open-in-mpv

This is a simple web extension (for Chrome and Firefox) which helps open any video in the currently open tab in the mpv player.

The extension itself shares a lot of code with the one from the awesome iina, while the (bare) backend is written in C++20 (this is a rewrite from Rust).

Installation

Compiled binaries and packed extensions can be found in the releases page.

This project does not require any external library to run or compile release builds. To build and install open-in-mpv, just run

sudo make install

The mpv:// protocol

open-in-mpv install-protocol will create a custom xdg-open desktop file with a scheme handler for the mpv:// protocol. This lets xdg-open call open-in-mpv with an encoded URI, so that it can be parsed and the information can be relayed to mpv - this logic follows how iina parses and opens custom URIs with the iina:// protocol on Mac. install-protocol.sh has the same functionality.

The table below is a simple documentation of the URL query keys and values used to let the open-in-mpv executable what to do:

Key	Example value	Description
url	https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FdQw4w9WgXcQ	The actual file URL to be played, URL-encoded
full_screen	1	Controls whether the video is played in fullscreen mode
pip	1	Simulates a picture-in-picture mode (only works with mpv for now)
enqueue	1	Adds a video to the queue (see below)
new_window	1	Forcibly starts a video in a new window even if one is already open
player	celluloid	⚠️ WIP, starts any arbitrary video player (only mpv-based ones are recommended, such as Celluloid)
flags	--vo%3Dgpu	Custom command options and flags to be passed to the video player, URL-encoded

Playlist and enqueue functionality

For enqueue to work properly with any mpv-based player (provided it supports mpv's IPC), the player has to read commands from a socket. This can be achieved by adding the following line to the video player's configuration (usually .conf/mpv/mpv.conf for mpv).

input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket