smplayer(1)

🌸 SMPlayer — the manual, but make it cute 🌸

okay bestie, you're reading the manual page for smplayer, section 1 (that's the "user commands" section, iykyk 💅). It's the SMPlayer page from the SMPlayer manual, and I'm gonna walk you through literally every single flag, no skips, no cuts. grab a strawberry drink 🍓 and let's go.

✨ NAME ✨

SMPlayer — the best GUI frontend for MPlayer. no cap, that's what it says, I'm not even being dramatic for once.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

[-send-action <action_name>] [-actions <action_list>]
[[-no]-close-at-end] [[-no]-fullscreen] [-sub <subtitle_file>] [-pos <x>
<y>] [-size <width> <height>] [-add-to-playlist] [-disable-server]
[-help|--help|-h|-?] [<media1>] [<media2>]...

like. look at all those little square brackets. they're all optional, bestie. you literally cannot mess this up unless you try really hard 🫶

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

SMPlayer is a GUI media player built on Qt, and it uses mplayer(1) as its backend. that's it, that's the whole vibe — pretty face on the outside, hardworking mplayer on the inside. it's giving ✨main character with a reliable bestie✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

okay here's the whole menu, every single item, in order, no crumbs left behind:

• -minigui — open the mini GUI instead of the default one. smol window, big energy.
• -mpcgui — open the mpc GUI</> instead of the default one.
• -defaultgui — open the default gui. the classic. the original. the blueprint 👑
• -config-path <directory> — tell it which directory holds the config files (smplayer.ini, smplayer_files.ini...). your settings, your house, your rules.
• -send-action <action_name> — it tries to connect to another running instance and send it the action you named. multitasking icon behaviour.

example:

smplayer -send-action pause

heads up bestie: the rest of the options (if any) get ignored and the app just exits. it returns 0 on success or -1 on failure. so yeah, don't bother piling more flags on top, they're getting ghosted 💀

• -actions <action_list> — <action_list> is a list of actions separated by spaces. they run right after the file loads (if there is one), in the exact same order you typed them. for switchable actions you can pass true or false as the parameter.

example:

smplayer -actions.br "fullscreen compact true"

the quotes are necessary if you're passing more than one action. no quotes, no service 🙈

• -close-at-end — close the main window when the file/playlist finishes. dramatic exit, love that for it.
• -no-close-at-end — do not close the main window when the file/playlist finishes. it stays. it's committed.
• -fullscreen — play the video in fullscreen mode. immersive. cinematic. slay.
• -no-fullscreen — play the video in windowed mode. cozy, contained, humble.
• -sub — specify the subtitle file to be loaded (for the first video only). yes, only the first one, don't @ me, that's just what it says 🎀
• -pos <x> <y> — specify the coordinates where the main window will be displayed. place it wherever, you're the artist.
• -size <width> <height> — specify the size of the main window. big. small. unhinged rectangle. your call ✨
• -h, -help, --help, -? — show the help message and then exit. four whole ways to ask for help, because we support you 💜
• -add-to-playlist — if another instance is already running, the media gets added to that instance's playlist. if there's no other instance, this option is ignored and the files open in a new instance. lowkey it does what it wants.
• -disable-server — disables the server used to talk to other instances. this also kills the possibility of using a single instance. it's giving ✂️ cutting off all contact ✂️
• <media1> <media2> ... — any kind of file SMPlayer can open. could be a local file, a DVD (e.g. dvd://1), an Internet stream (e.g. mms://....) or a local playlist in format m3u or pls. throw the whole media collection at it fr fr 🔥

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

mplayer(1) — go say hi to the backend, it's doing all the actual work 💅

👑 AUTHOR 👑

the author of SMPlayer is Ricardo Villalba <ricardo@smplayer.info>. king behaviour, honestly.

this manual page was written by Matvey Kozhev <sikon@lucidfox.org> for the Ubuntu project (but it may be used by others, sharing is caring 🫶). it has been updated by greengreat <gmeildeno@gmail.com> for the SMPlayer project (July 2009).

permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. on Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

💀 BUGS 💀

found a bug? please submit bugs to http://sourceforge.net/projects/smplayer. don't suffer in silence bestie, tell the devs 🙈

and that's the whole page, start to finish, nothing left out. this one's from The SMPlayer Project, dated January 2012 — so yes it's an elder but it still ate, and it's still serving. mwah 💋✨