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](MOBILE.md) 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

<img src="../images/desktop-library.png" alt="The whole library, filtered and sorted" width="820">

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

- **The banner** at the top shows the title you watched last, with **Resume** and **More info**.
- **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.

| 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.

- **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](#downloads).
- **Match…** opens the matcher, where you choose which AniList or TMDB entry the title is. Use it
  when the app guessed wrong or did not guess at all. A match you pick is never replaced.
- **More on AniList** (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.

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:

```text
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](ACCOUNT_AND_SYNC.md).

## 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. The sample line uses the
  app's own font; 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). See [Privacy](PRIVACY.md).
- **Match the library** looks up new titles now. **Match everything again** looks up every title,
  except those you matched by hand.