mpvRex

August 1, 2026 · View on GitHub

Feature-rich Android video player based on libmpv.

mpvRex is an advanced, customizable video player for Android. It combines the versatility of libmpv with a modern Jetpack Compose interface and unique user-centric features.

Showcase

Player UI — Glassmorphism controls

Video browser · Picture-in-picture · About screen

Playlist window · File options sheet

Features

🎬 Playback & Gestures

  • Circular Double-Tap Seek — fully customizable circular seek overlay with smooth transition animations
  • Seek Cancellation — cancel a seek mid-gesture by dragging backwards, with interactive pointer-scaling feedback animations
  • Subtitle Drag-to-Reposition — tap and drag subtitles vertically to position them anywhere on screen
  • Subtitle Swipe Seeking — swipe horizontally to jump precisely between subtitle lines
  • Top Seek Capsule OSD — pill-shaped overlay showing double-tap seek feedback without blocking the video
  • Dynamic A-B Loop & Frame Navigation — set loop points with adjustable vertical bias; fine-tune with a floating, non-colliding frame-by-frame panel
  • Advanced Zoom & Pan — independent video scaling, black bar removal, and interactive zoom/pan sliders in the Aspect Ratio sheet; settings saved per video
  • Refined Tap & Lock Logic — custom exclusion zones, optional seekbar tap prevention, and one-tap control lock

🎨 UI & Aesthetics

  • Glass Theme Player UI — sleek glassmorphism design across controls, seekbar, title bar, speed indicator, and Shorts player
  • Dynamic Tab Manager — hide, show, and reorder dashboard tabs to fully customize your bottom navigation
  • Material You — player controls dynamically match your Android system accent or app theme
  • Theme Transition Animation — premium circular reveal animation when toggling between light and dark themes
  • Embedded Cover Art Thumbnails — automatic extraction of embedded cover art and sibling artwork as local video thumbnails

🗂️ File Explorer & Media Library

  • Unified Explorer Engine — ensures every browsing mode (local storage, network shares, and playlists) looks, feels, and behaves identically
  • M3U Playlist Support — load M3U playlists with custom stream titles and drag-and-drop reordering
  • Multi-Select Range — select a range of items easily by long-pressing the first file and tapping the last
  • Sectioned Grid/List Layouts — independently customizable inside tree subdirectories
  • Folder Metadata — recursive file counts, watched/unplayed dimming, and reactive "NEW" badges
  • Breadcrumb Navigation — toggleable path breadcrumbs in the tree view
  • Advanced Sorting — by Name, Date, Size, and Duration
  • Network Streaming Proxy — high-performance proxy for WebDAV, SMB, and FTP streams with image preview caching
  • Mark As System — mark videos as watched, skipped, new, or flagged; filter your library accordingly
  • Media Library View — browse your full video collection outside the file tree
  • Shorts Mode — overhauled vertical video player with directory source filters, session Free Mode, Clean UI Mode, and reactive MPV observers

⚙️ Engine & Customization

  • HDR-to-SDR Tone Mapping — high-quality tone mapping via hdr-toys shader pipeline
  • Smart Orientation — force landscape/portrait per video, stored as a preference
  • Audio Support — scan, display, and play standalone audio files directly inside the file explorer and player

⚡ Performance

  • Battery-Optimized Playback — optimized playback engine designed to maximize battery life during long viewing sessions
  • Reactive StateFlow Observers — per-instance MPV property observers that survive background resume and eliminate frozen UI
  • Gesture JNI Elimination — removed per-event JNI reads during pan and zoom gestures for smoother interaction
  • Smart Background Service — background playback service starts only when actually backgrounded

Installation

Stable Release Preview Release

Preview builds may be unstable and are intended for testing only.

Translations

Translations can be managed using Droidlate (PyPI) — a local, web-based UI designed for editing Android strings.xml translation files.

If you would like to contribute to translating mpvRex into your language, please refer to the Translation Contribution Guide for step-by-step instructions on running Droidlate locally.

Credits

mpvRex has its roots in mpvEx, which itself builds on mpv-android. We're grateful for the foundation they laid.

Additional inspiration and reference: mpvKt · Next Player · Gramophone

License

Distributed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE for details.