mcastorina / mpv-remote-app

Android app to control mpv running on another computer

mpv-remote-app

An Android application to control the mpv media player running on a separate computer.

Features

• play / pause / stop
• fast forward / rewind
• volume slider
• fullscreen
• subtitles toggle
• audio / subtitle selection
• file browsing
• automatically find server
• NEW! play yt video streams from URL or search keywords

How it Works

mpv has an option --input-ipc-server which allows you to control the state of the media player, so the python script server.py acts as a mediator between the unix socket specified to mpv and the Android application. It will receive commands via UDP packets and translate it into a form the mpv IPC server understands.

HMAC with a shared secret is used to ensure message authenticity and integrity, so only users with the server's secret can alter its state. Because the server receives commands over the network, this means it is possible, although a very bad idea, to open this up to the Internet. I do not recommend it.

For a more detailed description, refer to DESIGN.md.

Getting Started

Installation

1. Install the server (Python 3 only)

python3 -m pip install mpv-remote-app

2. Install the Android application

The Android application is available on F-Droid here.

Alternatively, you can follow these steps to install the APK manually (requires android tools):

• Download snapshot.apk
• Plug in your Android phone
• Enable developer mode

adb install snapshot.apk

Run

Running the server will automatically connect to an existing mpv instance or spawn a new one if none found. Use Ctrl+C to kill the server. Currently, the server only works with Python 3.

You can manually start mpv below or let the server spawn it for you.

mpv --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket --idle

mpv-remote-app p4ssw0rd

Connect

1. Start the Android app and open the settings
2. Fill in the target IP address to the one the server is running on
3. Fill in the password to the password specified on the command line (e.g. p4ssw0rd)
4. Browse and play!

Dependencies

• Android (android-tools)
• Python 3
  • psutil

Contributors

Thank you to all who have contributed!