pureplayer Piotr Zieliński

keyboard-driven media player video

Use this command to install pureplayer with WinGet:

winget install --id=pzielinski.pureplayer -e

pureplayer is a minimal, keyboard-driven desktop video player built on Tauri 2 with a React 19 frontend.

README

pureplayer

A minimal, keyboard-driven desktop video player.

Built as a Tauri 2 desktop app with a React 19 + TypeScript frontend on the TanStack stack (Router, Query, Hotkeys) and shadcn/ui + Tailwind v4.

Prerequisites

Node.js - version pinned in .nvmrc. Run nvm use before any npm command.
Rust stable toolchain (rustc, cargo).
Tauri OS prerequisites - platform-specific system libraries (WebKitGTK on Linux, Xcode CLT on macOS, WebView2 + Build Tools on Windows). See https://tauri.app/start/prerequisites/

If the Rust toolchain or system prerequisites are missing, npm start fails fast with a build error from Cargo.

Setup

nvm use
npm install
scripts/fetch-ffmpeg.sh   # download the bundled ffmpeg/ffprobe sidecars (required before any build)

scripts/fetch-ffmpeg.sh downloads statically-linked ffmpeg+ffprobe for all supported targets (macOS arm64/x64, Windows x64, Linux x64) into src-tauri/binaries/ (gitignored, SHA-256 pinned). cargo fails to build without the binary for your host triple present. macOS binaries are GPLv3, Windows and Linux are LGPLv3 - see docs/adr.md.

Commands

Command	Description
`npm start`	Run the app in development (`tauri dev`).
`npm run tauri build`	Build the distributable desktop bundle.

Each launch writes a fresh pureplayer-.log to the OS app-log dir (macOS ~/Library/Logs/com.pzielinski.pureplayer/).

Features

Playlist - flat sidebar of the open files; Open files (Mod+O) replaces it, drag & drop appends (folders recursed, deduped, sorted). Audio files are first-class playlist items.
Universal playback - every file is probed (ffprobe) and a playback strategy is chosen so the picture is instant and seeking is native: native-codec files play directly, others are stream-copied into a finished MP4, play with a background audio re-encode, or fall back to play-while-encode HLS. ffmpeg/ffprobe are bundled as Tauri sidecars - the app is standalone.
Transport - prev/play-pause/next, seekable progress bar (click or drag), arrows seek ±5s (Shift ±1s), Up/Down/M volume + mute, [/] speed 0.5x-2x, auto-advance with repeat (R) and shuffle (S).
Viewport - single-click play/pause, double-click / F11 / green button fullscreen, rotate (Mod+Shift+R), fit modes (F), zoom (=/-), reset (Mod+0). Transforms are session-sticky.
Command palette (Mod+K) - every runnable action, each with its own global hotkey.
Mini player (Mod+Shift+M) - hide the viewport and shrink the window to just the playlist + transport bar.
Logs panel (Mod+Shift+J) - bottom-docked view of the app logs as they stream in: key=value runs are searchable with field filters like level:error path:/tmp/x.mkv; Clear in its header. Hidden by default, hidden on fullscreen, hidden in mini player.
Settings (Mod+,) - rebind any hotkey (conflicts rejected), playback/UI defaults, theme (light/dark/system + per-token color customization), reveal-transport-on-hover toggle.
Auto-update - see below.

Not yet: subtitles, playlist persistence.

Releasing installers

The Release workflow builds installers for all three OSes and publishes them to a GitHub Release. It is manual only: GitHub -> Actions -> "Release" -> "Run workflow", enter a tag (e.g. v0.1.0). It produces a single universal macOS .dmg, a Windows installer, and a Linux .AppImage, attached to a draft Release. The binaries are unsigned: on macOS right-click the app and choose Open; on Windows choose "More info -> Run anyway".

To take installers down later, delete the Release (and its tag) or remove individual assets - the download links 404 immediately. Anyone who already downloaded keeps their local copy.

In-app auto-update

Release builds ship the Tauri v2 updater: on startup (and via Settings -> Updates -> Check for updates) the app checks the latest GitHub Release's latest.json and, on a newer version, offers a one-click Update now that downloads the signed artifact and relaunches. Update artifacts (.sig files + latest.json) are produced by the Release workflow, which signs them using two repo secrets: TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY and TAURI_SIGNING_PRIVATE_KEY_PASSWORD (the matching public key is baked into src-tauri/tauri.conf.json). Caveat: a build can only auto-update to releases published after it - the first updater-enabled release is still a manual download, and the pre-updater v0.1.0 cannot retro-update.