MPV is the minimalist media player with incredible power under the hood. Here’s how to control it.

Basic Controls

MPV is keyboard-driven. There’s no visible UI — just the video window.

KeyAction
Space / PPlay/Pause
← →Seek 5 seconds
↑ ↓Seek 1 minute
[ ]Change speed
FFullscreen
MMute
9 / 0Volume down/up
SScreenshot
QQuit

The Configuration File

Create ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf on Linux/Mac, or %APPDATA%/mpv/mpv.conf on Windows:

# Video
profile=gpu-hq
scale=ewa_lanczossharp
video-sync=display-resample

# Subtitles
sub-font-size=40
sub-bold=yes
sub-color="#FFFFFF"

# Audio
volume=100
volume-max=200

# OSD
osd-font-size=24
osd-playing-msg="${media-title}"

Input Customization

Create input.conf in the same folder:

Ctrl+LEFT   seek -60
Ctrl+RIGHT  seek 60
Shift+UP    add volume 5
Shift+DOWN  add volume -5

Streaming

MPV plays YouTube and other streams directly:

mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

Combine with yt-dlp for more reliable streaming. MPV passes the URL to yt-dlp automatically if installed.

Advanced Playback

mpv --start=5:30 video.mp4      # Start at 5:30
mpv --speed=1.5 video.mp4       # 1.5x speed
mpv --loop-file video.mp4       # Loop single file
mpv --loop-playlist folder/     # Loop all files in folder
mpv --ab-loop-a=1:00 --ab-loop-b=2:00 video.mp4  # Loop a section