tplay

Terminal Media Player

View images, videos (files or YouTube links), webcam, etc directly in the terminal as ASCII. All images you see below are just made by characters on the terminal command line, drawn really fast.

Table of Contents

• Terminal Media Player
• Who is it for?
• Features
  • RGB Colors
  • Live update when updating character size
  • On-the-fly character map selection
  • Dynamic resize
  • Emojis
  • Webcam support
• Getting Started
• Prerequisites
  • Prerequisites Installation on Ubuntu Linux
  • Prerequisites Installation on macOS (Homebrew)
  • Prerequisites installation on Windows
• Installation
  • For users
    • Arch Linux
    • NixOS
    • Other Distros
    • Install Using Cargo
  • For developers
  • Feature flags
• Usage
• Playback commands
• Playback Speed Control
• Subtitle Support
• Known Issues
• Alternatives
• Contributing
• License
• Why?
• Credits

Who is it for?

• You really don't like graphical applications or work on a computer without graphical capabilities.
• You are looking for a quick way to convert visual media to ASCII art.
• You want to watch a video in the terminal, but you don't want to use mpv or vlc because they're too mainstream.
• You want to show off your terminal skills to your friends and make them think you're a hacker.

Features

This crate is still in early development, but it already has a lot of features. Here's a list of what it can or can't do:

• Converts and shows any media to ASCII art in the terminal
• Supports images/gifs/videos/webcam, YouTube links, and streaming protocols (RTSP, RTMP, SRT, UDP, TCP, RTP, MMS, HLS)
• Any resolution, aspect ratio, and framerate
• Use any character set as supported by your terminal
• Handy pause/unpause and char map selection controls
• RGB Colors (on terminals that support RGB colors)
• Play sounds
• Spark joy
• Full media controls (forward, backwards, etc)
• Subtitles
• Replace a fully-fledged media player

RGB Colors

Live update when updating character size

On-the-fly character map selection

Dynamic resize

Emojis

Webcam support

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

Being a Rust crate, you will need to have Rust installed on your system. You can find the installation instructions here.

The following dependencies are also required:

• FFmpeg (development libraries) — Tested with FFmpeg 6.1 and 7.1 (Linux) and 9.x (macOS/Homebrew)
• libmpv-dev (development libraries for audio playback and subtitles)
• Optional dependency for YouTube playback support: yt-dlp

They can be simply installed on Linux with your package manager. See below for more details.

Prerequisites Installation on Ubuntu Linux

If you're on Linux (Ubuntu), you can install all dependencies with your package manager. First install Rust:

sudo apt install curl
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Then install tplay's prerequisite dependencies:

sudo apt install libssl-dev ffmpeg libavfilter-dev libavdevice-dev libavformat-dev libavcodec-dev libswscale-dev libasound2-dev yt-dlp libmpv-dev clang

Prerequisites Installation on macOS (Homebrew)

Minimal setup on macOS using Homebrew. Commands below set the needed env vars, run quick checks, then install.

# 1) Install dependencies
xcode-select -p >/dev/null 2>&1 || xcode-select --install
brew update
brew install pkg-config cmake ffmpeg yt-dlp mpv

# 2) Session-only exports so pkg-config can find FFmpeg
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix)/lib/pkgconfig:$(brew --prefix)/share/pkgconfig:$(brew --prefix ffmpeg)/lib/pkgconfig:${PKG_CONFIG_PATH:-}"

# 3) Quick checks (should print versions)
pkg-config --modversion libavutil

# 4) Install / update
cargo install tplay         # fresh install
# or
cargo install tplay --force # update existing

Troubleshooting (one-off FFmpeg selection): If the FFmpeg check fails, point pkg-config at a specific Homebrew formula for this command only:

brew install ffmpeg@7
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix ffmpeg@7)/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH" cargo install tplay

Prerequisites installation on Windows

The crate can run on Windows and all prerequisites (ffmpeg) can be installed with vcpkg. However, the installation/setup process is lengthy and prone to errors. Performance is also very poor. Save yourself a headache: use WSL and follow the Linux instructions.

Installation

For users

Arch Linux

You can install it on Arch Linux using aur by running the following commands (using paru):

paru -S tplay-git

NixOS

https://search.nixos.org/packages?channel=24.05&show=tplay&from=0&size=50&sort=relevance&type=packages&query=tplay

Other Distros

With your contribution and support it can be made available on other distros as well :).

