An mpv plugin that colours Japanese subtitles by how well you know each word, powered by Jiten.
Subtitles are parsed as they play, each word coloured by its state in your Jiten account. Hover a word for its dictionary entry, review it, or mine it to Jiten with a screenshot, audio clip and sentence.
- Subtitle colouring by word state, with themes and per-state customization
- Dictionary popup on hover, with furigana, pitch accent and frequency
- One-click mining to a word list with the subtitle as example sentence
- Media mining: screenshot, audio clip, animated clip, sentence context (requires Jiten+ subscription)
- i+1 detection and frequency marking Blur words depending on their status to help you rely on subtitles less
- Tons of settings for a customised experience
- mpv
- A Jiten account and API key
- ffmpeg, for audio and clip mining. JitenMPV can download it for you.
- Windows, Linux or macOS. On Linux the dictionary popup needs X11/XWayland.
On a Wayland desktop, add this to ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf and restart mpv:
gpu-context=x11vk,x11eglDownload JitenMPV-Setup.exe and run it. Then start mpv and press Ctrl+J.
It installs per-user, needs no administrator rights, and puts nothing system-wide. It is not code-signed, so Windows will warn that it does not recognise the publisher: choose More info, then Run anyway.
If you would rather not see that warning, or prefer a scriptable install, this one-liner does the same thing:
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sirush/JitenMPV/master/installers/windows.ps1 | iexcurl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sirush/JitenMPV/master/installers/unix.sh | shThen start mpv and press Ctrl+J. Nothing needs administrator rights and nothing is installed system-wide.
The install scripts download the latest release, check it against its published SHA-256, and install it. Two environment variables adjust what they do:
JITEN_MPV_VERSION=0.2.0installs that release instead of the latest.JITEN_MPV_MPV_CONFIG_DIR=/path/to/mpvoverrides the mpv config directory. The installer prints the one it picked, so set this if that is not where your mpv reads its config from.
Every release also carries a plain archive — jiten-mpv-win-x64.zip / jiten-mpv-linux-x64.tar.gz / jiten-mpv-osx-*.tar.gz — holding one self-contained executable, with no runtime to install. It is the same build the setup program and the scripts fetch.
Download the archive for your platform from the releases page, extract it, and run the executable — JitenMPV.App on Windows and Linux, JitenMPV on macOS — with no arguments. It offers to install itself, showing the directory it will write the mpv script to.
Each archive also contains jiten-mpv.lua. You never need it — the installer writes its own copy — but it is there if you would rather drop the script into portable_config\scripts yourself and keep everything under your own control.
For scripted installs, JitenMPV.App install does the same without a window (--mpv-config-dir <path>, --dry-run, --quiet). On Windows the prompt returns before it finishes, since the executable has no console of its own.
On macOS, download with curl rather than a browser, and re-sign the extracted binary before running it:
codesign --force --sign - JitenMPVRecent macOS kills executables whose ad-hoc signature was made on another machine and only a signature made on your own Mac satisfies it. The install script above does this automatically. Browser downloads are additionally quarantined (macOS 15 removed the right-click-Open bypass); xattr -d com.apple.quarantine JitenMPV clears that, but clearing quarantine alone is not enough.
If mpv still reports the plugin being killed after all of that (seen on macOS 26.6), grant mpv the right to run locally signed code: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Developer Tools, add mpv with the + button and enable it, then restart mpv. The permission must go to mpv itself — it is the process that launches the plugin, so exempting Terminal changes nothing.
| Windows | Linux and macOS | |
|---|---|---|
| Program | %APPDATA%\jiten-mpv\ |
~/.local/share/jiten-mpv/ ($XDG_DATA_HOME) |
| Settings | %APPDATA%\jiten-mpv\ |
~/.config/jiten-mpv/ ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME) |
| mpv script | %APPDATA%\mpv\scripts\, or portable_config\scripts\ beside mpv.exe |
~/.config/mpv/scripts/ |
Set JITEN_MPV_EXE if you keep the executable somewhere else.
JitenMPV checks for new releases once a day and tells you in mpv and in the settings window. Nothing is downloaded until you press Install update. Turn the check off under Settings > Advanced.
Re-running the install command above also updates, and works when the in-app updater cannot.
JitenMPV.App uninstall removes the mpv script; add --all to delete the program as well. Settings are always kept.
dotnet publish src/JitenMPV.App -c Release -r win-x64 -o publishUse linux-x64, osx-x64 or osx-arm64 in place of win-x64. This produces one self-contained executable in publish/; run JitenMPV.App install from there to place it and the mpv script.
Press Ctrl+J during playback to open the settings window, and paste your API key from the bottom of the Jiten settings page.
If ffmpeg is missing, the same screen offers a one-click download. Without it, subtitle coloring and screenshots still work, but audio and clip mining do not.
Ctrl+Jopens settingsF10starts JitenMPV, or restarts it if it stopped- mpv's subtitle visibility key (
vby default) hides or shows JitenMPV's coloured subtitles - Hover a word for its dictionary entry, click to interact
JitenMPV starts automatically when a file is opened. Turn that off under Settings > Advanced if you would rather start it with F10 only.
test-mpv.bat <video> builds the solution and launches mpv with the script and binary from the working tree.
Issues and ideas are welcome. There is also a Discord server.
JitenMPV does not bundle ffmpeg and is not a derivative of it. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.