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:

• Hover to look up — Yomitan dictionary popups directly on subtitles
• Keyboard-driven lookup mode — Navigate token-by-token, keep lookup open across tokens, and control popup scrolling/audio/mining without leaving the overlay
• One-key mining — Creates Anki cards with sentence, audio, screenshot, and translation
• Instant auto-enrichment — Optional local AnkiConnect proxy enriches new Yomitan cards immediately
• Reading annotations — Combines N+1 targeting, frequency-dictionary highlighting, and JLPT underlining while you read
• Hover-aware playback — By default, hovering subtitle text pauses mpv and resumes on mouse leave (subtitleStyle.autoPauseVideoOnHover)
• Subtitle tools — Download from Jimaku, sync with alass/ffsubsync
• Immersion tracking — SQLite-powered stats on your watch time and mining activity
• Custom texthooker page — Built-in custom texthooker page and websocket, no extra setup
• Jellyfin integration — Remote playback setup, cast device mode, and direct playback launch
• AniList progress — Track episode completion and push watching progress automatically

Quick start

1. Install

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.

From source or macOS — see the installation guide.

2. Install the mpv plugin and configuration file

wget https://github.com/ksyasuda/SubMiner/releases/latest/download/subminer-assets.tar.gz -O /tmp/subminer-assets.tar.gz
tar -xzf /tmp/subminer-assets.tar.gz -C /tmp
mkdir -p ~/.config/mpv/scripts/subminer
mkdir -p ~/.config/mpv/script-opts
cp -R /tmp/plugin/subminer/. ~/.config/mpv/scripts/subminer/
cp /tmp/plugin/subminer.conf ~/.config/mpv/script-opts/
mkdir -p ~/.config/SubMiner && cp /tmp/config.example.jsonc ~/.config/SubMiner/config.jsonc

3. Set up Yomitan Dictionaries

subminer app --yomitan

4. Mine

subminer app --start --background
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

Requirements

Required	Optional
bun
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

Documentation

For full guides on configuration, Anki, Jellyfin, and more, see docs.subminer.moe.

Testing

• Run bun run test or bun run test:fast for the default fast lane: config/core coverage plus representative entry/runtime, Anki integration, and main runtime checks.
• Run bun run test:full for the maintained test surface: Bun-compatible src/** coverage, Bun-compatible launcher unit coverage, and a Node compatibility lane for suites that depend on Electron named exports or node:sqlite behavior.
• Run bun run test:node:compat directly when you only need the Node-backed compatibility slice: ipc, anki-jimaku-ipc, overlay-manager, config-validation, startup-config, and runtime registry coverage.
• Run bun run test:env for environment-specific verification: launcher smoke/plugin checks plus the SQLite-backed immersion tracker lane.
• Run bun run test:immersion:sqlite when you specifically need real SQLite persistence coverage under Node with --experimental-sqlite.
• Run bun run test:subtitle for the maintained alass/ffsubsync subtitle surface.

The Bun-managed discovery lanes intentionally exclude a small set of suites that are currently Node-only because of Bun runtime/tooling gaps rather than product behavior: Electron named-export tests in src/core/services/ipc.test.ts, src/core/services/anki-jimaku-ipc.test.ts, and src/core/services/overlay-manager.test.ts, plus runtime/config tests in src/main/config-validation.test.ts, src/main/runtime/startup-config.test.ts, and src/main/runtime/registry.test.ts. bun run test:node:compat keeps those suites in the standard workflow instead of leaving them untracked.

Acknowledgments

Built on the shoulders of GameSentenceMiner, texthooker-ui, mpvacious, Anacreon-Script, and autosubsync-mpv. Subtitles powered by Jimaku.cc. Dictionary lookups via Yomitan.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0