. These are usually also exposed as item action buttons for you to find out about them that way.

Click on a faded parent menu to go back to it.

Commands

uosc provides various commands with useful features to bind your preferred keys to, or populate your menu with. These are all unbound by default.

To add a keybind to one of this commands, open your input.conf file and add one on a new line. The command syntax is script-binding uosc/{command-name}.

Example to bind the tab key to toggle the ui visibility:

tab  script-binding uosc/toggle-ui

Available commands:

toggle-ui

Makes the whole UI visible until you call this command again. Useful for peeking remaining time and such while watching.

There's also a toggle-elements <ids> message you can send to toggle one or more specific elements by specifying their names separated by comma:

script-message-to uosc toggle-elements timeline,speed

Available element IDs: timeline, controls, volume, top_bar, speed

Under the hood, toggle-ui is using toggle-elements, and that is in turn using the set-min-visibility <visibility> [<ids>] message. <visibility> is a 0-1 floating point. Leave out <ids> to set it for all elements.

toggle-progress

Toggles the timeline progress mode on/off. Progress mode is an always visible thin version of timeline with no text labels. It can be configured using the progress* config options.

toggle-title

Toggles the top bar title between main and alternative title's. This can also be done by clicking on the top bar.

Only relevant if top bar is enabled, top_bar_alt_title is configured, and top_bar_alt_title_place is toggle.

flash-ui

Command(s) to briefly flash the whole UI. Elements are revealed for a second and then fade away.

To flash individual elements, you can use: flash-timeline, flash-progress, flash-top-bar, flash-volume, flash-speed, flash-pause-indicator, decide-pause-indicator

There's also a flash-elements <ids> message you can use to flash one or more specific elements. Example:

script-message-to uosc flash-elements timeline,speed

Available element IDs: timeline, progress, controls, volume, top_bar, speed, pause_indicator

This is useful in combination with other commands that modify values represented by flashed elements, for example: flashing volume element when changing the volume.

You can use it in your bindings like so:

space        cycle pause; script-binding uosc/flash-pause-indicator
right        seek  5
left         seek -5
shift+right  seek  30; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline
shift+left   seek -30; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline
m            no-osd cycle mute; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
up           no-osd add volume  10; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
down         no-osd add volume -10; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
[            no-osd add speed -0.25; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
]            no-osd add speed  0.25; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
\            no-osd set speed 1; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
>            script-binding uosc/next; script-message-to uosc flash-elements top_bar,timeline
<            script-binding uosc/prev; script-message-to uosc flash-elements top_bar,timeline

Case for (flash/decide)-pause-indicator: mpv handles frame stepping forward by briefly resuming the video, which causes pause indicator to flash, and none likes that when they are trying to compare frames. The solution is to enable manual pause indicator (pause_indicator=manual) and use flash-pause-indicator (for a brief flash) or decide-pause-indicator (for a static indicator) as a secondary command to appropriate bindings.

menu

Toggles default menu. Read Menu section below to find out how to fill it up with items you want there.

Note: there's also a menu-blurred command that opens a menu without pre-selecting the 1st item, suitable for commands triggered with a mouse, such as control bar buttons.

subtitles, audio, video

Menus to select a track of a requested type.

load-subtitles, load-audio, load-video

Displays a file explorer with directory navigation to load a requested track type.

For subtitles, the explorer only displays file types defined in subtitle_types option. For audio and video, the ones defined in video_types and audio_types are displayed.

download-subtitles

A menu to search and download subtitles from Open Subtitles. It can also be opened by selecting the Download option in subtitles menu.

We fetch results for languages defined in uosc*'s languages option, which defaults to your mpv slang configuration.

We also hash the current file and send the hash to Open Subtitles so you can search even with empty query and if your file is known, you'll get subtitles exactly for it.

Subtitles will be downloaded to the same directory as currently opened file, or ~~/subtitles (folder in your mpv config directory) if playing a URL.

Current Open Subtitles limit for unauthenticated requests is 5 download per day, but searching is unlimited. Authentication raises downloads to 10, which doesn't feel like it's worth the effort of implementing it, so currently there's no way to authenticate. 5 downloads per day seems sufficient for most use cases anyway, as if you need more, you should probably just deal with it in the browser beforehand so you don't have to fiddle with the subtitle downloading menu every time you start playing a new file.

playlist

Playlist navigation.

chapters

Chapter navigation.

editions

Editions menu. Editions are different video cuts available in some mkv files.

stream-quality

Switch stream quality. This is just a basic re-assignment of ytdl-format mpv property from predefined options (configurable with stream_quality_options) and video reload, there is no fetching of available formats going on.

keybinds

Displays a command palette menu with all currently active keybindings (defined in your input.conf file, or registered by scripts). Useful to check what command is bound to what shortcut, or the other way around.

open-file

Open file menu. Browsing starts in current file directory, or user directory when file not available. The explorer only displays file types defined in the video_types, audio_types, and image_types options.

