The player

anistream plays everything in mpv and gives it the app’s look: its own controls, seekbar thumbnails, a skip button, an Up Next card and menus, in the same colours and font as the terminal. The next episode loads into the window the last one played in, so fullscreen and window position stay put.

The controls appear when you move the mouse, pause or seek, and leave about a second after the mouse stops, wherever it rests, or as soon as it leaves the window. While they are up, the bottom of the picture is shaded so they read over a bright scene, and subtitles move up out of their way and settle back when they go. When they are hidden the screen shows the video and nothing else.

Two interfaces

[playback]
player_ui = "anistream"   # or "mpv"

anistream is the default. It brings its own controls (uosc), thumbnails (thumbfast) and the companion script that draws the skip button, Up Next and the menus. It still reads your mpv.conf, but scripts in your mpv folder are not loaded, so another controller or track picker cannot compete with these.

mpv keeps your own setup as it is and adds only the companion script. The skip button, Up Next and the menus work with mpv’s built-in controller and with your own uosc. In this mode the anistream menu also appears in mpv’s right-click menu.

Both need mpv 0.36 or newer for the skip button, Up Next, the menus and thumbnails. Older versions, such as Debian 12’s 0.35, play with mpv’s own controls. anistream --doctor reports your mpv version, which interface is in use and where its files were written.

Keys inside the player

Keys are written the way the player’s ? list writes them: S is the S key on its own, and Shift+N is N with Shift held.

Key	Action
Shift+N / Shift+P	Next · previous episode
Shift+M, right click	The anistream menu
?	Every key on this list, in the player window
← / →	Back · forward 5 seconds
S or Enter	Skip the opening or ending, while the button is shown
U	Undo an automatic skip, while the note is shown
Enter / Esc	Play now · cancel, while Up Next is shown
Enter / Esc	Switch source · keep waiting, when a stream stops mid-episode
Click the picture	Pause and resume. A double click is fullscreen, as in mpv
Mouse wheel	Volume
Alt+M	Mini player
Alt+Z	Sync subtitles

Keys that belong to an element only exist while it is on screen. The rest of the time S takes a screenshot and Enter and Esc do what mpv does. Every binding has a name, so a line like F2 script-binding anistream/menu in your input.conf moves it, and the ? list shows the key you chose. mpv’s own full list of bindings is Shift+I, then 4.

Skipping and Up Next

Opening and ending times come from the file’s own chapters when it has them, and from aniskip otherwise. Either way they are marked on the seekbar. While the playhead is inside one, a skip button sits in the corner. With skip_opening = true the skip happens on its own and a short note offers to undo it. skip_button = false takes the button away, and with skip_opening and mark_chapters off too, aniskip is not asked at all.

Near the end of an episode, from the start of its ending when that is known, an Up Next card shows the next episode’s still and title. With auto_next = true the next episode starts in the same window when this one ends. Its streams are found while the ending plays, so it starts without a search, and a torrent has its first pieces by then. Cancel keeps the player where it is.

Menus

Press Shift+M or right click for the anistream menu:

• Episodes jumps to any episode of the season.
• Sources switches to another release of the same episode and keeps your place.
• Sub / Dub restarts the episode in the other version, where you were.
• Upscaling, HDR tone mapping (only while HDR video is playing) and Night mode.
• Subtitles and Audio list the file’s tracks, by title, or by language when a track has none.
• Sync subtitles and Mini player.

Upscaling

[playback]
upscaling = "natural"   # "natural", "sharp" or "off"

natural uses ArtCNN, small networks trained to reconstruct line work and texture without restyling them. Standard-definition sources get the AniSD model. sharp uses Anime4K’s presets, which give crisper lines and heavier cleanup. The old anime4k-fast and anime4k-quality settings read as sharp.

Which networks run is decided per file:

• Nothing heavy runs when the source already fills your display.
• On battery the chain starts one step lighter.
• If frames keep dropping, the chain steps down and stays there for the rest of the binge. A short note on the video says so.
• HDR video only gets chroma work, and Dolby Vision gets none, because the networks were trained on SDR frames.

If you pass your own --glsl-shaders in playback.mpv_args, anistream leaves shaders alone.

The shaders ship inside anistream. ArtCNN and Anime4K are MIT, KrigBilateral and SSimDownscaler are LGPL-3.0, and the AniSD model is CC BY-NC 4.0, which anistream can ship because it is free and non-commercial. Release packages carry every licence in a third-party folder.

HDR

On a display that mpv drives in SDR, HDR video is tone mapped. auto is mpv’s own choice and right for most screens. The menu lists the alternatives while HDR is playing, and your pick is kept as tone_mapping.

Tracks

On releases with several subtitle tracks, anistream picks the full subtitles over signs and songs when you watch subbed, and the signs track when you watch dubbed. Commentary is never chosen for you.

When you change the audio track, the subtitle track or the subtitle delay, that choice is kept for the series, separately for sub and dub, and matched on later episodes even when their track numbers differ. This follows persist_speed, which also carries playback speed.

Sync subtitles (Alt+Z) fixes subtitles that drift: mark a line where it shows and where it should show, twice, and anistream works out the delay and speed.

Thumbnails

Hovering the seekbar shows a thumbnail of that moment. Torrent streams get thumbnails too. They are read only from parts of the file already downloaded, so hovering never takes bandwidth from playback, and parts not downloaded yet show no thumbnail.

Night mode

Night mode evens out quiet dialogue and loud music, so a low volume stays usable and the opening isn’t suddenly loud. Turn it on in the menu or with night_mode = true.

Trying it without a source

The player_preview example plays any local video as a two-episode binge through the real playback code, with your config’s player settings:

cargo run -p anistream --example player_preview -- path/to/video.mp4