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blarns edited this page Jun 3, 2026 · 1 revision

Features

Hardware video acceleration (VA-API)

Hardware-accelerated video decoding is enabled by default. It uses --avcodec-hw=any which lets libVLC auto-select the best available backend:

GPU Backend used
Intel VA-API
AMD VA-API (Mesa)
NVIDIA NVDEC (via nvidia-vaapi-driver)

To toggle: Settings → Playback → Linux desktop → Hardware video acceleration

The setting takes effect on next app launch (the VLC factory is created once at startup). Disable it if you see graphical glitches or playback failures on your hardware.

Verify VA-API is available:

vainfo

See Installation for driver setup per GPU vendor.

Audio output selection

By default VLC picks the best available audio output automatically. If you need to force a specific backend:

Settings → Playback → Linux desktop → Audio output

Option Backend
Auto (default) VLC chooses
PulseAudio --aout=pulse
ALSA --aout=alsa
JACK --aout=jack

Like hardware acceleration, this takes effect on next app launch.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key Action
Space Play / Pause
← Seek back 10 seconds
→ Seek forward 10 seconds
↑ Volume up 5%
↓ Volume down 5%
M Toggle mute
F Toggle fullscreen
Scroll wheel (on player) Volume up / down

The player surface must have focus for keyboard shortcuts to work — click on the video area first if they are not responding.

MPRIS2 media key integration

NuvioForLinux registers itself on the D-Bus session bus as org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.nuvio. This means:

  • Keyboard media keys (⏯ ⏹) work out of the box on most desktop environments
  • System media panel (GNOME, KDE, etc.) shows now-playing information
  • playerctl can control playback from the terminal:
playerctl --player=nuvio play-pause
playerctl --player=nuvio stop
playerctl --player=nuvio status

MPRIS2 starts silently and fails gracefully if D-Bus is unavailable.

Episode release notifications

When you follow a show, NuvioForLinux schedules a desktop notification for each upcoming episode release using notify-send.

Notifications appear at 9:00 AM on the release date. They require notify-send to be installed:

sudo apt install libnotify-bin   # Ubuntu/Debian/Mint

To test: Settings → Notifications → Send test notification.

GNOME users: GNOME supports notifications natively. KDE and other desktops also support notify-send.

App menu integration

Run the install script to add Nuvio to your desktop application launcher:

bash scripts/install-desktop.sh

This installs nuvio.desktop to ~/.local/share/applications/. The app will then appear in your application menu / launcher and can be pinned to the panel.

To remove:

rm ~/.local/share/applications/nuvio.desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications/

Window persistence

The app remembers its window size between sessions. Position is not currently saved (Compose Desktop limitation on some window managers).

Dynamic window title

The window title bar shows the currently playing content:

Nuvio — Show Name S01E03

When nothing is playing it shows just Nuvio.

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