You can use alt+enter or alt+click to load the whole directory in mpv instead of navigating its contents. You can also use ctrl+enter or ctrl+click to append a file or directory to the playlist.

items

Opens playlist menu when playlist exists, or open-file menu otherwise.

next, prev

Open next/previous item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist. Enable loop-playlist to loop around.

first, last

Open first/last item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist.

next-file, prev-file

Open next/prev file in current directory. Enable loop-playlist to loop around

first-file, last-file

Open first/last file in current directory.

shuffle

Toggle uosc's playlist/directory shuffle mode on or off.

This simply makes the next selected playlist or directory item be random, like the shuffle function of most other players. This does not modify the actual playlist in any way, in contrast to the mpv built-in command playlist-shuffle.

delete-file-next

Delete currently playing file and start next file in playlist (if there is a playlist) or current directory.

Useful when watching episodic content.

delete-file-quit

Delete currently playing file and quit mpv.

show-in-directory

Show current file in your operating systems' file explorer.

audio-device

Switch audio output device.

paste, paste-to-open, paste-to-playlist

Commands to paste path or URL in clipboard to either open immediately, or append to playlist.

paste will add to playlist if there's any (playlist-count > 1), or open immediately otherwise.

paste-to-playlist will also open the pasted file if mpv is idle (no file open).

Note: there are alternative ways to open stuff from clipboard without the need to bind these commands:

• When open-file menu is open → ctrl+v to open path/URL in clipboard.
• When playlist menu is open → ctrl+v to add path/URL in clipboard to playlist.
• When any track menu (subtitles, audio, video) is open → ctrl+v to add path/URL in clipboard as a new track.

copy-to-clipboard

Copy currently open path or URL to clipboard.

Additionally, you can also press ctrl+c to copy path of a selected item in playlist or all directory listing menus.

open-config-directory

Open directory with mpv.conf in file explorer.

update

Updates uosc to the latest stable release right from the UI. Available in the "Utils" section of default menu .

Supported environments:

Env	Works	Note
Windows	✔️	Not tested on older PowerShell versions. You might need to Set-ExecutionPolicy from the install instructions and install with the terminal command first.
Linux (apt)	✔️
Linux (flatpak)	✔️
Linux (snap)	❌	We're not allowed to access commands like curl even if they're installed. (Or at least this is what I think the issue is.)
MacOS	❌	(23) Failed writing body error, whatever that means.

If you know about a solution to fix self-updater for any of the currently broken environments, please make an issue/PR and share it with us!

Note: The terminal commands from install instructions still work fine everywhere, so you can use those to update instead.

Menu

uosc provides a way to build, display, and use your own menu. By default it displays a pre-configured menu with common actions.

To display the menu, add uosc's menu command to a key of your choice. Example to bind it to right click and menu buttons:

mbtn_right  script-binding uosc/menu
menu        script-binding uosc/menu

To display a submenu, send a show-submenu message to uosc with first parameter specifying menu ID. Example:

R    script-message-to uosc show-submenu "Utils > Aspect ratio"

Note: The menu key is the one nobody uses between the win and right_ctrl keys (it might not be on your keyboard).

Adding items to menu

Adding items to menu is facilitated by commenting your keybinds in input.conf with special comment syntax. uosc will than parse this file and build the context menu out of it.

Syntax

Comment has to be at the end of the line with the binding.

Comment has to start with #! (or #menu:).

Text after #! is an item title.

Title can be split with > to define nested menus. There is no limit on nesting.

Use # instead of a key if you don't necessarily want to bind a key to a command, but still want it in the menu.

If multiple menu items with the same command are defined, uosc will concatenate them into one item and just display all available shortcuts as that items' hint, while using the title of the first defined item.

Menu items are displayed in the order they are defined in input.conf file.

The command ignore does not result in a menu item, however all the folders leading up to it will still be created. This allows more flexible structuring of the input.conf file.

Examples

Adds a menu item to load subtitles:

alt+s  script-binding uosc/load-subtitles  #! Load subtitles

Adds a stay-on-top toggle with no keybind:

#  cycle ontop  #! Toggle on-top

Define and display multiple shortcuts in single items' menu hint (items with same command get concatenated):

esc  quit  #! Quit
q    quit  #!

