Configuration

The config file is ~/.config/anistream/config.toml on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/anistream/config.toml on macOS and %APPDATA%\anistream\config\config.toml on Windows. Every section is optional, and a missing file is a valid configuration. The Settings screen edits the same file in place, format-preserving, so hand-written comments survive.

[theme]
mode = "adaptive"      # inherit the terminal's background, or "immersive" for dusk indigo

[playback]
translation = "sub"
quality = 1080
commit_threshold = 0.85    # fraction of runtime that counts as *watched* and gets synced
auto_next = true
skip_opening = true        # skips it, with an Undo on the video
mark_chapters = true       # puts the opening and ending on the seek bar
skip_button = true         # offers a skip while they play, when it isn't automatic
upscaling = "natural"      # "natural" (ArtCNN), "sharp" (Anime4K) or "off"
player_ui = "anistream"    # or "mpv" to keep your own mpv setup
night_mode = false         # evens out quiet dialogue and loud music
tone_mapping = "auto"      # how HDR is shown on an SDR display

[providers]
order = ["torrent", "plugins"]    # tried in order; failover walks the list

Theme

adaptive reads your terminal’s background over OSC 11 and sits beside your other tools. immersive paints its own dusk-indigo ground. light and dark keep your terminal’s background and use the colours made for that kind of ground, for a terminal that does not answer the background query. Set motion = false to turn off the eyecatch wipe, which is the app’s only orchestrated animation, and hold the loading pulses still.

Watched versus resumable

commit_threshold, 85% by default, decides when an episode counts as watched and gets pushed to a tracker. It is set high so that opening an episode to check the subtitles does not mark it seen.

Resuming is separate. Quit an episode any time past thirty seconds and it appears on the home screen with its position. Only past 95% is an episode treated as too close to the end to resume.

Sources

providers.order is the failover chain. No entry does anything until you configure it.

• "torrent" is the BitTorrent transport, pointed at an indexer you configure and gated behind the VPN guard.
• "plugins" is every plugin you have installed, by hand or from a plugin store.
• "remote" is a JSON API you host yourself, answering search/<query>, info/<id> and watch/<id>-episode-<n> under providers.remote_url. It does nothing until that is set.

Plugins compile in the background and are cached, so they never hold up the first frame. An installed plugin is only used while "plugins" is in the order; drop it if you use none.

The order can also name a plugin by its id, which puts that plugin at its own place in it:

[providers]
order = ["alpha", "torrent", "plugins"]    # alpha first, then torrents, then the other plugins

The plugins the order does not name are tried at "plugins", in alphabetical order of their ids. Naming a plugin only moves it: plugins are still used only while "plugins" is in the order.

On the Sources screen, K moves the selected source up the order and J moves it down. The order is saved to providers.order and takes effect at once, without restarting the torrent session. Moving a plugin names the plugins on the screen in the order, with "plugins" after them for any you install later.

Each source is matched to the title on its own, and asked in order. A source that cannot find the title or the episode, or fails, hands over to the next. A source that finds several possible matches and cannot choose asks you which is right, once, before the next is tried.

The order is a default. P on a title pins one source for that title, and s on an episode picks an exact release; pinned sources do not fail over.

A plugin that needs an API key or similar reads it from its own settings table:

[providers.plugins.settings.my-source]
api-key = "…"

All keys are optional and defined by the plugin; anistream passes them through unread.

Downloads

[downloads]
directory = "~/Downloads/anistream"
merge_subtitles = true     # mux sidecar subtitles into the file, a stream copy with no re-encode
on_complete = "…"          # a command run after each download, with ANISTREAM_PATH, _TITLE, _EPISODE
keep_seeding = false       # whether a finished download keeps seeding

on_complete is for refreshing a media library or renaming to a scheme of your own; a failure is logged, never fatal. A finished download stops seeding unless you ask otherwise, which is a privacy choice. What a watched episode does is set under Seeding.

Caution

A key this version doesn’t know is skipped and left in the file, so apps of different versions can share it. The one exception is [providers.torrent.vpn], where an unknown key is refused, since a misspelt one there could leave torrents unprotected. A config that fails to load is not used at all: anistream runs entirely on the defaults, without your VPN mode, indexer and tracker credentials, until the file is fixed. It says so on every screen, naming the file and the line, and the Settings screen saves nothing until the file loads again, so a broken file is never written over.

Disk space

Streamed episodes are written to the cache directory: ~/.cache/anistream/torrents on Linux, ~/Library/Caches/anistream/torrents on macOS and %LOCALAPPDATA%\anistream\cache\torrents on Windows. An episode’s files are deleted once it is no longer playing, fetched ahead or seeding, and the directory as a whole is held to a limit:

[providers.torrent]
cache_limit_gb = 20    # what streamed episodes may keep on disk; 0 keeps only what is in use

Past the limit the least recently watched go first, at launch and every couple of minutes while anistream runs. Downloads count toward the limit but are never removed by it; set downloads.directory to move finished downloads out of the cache altogether.

The rest of the cache directory is trimmed on its own: logs are kept for two weeks, cover art for a month, and what the player leaves behind for a day.

Notifications, metadata and updates

[notifications]
airing_digest = true   # one line on launch: what aired for shows you watch
desktop = false        # send the same line to the desktop too

[meta]
fallback = true        # when AniList cannot answer, ask Tenrai before using cached data
title_language = "anilist"   # or "english" or "romaji"

[updates]
check = true           # ask GitHub once a day whether a new release exists

title_language decides which form of each title is shown, everywhere: lists, title pages, the player and notifications. anilist follows the signed-in AniList account’s own setting, native titles included; signed out it shows English first, falling back to romaji. The Settings screen’s titles row changes it. Searching still finds a title by any of its names.

The update check downloads nothing; anistream --update does that when you run it.

Discord and watch parties

[presence]
enabled = false        # show what you are watching on your Discord profile
show_title = true      # or only that something is playing
rich = false           # cover, progress bar and an AniList button; needs show_title

[syncplay]
server = ""            # host:port of a Syncplay server; none is set until you pick one
room = "…"             # the room y joins
name = "anistream"     # the name the room sees

Presence is off until you turn it on, since it publishes what you watch to a third party. presence.client_id names the Discord application it appears under.

anistream runs a watch party itself, over Syncplay’s protocol, so any Syncplay server works and nothing else needs installing. There is no default server: the party form suggests syncplay.pl:8995, which the Syncplay project runs. syncplay.recent_servers keeps the last five servers you joined. A party play saves no position, and the episode is marked watched when it ends.

A torrent proxy in the apps

In the apps, torrent protection is set under Settings › Sources. A proxy is checked before it is saved: the guard’s check runs through it first, and a failed check saves nothing and says why. To change the saved proxy, choose Edit proxy… beside Protect with. Its form opens filled in; leave the password empty to keep the saved one. In the apps has the rest.

Everything else

[providers.torrent] and [providers.torrent.vpn] are covered in Torrents and the VPN guard; [trackers] in Trackers and sync; [keys] in Keys and command line.