Interactive control

mpv has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control mpv using keyboard, mouse, or remote control (there is no LIRC support - configure remotes as input devices instead).

See the --input- options for ways to customize it.

The following listings are not necessarily complete. See etc/input.conf in the mpv source files for a list of default bindings. User input.conf files and Lua scripts can define additional key bindings.

See COMMAND INTERFACE and Key names sections for more details on configuring keybindings.

See also --input-test for interactive binding details by key, and the stats built-in script for key bindings list (including print to terminal). By default, the ? key toggles the display of this list.

Keyboard Control¶

LEFT and RIGHT

Seek backward/forward 5 seconds. Shift+arrow does a 1 second exact seek (see --hr-seek).

UP and DOWN

Seek forward/backward 1 minute. Shift+arrow does a 5 second exact seek (see --hr-seek).

Ctrl+LEFT and Ctrl+RIGHT

Seek to the previous/next subtitle. Subject to some restrictions and might not always work; see sub-seek command.

Ctrl+Shift+LEFT and Ctrl+Shift+RIGHT

Adjust subtitle delay so that the previous or next subtitle is displayed now. This is especially useful to sync subtitles to audio.

[ and ]

Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.

{ and }

Halve/double current playback speed.

BACKSPACE

Reset playback speed to normal.

Shift+BACKSPACE

Undo the last seek. This works only if the playlist entry was not changed. Hitting it a second time will go back to the original position. See revert-seek command for details.

Shift+Ctrl+BACKSPACE

Mark the current position. This will then be used by Shift+BACKSPACE as revert position (once you seek back, the marker will be reset). You can use this to seek around in the file and then return to the exact position where you left off.

\< and >

Go backward/forward in the playlist.

ENTER

Go forward in the playlist.

Shift+HOME and Shift+END

Go to the first/last playlist entry.

p and SPACE

Pause (pressing again unpauses).

.

Step forward. Pressing once will pause, every consecutive press will play one frame and then go into pause mode again.

,

Step backward. Pressing once will pause, every consecutive press will play one frame in reverse and then go into pause mode again.

q

Stop playing and quit.

Q

Like q, but store the current playback position. Playing the same file later will resume at the old playback position if possible. See RESUMING PLAYBACK.

/ and *

Decrease/increase volume.

KP_DIVIDE and KP_MULTIPLY

Decrease/increase volume.

9 and 0

Decrease/increase volume.

m

Mute sound.

_

Cycle through the available video tracks.

#

Cycle through the available audio tracks.

E

Cycle through the available Editions.

f

Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).

ESC

Exit fullscreen mode.

T

Toggle stay-on-top (see also --ontop).

w and W

Decrease/increase pan-and-scan range. The e key does the same as W currently, but use is discouraged. See --panscan for more information.

o and P

Show progression bar, elapsed time and total duration on the OSD.

O

Toggle OSD states between normal and playback time/duration.

v

Toggle subtitle visibility.

Alt+v

Toggle secondary subtitle visibility.

j and J

Cycle through the available subtitles.

z and Z

Adjust subtitle delay by -/+ 0.1 seconds. The x key does the same as Z currently, but use is discouraged.

l

Set/clear A-B loop points. See ab-loop command for details.

L

Toggle infinite looping.

Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-

Adjust audio delay (A/V sync) by ± 0.1 seconds.

Ctrl+KP_ADD and Ctrl+KP_SUBTRACT

Adjust audio delay (A/V sync) by ± 0.1 seconds.

G and F

Adjust subtitle font size by ± 10%.

u

Switch between applying only --sub-ass-* overrides (default) to SSA/ASS subtitles, and overriding them almost completely with the normal subtitle style. See --sub-ass-override for more info.

V

Cycle through which video data gets used for ASS rendering. See --sub-ass-use-video-data for more info.

r and R

Move subtitles up/down. The t key does the same as R currently, but use is discouraged.

s

Take a screenshot.

S

Take a screenshot, without subtitles. (Whether this works depends on VO driver support.)

Ctrl+s

Take a screenshot, as the window shows it (with subtitles, OSD, and scaled video).

HOME

Seek to the beginning of the file.

PGUP and PGDWN

Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter. In most cases, "previous" will actually go to the beginning of the current chapter; see --chapter-seek-threshold.

Shift+PGUP and Shift+PGDWN

Seek backward or forward by 10 minutes. (This used to be mapped to PGUP/PGDWN without Shift.)

b

Activate/deactivate debanding.

d

Cycle the deinterlacing filter.

A

Cycle aspect ratio override.

Ctrl+h

Toggle hardware video decoding on/off.

Alt+LEFT, Alt+RIGHT, Alt+UP, Alt+DOWN

Move the video rectangle (panning).

Alt++ and Alt+-

Change video zoom.

Alt+KP_ADD and Alt+KP_SUBTRACT

Change video zoom.

Alt+BACKSPACE

Reset the pan/zoom settings.

F8

Show the playlist and the current position in it.

F9

Show the list of audio and subtitle streams.

Ctrl+v

Append the file or URL in the clipboard to the playlist. If nothing is currently playing, it is played immediately. Only works on platforms that support the clipboard property.

i and I

Show/toggle an overlay displaying statistics about the currently playing file such as codec, framerate, number of dropped frames and so on. See STATS for more information.

?

Toggle an overlay displaying the active key bindings. See STATS for more information.

DEL

Cycle OSC visibility between never / auto (mouse-move) / always

`

Show the console. (ESC closes it again. See CONSOLE.)

(The following keys are valid only when using a video output that supports the corresponding adjustment.)

1 and 2

Adjust contrast.

3 and 4

Adjust brightness.

5 and 6

Adjust gamma.

7 and 8

Adjust saturation.

Alt+0 (and Command+0 on macOS)

Resize video window to half its original size.

Alt+1 (and Command+1 on macOS)

Resize video window to its original size.

Alt+2 (and Command+2 on macOS)

Resize video window to double its original size.

Command + f (macOS only)

Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).

(The following keybindings open a menu in the console that lets you choose from a list of items by typing part of the desired item, by clicking the desired item, or by navigating them with keybindings: Down and Ctrl+n go down, Up and Ctrl+p go up, Page down and Ctrl+f scroll down one page, and Page up and Ctrl+b scroll up one page.)

In track menus, selecting the current tracks disables it.

g-p

Select a playlist entry.

g-s

Select a subtitle track.

g-S

Select a secondary subtitle track.

g-a

Select an audio track.

g-v

Select a video track.

g-t

Select a track of any type.

g-c

Select a chapter.

g-e

Select an MKV edition or DVD/Blu-ray title.

g-l

Select a subtitle line to seek to. This currently requires ffmpeg in PATH, or in the same folder as mpv on Windows.

g-d

Select an audio device.

g-h

Select a file from the watch history. Requires --save-watch-history.

g-w

Select a file from watch later config files (see RESUMING PLAYBACK) to resume playing. Requires --write-filename-in-watch-later-config.

g-b

Select a defined input binding.

g-r

Show the values of all properties.

g-m, MENU, Ctrl+p

Show a menu with miscellaneous entries.

See SELECT for more information.

(The following keys are valid if you have a keyboard with multimedia keys.)

PAUSE

Pause.

STOP

Stop playing and quit.

PREVIOUS and NEXT

Seek backward/forward 1 minute.

ZOOMIN and ZOOMOUT

Change video zoom.

If you miss some older key bindings, look at etc/restore-old-bindings.conf in the mpv git repository.

Mouse Control¶

Ctrl+left click

Pan while holding the button, keeping the clicked part of the video under the cursor.

Left double click

Toggle fullscreen on/off.

Right click

Toggle pause on/off.

Forward/Back button

Skip to next/previous entry in playlist.

Wheel up/down

Decrease/increase volume.

Wheel left/right

Seek forward/backward 10 seconds.

Ctrl+Wheel up/down

Change video zoom keeping the part of the video hovered by the cursor under it.

Context Menu¶

Context Menu is a menu that pops up on the video window on user interaction (mouse right click, etc.).

To use this feature, you need to fill the menu-data property with menu definition data, and add a keybinding to run the context-menu command, which can be done with a user script.