proton-stream/docs/USER_GUIDE.md

User guide

This page describes the desktop app. The Android and iOS apps have the same pages as tabs at the bottom of the screen; Android and iOS covers what is different there.

The app has five pages, in the bar at the top: Library, History, Shares, Downloads and Settings. Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+5 open them.

Library

The library shows every title from every share in one place. Two shares that hold the same show show it once.

• The banner across the top shows the title you watched last first, with Resume, how far into it you are and More info. It then turns through up to four more titles that have a wide picture, a different set each day, moving on every eight seconds. It holds still while the pointer is over it; on a phone, swipe it or tap a dot under it to move on yourself. Its shading takes on the colours of the picture behind it, and so does the top of a title's page.
• Continue watching has the episode you stopped in for each show, or the next one when you finished an episode. To take a show off this row, right-click it and choose Remove from Continue watching.
• Shelves such as Airing now, Directed by Satoshi Kon or From MADHOUSE appear when posters and descriptions are on. The app shows at most four, and only for a director, studio or genre with at least three titles.
• All titles is the full grid. Choose a filter and a sort order above it.

Rows that run past the window fade out at the edge. Point at a row to show the arrows at its ends, which move it along by a page.

Filters	Sort orders
All, Series, Films, Watching, Not started, Downloaded	A – Z, Recently watched, Recently added, Newest, Highest rated, Most popular

Group franchises folds a series, its sequels and its films into one tile with a +N badge. It is on by default, and needs posters and descriptions to know what belongs together.

Search with Ctrl+F or /. It matches every name a title has: the English one, the romaji one and the name of its folder.

Refresh (or F5) reads every share again. The app also does this by itself when a share has not been read for 6 hours.

How the library reads your folders

The folder decides which show a file belongs to. The file name gives the season and episode.

Layout	Read as
Frieren/Season 01/S01E05.mkv	Frieren, season 1, episode 5
Frieren/S01E05 - The Hero's Statue.mkv	The same, with the episode title
Bocchi the Rock/[Group] Bocchi the Rock - 07 [1080p].mkv	Bocchi the Rock, episode 7
Spy x Family/Season 2 - 06.mkv	Spy x Family, season 2, episode 6
Akira (1988).mkv	A film, from 1988
Rebuild of Evangelion/Evangelion - 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone.mkv and three more	Four films, one title each

• Season folders can be called Season 01, Season 1, S01 or 3rd Season.
• Folders such as Specials, Extras, OVA, NCOP or Subs are not taken as a show's name; the folder above them is.
• An episode title is read only after a dash, as in S01E01 - Name.
• A file with no episode number is a film. A folder of such files, each with a different name, is one title per film.

The app plays mkv, mp4, m4v, avi, mov, webm, ts, m2ts and most other common video containers.

A title's page

Click a title to open its page. Esc goes back. On a phone, the picture at the top slides away more slowly than the page, and once it has gone a bar with the title's name stays at the top.

• Resume S01E03 · 12:04 continues where you stopped. Start over plays the episode from the beginning.
• Download show keeps every episode on this device. See Downloads.
• Match… opens the matcher, where you choose which AniList, TVmaze or TMDB entry the title is. Each result names the site it came from. Use it when the app guessed wrong or did not guess at all. A match you pick is never replaced.
• More on AniList (or TVmaze, or TMDB) opens the title's page there.
• Each season has Mark season watched and Download season.
• Each episode shows a tick when you have watched it. Right-click an episode and choose Mark watched up to here to tick it and every episode before it.
• In this franchise lists the other parts of the series, when posters and descriptions are on.
• With posters and descriptions on, a show's logo takes the place of its name at the top of the page and on the library's banner, and each episode says how long it runs. A film says how long it runs in the line under its name.
• A title with no wide picture shows its poster blurred across the top of the page instead, and on the library's banner the poster itself beside it.
• Small marks under the name say what most of the files are, when their names say it: 4K, 1080p, HDR, 10-bit or Dual audio.

An episode counts as watched once you have seen 90% of it.

The player

The picture plays inside the app's window. Move the mouse to show the controls.

• Skip opening and Skip ending appear when the file's chapters mark an opening, an ending or a preview. Files without chapter names get no skip button. Turn on Skip openings and credits in Settings to skip them without asking.
• Up next counts down 10 seconds when the credits start, then plays the next episode. Choose Play now, Cancel or Watch till the end.
• Subtitles and audio are chosen from the buttons at the bottom right. The app remembers your choice for each show. The subtitle menu also has Size and Position, which are saved like the ones in Settings and change styled subtitles only when they are restyled, and Delay, which moves subtitles earlier or later for this file only.
• Speed goes from 0.5× to 3×, and stays for the next episode.

