SubMiner

Look up words, mine to Anki, and enrich cards with context — without leaving mpv.

What it does

SubMiner is an Electron overlay that sits on top of mpv. It turns your video player into a full sentence-mining workstation:

• Look up words as you watch — Yomitan dictionary popups on hover or keyboard-driven token-by-token navigation
• One-key Anki mining — Creates cards with sentence, audio, screenshot, and translation; optional local AnkiConnect proxy auto-enriches Yomitan cards instantly
• Reading annotations — N+1 targeting, frequency-dictionary highlighting, JLPT underlining, and character name dictionary for anime/manga proper nouns
• Immersion stats — Optional local dashboard and overlay for watch time, anime progress, session drill-down, vocabulary growth, and mining throughput
• Subtitle tools — Download from Jimaku, sync with alass/ffsubsync
• Jellyfin & AniList integration — Remote playback, cast device mode, and automatic episode progress tracking
• Texthooker & API — Built-in texthooker page and annotated websocket feed for external clients

Quick start

1. Install

Arch Linux (AUR):

Install subminer-bin from the AUR. It installs the packaged AppImage plus the subminer wrapper:

paru -S subminer-bin

Or manually:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/subminer-bin.git
cd subminer-bin
makepkg -si

Linux (AppImage):

wget https://github.com/ksyasuda/SubMiner/releases/latest/download/SubMiner.AppImage -O ~/.local/bin/SubMiner.AppImage
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/SubMiner.AppImage
wget https://github.com/ksyasuda/SubMiner/releases/latest/download/subminer -O ~/.local/bin/subminer
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/subminer

Note

The subminer wrapper uses a Bun shebang. Make sure bun is on your PATH.

macOS (DMG/ZIP): download the latest packaged build from GitHub Releases and drag SubMiner.app into /Applications.

Windows (Installer/ZIP): download the latest SubMiner-<version>.exe installer or portable .zip from GitHub Releases. Keep mpv installed and available on PATH.

From source — initialize submodules first (git submodule update --init --recursive). Bundled Yomitan is built from the vendor/subminer-yomitan submodule into build/yomitan during bun run build, so source builds only need Bun for the JS toolchain. Packaged macOS and Windows installs do not require Bun. Windows installer builds go through electron-builder; its bundled app-builder-lib NSIS templates already use the third-party WinShell plugin for shortcut AppUserModelID assignment, and the WinShell.dll binary is supplied by electron-builder's cached nsis-resources bundle, so bun run build:win does not need a separate repo-local plugin install step. Full install guide: docs.subminer.moe/installation#from-source.

2. Launch the app once

# Linux
SubMiner.AppImage

On macOS, launch SubMiner.app. On Windows, launch SubMiner.exe from the Start menu or install directory.

On first launch, SubMiner:

• starts in the tray/background
• creates the default config directory and config.jsonc
• opens a compact setup popup
• can install the mpv plugin to the default mpv scripts location for you
• links directly to Yomitan settings so you can install dictionaries before finishing setup

3. Finish setup

• click Install mpv plugin if you want the default plugin auto-start flow
• click Open Yomitan Settings and install at least one dictionary
• click Refresh status
• click Finish setup

The mpv plugin step is optional. Yomitan must report at least one installed dictionary before setup can be completed.

4. Mine

subminer video.mkv # default plugin config auto-starts visible overlay + resumes playback when ready
subminer --start video.mkv # optional explicit overlay start when plugin auto_start=no
subminer stats # open the local stats dashboard in your browser

Requirements

Required	Optional
bun (source builds, Linux subminer)
mpv with IPC socket	yt-dlp
ffmpeg	guessit (better AniSkip title/episode detection)
mecab + mecab-ipadic	fzf / rofi
Linux: hyprctl or xdotool + xwininfo	chafa, ffmpegthumbnailer
macOS: Accessibility permission

Windows builds use native window tracking and do not require the Linux compositor helper tools.

Documentation

For full guides on configuration, Anki, Jellyfin, immersion tracking/stats, and more, see docs.subminer.moe. The VitePress source for that site lives in docs-site/.

Acknowledgments

Built on the shoulders of GameSentenceMiner, Renji's Texthooker Page, Anacreon-Script, and Bee's Character Dictionary. Subtitles powered by Jimaku.cc. Dictionary lookups via Yomitan, and JLPT tags from yomitan-jlpt-vocab.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0