Define a folder without defining any of its contents:

#  ignore  #! Folder title >

Define an un-selectable, muted, and italic title item by using # as key, and omitting the command:

#    #! Title
#    #! Section > Title

Define a separator between previous and next items by doing the same, but using --- as title:

#    #! ---
#    #! Section > ---

Example context menu:

This is the default pre-configured menu if none is defined in your input.conf, but with added shortcuts. To both pause & move the window with left mouse button, so that you can have the menu on the right one, enable click_threshold in uosc.conf (see default uosc.conf for example/docs).

menu        script-binding uosc/menu
mbtn_right  script-binding uosc/menu
s           script-binding uosc/subtitles          #! Subtitles
a           script-binding uosc/audio              #! Audio tracks
q           script-binding uosc/stream-quality     #! Stream quality
p           script-binding uosc/items              #! Playlist
c           script-binding uosc/chapters           #! Chapters
>           script-binding uosc/next               #! Navigation > Next
<           script-binding uosc/prev               #! Navigation > Prev
alt+>       script-binding uosc/delete-file-next   #! Navigation > Delete file & Next
alt+<       script-binding uosc/delete-file-prev   #! Navigation > Delete file & Prev
alt+esc     script-binding uosc/delete-file-quit   #! Navigation > Delete file & Quit
o           script-binding uosc/open-file          #! Navigation > Open file
#           set video-aspect-override "-1"         #! Utils > Aspect ratio > Default
#           set video-aspect-override "16:9"       #! Utils > Aspect ratio > 16:9
#           set video-aspect-override "4:3"        #! Utils > Aspect ratio > 4:3
#           set video-aspect-override "2.35:1"     #! Utils > Aspect ratio > 2.35:1
#           script-binding uosc/audio-device       #! Utils > Audio devices
#           script-binding uosc/editions           #! Utils > Editions
ctrl+s      async screenshot                       #! Utils > Screenshot
alt+i       script-binding uosc/keybinds           #! Utils > Key bindings
O           script-binding uosc/show-in-directory  #! Utils > Show in directory
#           script-binding uosc/open-config-directory #! Utils > Open config directory
#           script-binding uosc/update             #! Utils > Update uosc
esc         quit #! Quit

To see all the commands you can bind keys or menu items to, refer to mpv's list of input commands documentation.

Messages

uosc listens on some messages that can be sent with script-message-to uosc command. Example:

R    script-message-to uosc show-submenu "Utils > Aspect ratio"

show-submenu <menu_id>, show-submenu-blurred <menu_id>

Opens one of the submenus defined in input.conf (read on how to build those in the Menu documentation above). To prevent 1st item being preselected, use show-submenu-blurred instead.

Parameters

<menu_id>

ID (title) of the submenu, including > subsections as defined in input.conf. It has to be match the title exactly.

Scripting API

3rd party script developers can use our messaging API to integrate with uosc, or use it to render their menus. Documentation is available in uosc Wiki.

Contributing

Localization

If you want to help localizing uosc by either adding a new locale or fixing one that is not up to date, start by running this while in the repository root:

tools/intl languagecode

languagecode can be any existing locale in src/uosc/intl/ directory, or any IETF language tag. If it doesn't exist yet, the intl tool will create it.

This will parse the codebase for localization strings and use them to either update existing locale by removing unused and setting untranslated strings to null, or create a new one with all null strings.

You can then navigate to src/uosc/intl/languagecode.json and start translating.

Setting up binaries

If you want to test or work on something that involves ziggy (our multitool binary, currently handles searching & downloading subtitles), you first need to build it with:

tools/build ziggy

This requires go to be installed and in path. If you don't want to bother with installing go, and there were no changes to ziggy, you can just use the binaries from latest release. Place folder scripts/uosc/bin from uosc.zip into src/uosc/bin.

FAQ

Why is the release zip size in megabytes? Isn't this just a lua script?

We are limited in what we can do in mpv's lua scripting environment. To work around this, we include a binary tool (one for each platform), that we call to handle stuff we can't do in lua. Currently this means searching & downloading subtitles, accessing clipboard data, and in future might improve self updating, and potentially other things.

Other scripts usually choose to go the route of adding python scripts and requiring users to install the runtime. I don't like this as I want the installation process to be as seamless and as painless as possible. I also don't want to contribute to potential python version mismatch issues, because one tool depends on 2.7, other latest 3, and this one 3.9 only and no newer (real world scenario that happened to me), now have fun reconciling this. Depending on external runtimes can be a mess, and shipping a stable, tiny, and fast binary that users don't even have to know about is imo more preferable than having unstable external dependencies and additional installation steps that force everyone to install and manage hundreds of megabytes big runtimes in global PATH.

Why don't you have uosc-{platform}.zip releases and only include binaries for the concerned platform in each?

Then you wouldn't be able to sync your mpv config between platforms and everything just work.

Why is the release reported as malicious by some antiviruses?

Some antiviruses find our binaries suspicious due to the way go packages them. This is a known issue with all go binaries (https://go.dev/doc/faq#virus). I think the only way to solve that would be to sign them (not 100% sure though), but I'm not paying to work on free stuff. If anyone is bothered by this, and would be willing to donate a code signing certificate, let me know.

If you want to check the binaries are safe, the code is in src/ziggy, and you can build them yourself by running tools/build ziggy in the repository root.

We might eventually rewrite it in something else.

Why uosc?

It stood for micro osc as it used to render just a couple rectangles before it grew to what it is today. And now it means a minimalist UI design direction where everything is out of your way until needed.