How can I control mpv in command line?

Question

How can I control mpv in command line?

Like is there a mpv next/prev command that I can use to play next or previous media file?

Answer 1

There are two ways to do such a thing:

• Setup IPC for mpv and socket controlling
• Using 3rd party scripts

Setup IPC for mpv

You can do such a thing with IPC, as man mpv said:

Using --input-ipc-server is also suitable for purposes like remote control.

First you'll need to enable IPC socketing in your mpv.conf or ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf:

# Enable the IPC support to control mpv from the command-line.
input-ipc-server=~~/socket

If you want to keep it open temporarily and only for one session, you can do:

$ mpv --input-ipc-server=$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv/socket

Now you can control your media:

Play / Pause

echo cycle pause | socat - "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv/socket"

Next Track

echo playlist-next | socat - "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv/socket"

Previous Track

echo playlist-prev | socat - "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv/socket"

Get playback time

To get return values, we send the command as JSON:

echo '{ "command": ["get_property", "playback-time"] }' | socat - "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv/socket"
{"data":7.026783,"request_id":0,"error":"success"}

Using an external program

Another way to control mpv from command line, is to use mpvc or such programs, it's like mpc but for `mpv.

Really powerful, examples:

$ mpvc next                   # Play next media
$ mpvc prev                   # Play previous media
$ mpvc mute                   # Mute media's sound track
$ mpvc unmute                 # Unmute media's sound track
$ mpvc volume +               # Increase volume
$ mpvc volume -               # Decrease volume
...

Answer 2

There are multiple options to interact with mpv from a command line, as suggested in the manual e.g.,

• keybindings (using 'input.conf')
• OSD
• JSON IPC
• client API (libmpv) ...

In GNU systems you can check /usr/share/doc/mpv/ to have some inspiration on how to configure mpv: input.conf has default keybindings and mpv.confhas an example configuration file.

You can check the manual to know about how to use in different operational systems:

https://mpv.io/manual/master/#command-interface

Answer 3

While there are multiple ways and programs to handle controlling MPV from the command line, I wasn't satisfied with the existing solutions, so I wrote a script that supports controlling mpv from the command line in Python.

https://github.com/ideasman42/mpvctl/blob/master/mpvctl

---

$ mpvctl next               # Play next media
$ mpvctl prev               # Play previous media
$ mpvctl add *.mp3          # Play MP3's in the current directory.
$ mpvctl trash              # Move the file to the trash and play the next. 

---

This supports:

• Basics such as pause/play, next/previous .. etc.
• Relative seeking.
• Adding file(s), optionally replacing the current playlist.
• Moving file playing to the trash.

The alternatives I found had some limitations (not expanding the $PWD when adding files - for example), and I found the BASH to handle more involved commands was difficult to follow. Hence the rewrite in Python.