Hacker News: gmt4

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: We missed Winamp, so we built an audio player for macOS"

gmt4 — Mon, 18 May 2026 22:14:50 +0000

I share the sentiment, even with fond memories of foobar2000/winamp/audacious, I've gone the route of just resorting to a "simpler" setup, just a collection of shell scripts to manage mpv to play my files from my disk/shares/http

This is how it looks on macOS, and Linux:

https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/assets/mpvc-fzf-mac.jpg

https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/

Show HN: Mpvc, minimal music player for controling mpv from the shell

gmt4 — Sat, 16 May 2026 19:51:08 +0000

mpvc has been my daily music player since COVID years, I started getting involved and forked lwillets/mpvc around 2022, as the uses of mpvc have evolved I've tried to group specific functionalities under its own separate tools, so for example now there is: mpvc for the CLI, mpvc-tui for a minimal text user interface (TUI), mpvc-web for a web-based interface, and mpvc-fzf for fzf integration for searching and playing music from online streaming services, among others.

PS: The project has appeared before in Show HN, in 2022, and a year later, since the project has continued, and the Show HN was useful in raising discussion and providing feedback, I'm posting it again.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48163197

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by gmt4 in "The state of Linux music players in 2026"

gmt4 — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 07:47:13 +0000

I'm using and enjoying https://github.com/gmt4/mpvc which is just mpv+shell, it covers most of my needs: offline, internet radio, and streaming.

Previous HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34013149

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: Mpvc-TUI – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv (repost)"

gmt4 — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 06:10:11 +0000

Noted! that was not by far the purpose, at least made some laughs. I've tried to lower the amount of acronyms in the About and Overview section, adding links to the relevant pages that describe the acronyms, however, it's rather difficult to remove the acronyms without losing the meaning. thanks for the feedback.

Show HN: Mpvc-TUI – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv (repost)

gmt4 — Wed, 22 Nov 2023 05:51:48 +0000

Hi there, This is just a shameless (re)post about a personal project of mine:

      "Using mpv and mpvc to play and manage the stuff I listen/watch."

The goal of the project stays the same as stated in the original [2022] HN post, and revolves around: the need to manage music programmatically, through a CLI that can be scripted/coded, and CLI tools to manage, arrange and control the music played.

What has changed during last year has been that the set of mpvc tools has grown, and, stabilized, adding support for more use cases and functionality. So In addition to the core mpvc CLI, and TUI provided by mpvc-tui, there is now tools such as mpvc-equalizer, mpvc-fzf for fuzzy searches using fzf, mpvc-autostart to auto start/stop based on presence, and mpvc-web for having access to mpvc when away from the terminal, by using a web (HTTP) interface, say from a browser on a tablet or a phone, or a non-linux system. Recently the fork has been merged into the main github repo, and its packages updated in a few Linux distributions (Archlinux AUR).

The development progress presented above is documented into a logbook @ https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/logbook.html, so be sure to check it for more on how to use mpvc. It never occurred to me that the logbook would become such a useful tool to keep track of what's going on, what's missing, and just to recall commands/recipes on how to accomplish certain tasks.

If you are still reading, just head to https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/

Thanks!

Previous HN thread:

- [2022] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34013149

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38375177

Points: 8

# Comments: 2

New comment by gmt4 in "Rock Out with Your Console Out (2012)"

gmt4 — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 08:20:15 +0000

Thanks for that one, mpv-mpris is not present on Debian/Ubuntu, but is just easy to fetch the mpris.so from https://github.com/hoyon/mpv-mpris. Wrote a small entry to remember the setup: https://github.com/gmt4/mpvc/wiki/FAQ#mpris-support

New comment by gmt4 in "Rock Out with Your Console Out (2012)"

gmt4 — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 18:27:04 +0000

I use mpv + mpvc, started using it heavily a couple of years ago. Eventually, I started implementing features I was missing such as play, and search Youtube music, manage playlists/playstate, minimal TUI, fzf support, an equalizer. And last year decided to publish the changes on https://github.com/gmt4/mpvc/. I try to keep a log of the features I miss/implement at https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/logbook.html.

New comment by gmt4 in "Write Posix Shell"

gmt4 — Sun, 12 Mar 2023 07:16:37 +0000

Thanks for sharing that one!

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv"

gmt4 — Sun, 25 Dec 2022 10:55:45 +0000

Just came here to chime that I've been playing with mpv + fzf + notify-send, and as a result mpvc-tui has got now some cool fuzzy search + desktop notifications. I've included a bunch of screenshots showing the updates at: https://gmt4.github.io/mpvc/

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv"

gmt4 — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 18:40:55 +0000

That's definitely worth keeping an eye on, but actually its not that bad. Take this with a grain of salt, as I only have a user view, not mpv developer. I consider the JSON IPC API quite stable, well documented through mpv(1) and https://mpv.io/manual/stable/. Almost every command-line option documented in mpv(1) is mapped 1:1 to the JSON IPC, so mpv(1) documents both the command-line, and, the JSON IPC.

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv"

gmt4 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 07:23:24 +0000

The MPD & its clients are quite more complete, providing features such as: media library, indexing, extended searches, tags. etc. Instead mpvc is just a simple client that provides a mpc-like interface, and communicates with the mpv running on the same machine over a Unix Socket. So YMMV depending on how many MPD features you require.

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv"

gmt4 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 06:39:33 +0000

Good one, I wondered the same, and decided that for a minimal TUI the shell was more than enough.

New comment by gmt4 in "Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv"

gmt4 — Sat, 17 Dec 2022 04:09:23 +0000

Good to know, and thanks! I started using mpv recently, about year ago, and also found that mpv is simple, works, and the documentation has you covered.

Note that the aim/need is not on providing a complete player/interface replacement, but on co-existing, and having an easy way to control the running mpv from the terminal, so if I'm working from the terminal I don't need to switch to the player window/terminal.

One example of the above, is when you're listening music and want to filter the playlist to a specific artist. That's easy, just issue: "mpvc save | awk '/artist/' | mpvc load", then, the playlist is good and want to save it for later use: "mpvc autosave good.m3u", or the good part of the track starts at minute 34, so I can "mpvc time 34m". For more complex uses, as applying audio/video filters to the running player, things like "mpvc cmd af toggle lavfi=[loudnorm=I=-16:TP=-3:LRA=4]" are possible. The mpvc-tui covers a similar purpose: that last song/artist/section was good, what's the name?, start mpvc-tui and have a quick look at the playlist, or status.

And as you say, I also found out that I didn't require much fancy from a media player, just a player that worked, and a bit of shell scripting to cater my needs.

Show HN: mpvc-tui – A minimal mpc-like CLI and TUI for controlling mpv

gmt4 — Fri, 16 Dec 2022 11:03:17 +0000

Hi there, This is just a shameless self-plug about a personal project of mine:

    "Using mpv and mpvc to play and manage the stuff I listen."

To that end I've forked the great https://github.com/lwilletts/mpvc and started hacking around, so far I've focused on: getting a minimal TUI working, improving the CLI, playing online music (eg. youtube and other streaming services), and bugfixes (including the introducing new ones). The project is mainly developed, and, used under Debian/Ubuntu systems so expect the best results with these.

What I expect from sharing in HN is:

- Letting people know about that might find it useful/interesting.

- Getting some feedback about things that I might have been missing.

- Being a personal project, that I use and develop, I've got no commercial interest, but I highly value if people find it useful and promote it.