---
title: "mpv"
category: "Audio and video"
tagline: "A minimal, keyboard-driven media player that plays almost anything."
source: "pacman"
package: "mpv"
command: "mpv"
website: "https://mpv.io/"
code: "https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv"
---

## What it is

mpv is an open-source media player with almost no interface: a window with your video and a small on-screen controller. It's controlled from the keyboard, plays nearly every format, uses hardware decoding, and can be configured and scripted through plain text files and Lua. Given a URL, it can play online video through yt-dlp when that's installed.

```
mpv video.mkv
```

## Why it's here

- **Fast and light.** It opens instantly and gets out of the way.
- **Great from the terminal.** Play a file, a folder or a stream with one command.

## On CoreDesktop

CoreDesktop installs mpv from pacman. Open it from the app grid, run `mpv` with a file, or drop a file on its window. `update` keeps it current with the rest of the pacman packages.