Keyboard

Press ? anywhere to see this list in the app.

Key	Anywhere
Ctrl+F or /	Search the library
F5 or Ctrl+R	Read every share again
Ctrl+1 – 5	Library, History, Shares, Downloads, Settings
Ctrl+,	Settings
Ctrl+V	Paste a share link to add it
Tab or arrows	Move between titles and episodes
Enter	Open or play what is highlighted
Alt+← or mouse back	Back

Key	Playing
Space or K	Pause and play
← / →	Back 10 s, forward 30 s
↑ / ↓	Volume
M	Mute
N / P	Next and previous episode
[ / ]	Slower and faster
S	Skip the opening or the credits
Z / X	Subtitles 0.1 s earlier and later
E	The list of episodes
F or double-click	Fullscreen
Ctrl+S	Save the frame to Pictures/proton-stream
Esc	Leave fullscreen, then the player

Media keys and your desktop's media controls work too.

Subtitle files beside the video

The app picks up .srt, .ass, .ssa and .vtt files next to a video:

Frieren/Season 01/
  S01E01.mkv
  S01E01.en.srt          English
  S01E01.en.forced.ass   English, "forced"
  Subs/
    S01E01/
      2_English.srt      English

A Subs folder beside the videos works, and so does any subtitle in a folder that holds a single video. The language comes from the last word in the name that names one.

Dialogue, not signs and songs

Many anime releases have two subtitle tracks in one language: the full dialogue, and a short Signs & Songs track that only translates on-screen text. When a file would start on the short track, the app switches to the full one in the same language.

History

Everything you played, newest first, grouped by day. An entry says Watched, Stopped at 12:04 of 24:00 or Played. Removing an entry marks a watched episode unwatched, or forgets where you stopped in one you had not finished.

Downloads

A download keeps a full copy of an episode on this device, to play without a connection. Start one from a title's page: a whole show, a season or a single episode.

The Downloads page lists them with Pause, Resume, Cancel, Retry, Play and Delete. Three run at a time. Downloads do not count against the streaming cache.

Shares

The Shares page lists every share, with what it holds and when it was last read.

• Crawl reads the share again.
• Rename changes the name shown in the app.
• Re-enter link gives the app the link again, for a keyring that lost it or a password that changed. The library, history and downloads stay.
• Remove takes the share's titles out of the library, deletes its downloads and removes its link and password from the keyring.

The Proton account section on this page is where you sign in. See Account and sync.

Settings

Appearance

• Palette: Proton (the near-black default), Catppuccin Latte, Frappé, Macchiato and Mocha, or Persona 5.
• Accent: Mauve, Pink, Sky, Pink → Sky, Lavender, Blue, Teal, Peach or Red. Gradient accent draws it as a gradient.
• Text size: 90% to 150%. This one stays on this computer.
• Library tiles: posters or stills. Title names: as in the share, English or romaji.

Playback

• Audio language and Subtitles: the language to start in, or the file's own default.
• Play the next episode (on by default) and Skip openings and credits (off).
• Hardware decoding (on). Turn it off if the picture shows green blocks or stays black.

Subtitles

How subtitles look. A sample line at the top shows the style on a bright and a dark picture, and a video that is playing changes at once.

• Size and Position: how big the line is and how far up the picture it sits.
• Font, Bold and Italic: any font installed on this computer. On Linux the sample line shows the font too; on Windows and macOS it is drawn in the app's own font, and only the video uses the one you chose.
• Text colour, and a Background of Outline or Box, each with its own colour. A colour's opacity sets how much of the picture shows through. Choose Box if text is hard to read on bright scenes.
• Shadow and Blur.
• Restyle styled subtitles (off). Plain subtitles (SRT) always take the whole style. Styled subtitles (ASS) keep the look, size and place their makers gave them unless this is on; they only move up while the player's controls are showing. Turned on, signs and songs can come out wrong.
• Reset goes back to the default look.

Storage

• Streaming cache: 1 to 16 GiB, 4 GiB by default. It keeps the parts of videos you streamed, so watching again needs no network. Clear the streaming cache empties it.

Posters and descriptions

• Off by default. When it is on, the app sends the names of your titles to the provider you pick: AniList (no key needed) or TMDB (needs a free API key). With AniList, a title it does not have, such as a live-action show, is looked up on TVmaze next, which needs no key either. See Privacy.
• TMDB API key: needed for TMDB, optional with AniList. With a key, films and shows that have no wide picture or logo get TMDB's, asked for by their TMDB id alone. After saving a key, Match everything again fetches them for titles already matched.
• Match the library looks up new titles now. Match everything again looks up every title, except those you matched by hand.