Install Using Cargo

You can install the tplay command line tool by running the following command:

# Install the tplay command line tool
cargo install tplay

So that you can run it from anywhere as

tplay  [options]

For developers

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/maxcurzi/tplay.git

# Change to the project directory
cd tplay

# (optional) Build the project
cargo build --release

# (optional) Run the tests
cargo test

# Run the project (use --release for faster performance)
cargo run --release --  [options]

Feature flags

By default, the crate uses MPV (libmpv-dev) for audio playback and subtitles.

For MPV 0.34 instead of 0.35+:

cargo build --release --no-default-features --features mpv_0_34

Alternative rodio backend (no playback speed control or pitch preserving):

cargo build --release --no-default-features --features rodio_audio

Usage

tplay [options]

Argument	Description
media	Name of the file or stream to be processed (required).
-f, --fps	Forces a specific frame rate (--fps 23.976).
-c, --char-map	Custom lookup character table to use for the output.
-g, --gray	Start in grayscale mode
-w, --w-mod	Experimental width modifier for certain characters such as emojis (default: 1). Use a value of 2 if your char_map is composed of emojis.
-a, --allow-frame-skip	Experimental frame skip flag. Try to use it if the playback is too slow.
-n, --new-lines	Experimental flag. Adds newline and carriage return \n\r at the end of each line (except the last). Terminals wrap around and don't need new lines, but if you want to copy-paste the text outside the terminal you may want them. The output would be a single long string otherwise. Uses more CPU.
-l, --loop-playback	Loop video/gif forever (default: do not loop - play once)
-x, --auto-exit	Exit automatically when the media ends (default: keep displaying the last frame)
-s, --stretch	Stretch video to fill terminal (ignore aspect ratio)
-b, --browser	Browser passed to yt-dlp cookies-from-browser for YouTube (default: firefox; use none to disable). Supported browsers are: brave, chrome, chromium, edge, firefox, opera, safari, vivaldi, whale

Substitute tplay with cargo run --release -- if you plan to run from source.

…

Playback commands

• 0-9 - change character map
• space - toggle pause/unpause
• g - toggle grayscale/color
• m - toggle mute/unmute
• ← / → - seek backward/forward 5 seconds
• ↑ / ↓ - increase/decrease the audio volume
• j / l - seek backward/forward 10 seconds
• [ / ] - decrease/increase playback speed by 0.25x
• , / . - decrease/increase playback speed by 0.1x (fine control)
• \ - reset playback speed to 1.0x
• c - cycle through subtitle tracks
• C (Shift+c) - toggle subtitles on/off
• q - quit

Playback Speed Control

Speed range: 0.5x to 2.0x with pitch-preserving audio.

• [ / ] - 0.25x adjustments
• , / . - 0.1x fine adjustments
• \ - reset to 1.0x

Note: Requires MPV backend (default). Rodio backend does not support speed control.

Subtitle Support

Subtitles appear at the bottom of the terminal. Use c to cycle tracks and Shift+C to toggle visibility.

Note: Requires MPV backend (default). Rodio backend does not support subtitles.

Known Issues

• Videos played through the Konsole terminal may have reduced performance. This is due to the way Konsole handles terminal output. If you experience this issue, try using a different terminal emulator. I recommend Alacritty for great performance.
• Media playback is CPU-intensive. To improve performance, increase the font size, reduce the terminal window size, or run with the -a / --allow-frame-skip flag.

Alternatives

This is my ASCII media player: there are many like it, but this one is mine.

For other ASCII media players, check out: https://github.com/search?q=ascii+player&type=repositories

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request. Some ideas:

• Reduce external dependencies and streamline the installation process.
• Testing and feedback on installing and running it on other OSes.
• Let me know if you have any other ideas!

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Why?

Your Scientists Were So Preoccupied With Whether Or Not They Could, They Didn’t Stop To Think If They Should

Mostly did it for fun while learning Rust. I also wanted to see if it was possible to make a video player that could run in the terminal. I think it's pretty cool that you can play videos in the terminal now. I hope you enjoy it too!

Credits

Thanks to the following people for their contributions and support: