An Emacs media player, based on mpv. More precisely this package provides somewhat comprehensive interface to mpv with bunch of convenience functions.
empv is mostly focused on audio but it also provides some means to manage videos. It also supports YouTube searches. If you are a consult user, then you can also install consult-empv package to get search suggestions while using empv’s YouTube search capabilities.
Workflow is generally M-x empv-something and completing-read based, no buffers or complex interfaces. Scroll down to see available interactive functions. No default keybindings are provided.
First, you need to install mpv, go check out it’s installation instructions for your operating system/distribution. Then you can install empv.el using:
(use-package empv
:ensure t
:quelpa (empv
:fetcher github
:repo "isamert/empv.el"))Alternatively, you can use the straight package manager:
(use-package empv
:straight (empv
:type git
:host github
:repo "isamert/empv.el"))Another option is just downloading empv.el file and putting into your load-path, afterwards you can simply do the following in your init.el:
(require 'empv)If you have consult and embark installed on your system, empv will integrate itself with those packages and you’ll get some embark actions that you can use on the displayed candidates.
This list is not complete. I only listed most important functions. Do M-x and then search for empv- to list all available functions. Here are some information about functions:
- Most of the functions will ask you if you want to directly play your selection or if you want to enqueue it.
- Some functions have
-multiplevariations which serves the same functionality but also let’s you select more than one media to play/enqueue.
empv-play- Play given file/path/URL. It’ll ask for an string input. Input can be any type of media file/url; videos, audios, playlists, media streams etc.
empv-enqueue- Like
empv-playbut add the given URI to end of the playlist. empv-play-file- Like
empv-playbut let’s you interactively select one of your local files. empv-pause- Pause.
empv-toggle- Toggle the pause state.
empv-exit- Shut down empv.
empv-playlist-next- Play the next media in the playlist.
empv-playlist-prev- Play the previous media in the playlist.
empv-playlist-select- List all playlist items and select one to play.
empv-playlist-clear- Clear the playlist.
empv-playlist-shuffle- Shuffle the playlist.
Directory-related functions opens the selection menu starting from the default-directory. If you want to use a base directory to start the selection menu from, see empv-base-directory variable. This is mainly useful for starting your selection from your music collection (or any other collection) so that you can easily navigate to sub-folders (albums etc.) and play them.
empv-play-directory- Start playing all media files in given interactively selected directory.
Some convenience functions for quickly finding and playing files from your local collections.
empv-play-audio- List and interactively select one of the files under
empv-audio-dir(the directory is scanned recursively. Also seeempv-max-directory-search-depth.) empv-play-audio-multiple- Multiple selection version of
empv-audio. empv-play-video- Like
empv-play-audiobut for video files instead. empv-video-multiple- Multiple selection version of
empv-video.
See empv-video-file-extensions and empv-auido-file-extensions for more customization options. Also note that these functions require fd to be installed.
List of radio channels are configured through the empv-radio-channels variable.
empv-play-radio- Interactively select one of the stations from
empv-radio-channelsand start playing it. empv-play-random-channel- Play a random channel from
empv-radio-channels.
empv-toggle-video- Toggle the visibility of video (if the currently playing media is a video file). TIP: You can press
_in mpv to hide the video, or you can just call this function from Emacs again to hide it too. empv-toggle-event-display- Toggle the displaying of events in the echo area. (Like track changed, playback stopped etc.)
empv-display-current- Display the currently playing media info in the echo area.
empv.el lets you search in YouTube videos/playlists and play them in background or just play the video itself. This is done through invidious API. It’s a privacy respecting frontend (and API) for YouTube. To be able to use these features, you need to set an invidious instance manually, like:
(setq empv-invidious-instance "https://some-invidious-instance.com/api/v1")You can select an invidious instance from here.
empv-youtube- Search given term in Youtube videos and then interactively select one of the results.
empv-youtube-multiple- Multiple selection version of
empv-youtube. empv-youtube-playlist- Search given term in Youtube playlists and then interactively select and start playing selected playlist.
If you have installed consult-empv.el:
consult-empv-youtube- Like
empv-youtubebut it also shows search suggestions while typing the query. consult-empv-youtube-multiple- Multiple selection version of
consult-empv-youtube. consult-empv-youtube-playlist- Like
empv-youtube-playlistbut it also shows search suggestions while typing the query. consult-empv-youtube-playlist-multiple- Multiple selection version of
consult-empv-youtube.
If you start playing a YouTube video, it’ll start playing in background. You may be tempted to call empv-toggle-video to start watching the video itself but it’ll not work. mpv tries to be smart when it’s in background it only downloads the audio if it’s possible. If you want to be able to watch YouTube videos whenever you want, you need to add something like this to your configuration to force-download videos:
(add-to-list 'empv-mpv-args "--ytdl-format=best")See this page for how you can use --ytdl-format option.