Movi Player for VS Code

Play modern video formats directly inside VS Code — MKV, HEVC, AV1, HDR, WebM, MOV, AVI, M2TS and more, including formats VS Code can't natively handle.

100% local. Nothing uploaded. Powered by FFmpeg WebAssembly + WebCodecs hardware decoding. True streaming — multi-GB and 8K HDR files no longer hit the 4 GB Blob limit. Remote URLs stream through the extension host, so cross-origin videos play without CORS errors that block them in browsers.

Usage

Activity Bar

Click the Movi Player icon in the left-side Activity Bar to open the Quick Actions panel — one click to play any local file, paste a URL, or open beside / in a new window.

Open a video

Single-click any video file in the Explorer (.mp4, .mkv, .webm, .mov, .avi, .flv, .wmv, .m4v, .3gp, .mpg, .mpeg, .m2ts, .hevc, .265) — opens directly in Movi Player
Right-click any file → "Open With…" → "Movi Player" — works for any extension (.iso, .vob, etc.)

Multi-window & side-by-side

Right-click any video in the Explorer to get extra options:

Movi: Play with Movi Player — open in the active editor group
Movi: Play to the Side — open beside your code (great for tutorials, lectures, or while pair-coding)
Movi: Play in New Window — open in a separate VS Code window (independent layout, true multi-monitor playback)

Command Palette (`Cmd+Shift+P` / `Ctrl+Shift+P`)

Command	What it does
`Movi: Open Video File`	File picker
`Movi: Open Video File to the Side`	File picker, opens beside the active editor
`Movi: Open Video File in New Window`	File picker, opens in a new VS Code window
`Movi: Open Video from URL`	Paste a remote video URL
`Movi: Open URL to the Side`	Paste a remote URL beside the active editor
`Movi: Open URL in New Window`	Paste a remote URL in a new VS Code window
`Movi: Play with Movi Player`	Open the active editor's file
`Movi: Play to the Side`	Open the active file beside
`Movi: Play in New Window`	Open the active file in a new window

Supported formats

Containers: MP4, MKV, WebM, MOV, M2TS, AVI, FLV, WMV, MPG/MPEG, 3GP

Video codecs: H.264, HEVC (H.265), AV1, VP9, VP8 — hardware-accelerated where available

Audio codecs: AAC, Opus, FLAC, MP3, AC-3, E-AC-3, Vorbis — multi-track switching with language menu

Subtitles: SRT, ASS, WebVTT, PGS (image-based), DVB — multi-track, on-the-fly switching, delay/offset (Z/X), full transcript browser with search + click-to-seek, customizable size/color/background/edge

HDR: HDR10 / HLG / Dolby Vision profile 8 (on supported displays)

Features inside the player

Movi fullscreen — toggle a player-only view that hides VS Code's workbench chrome (sidebar, status bar, panel). Auto-restores on close or crash.
OS wake lock — your machine won't sleep during playback (caffeinate -i on macOS, systemd-inhibit on Linux, SetThreadExecutionState on Windows).
Resume — picks up where you left off across sessions.
Ambient mode — dynamic color glow around the video.
Stats for nerds — codec, resolution, FPS, decoder type, buffer health, network graph (I to toggle).
Chapter markers on the progress bar, auto-detected from container metadata.
Aspect ratio cycle (A), rotation (R), playback speed (+/-), thumbnail timeline (T).
Snapshot the current frame (S).

Press ? inside the player for the full keyboard shortcut panel.

Settings

Setting	Default	Effect
`movi.ambientMode`	`true`	Color glow around the video
`movi.resume`	`true`	Resume playback from last position

Limitations

VS Code's webview sandbox restricts a few features that work in the Chrome extension:

Native browser fullscreen is blocked (Permissions-Policy denies requestFullscreen in webviews) — use Movi fullscreen instead, which hides workbench chrome inside VS Code itself.
Picture-in-Picture is hidden (same reason). For PiP, use "Play in New Window" to drag the video to a separate window.
SharedArrayBuffer is unavailable, so FFmpeg runs single-threaded — slightly slower demuxing on very large files (8K HDR streams). Hardware video decode is unaffected.

For full feature parity (browser fullscreen + Document PiP), use the Chrome extension or the Movi Player web app.

Privacy

Everything runs locally inside VS Code's sandboxed webview. No uploads, no telemetry, no servers. Your video files never leave your machine.

Links

Made with 💜 by Ujjawal Kashyap

Movi Player

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