Video Player (with Audio)

Play MP4 / MOV / M4V / WebM videos with sound directly inside VS Code — audio that actually plays, and stays in sync.

Features

• 🔊 Plays MP4 / MOV / M4V / WebM with real sound — not the silent preview the built-in editor gives you.
• 🎯 Audio stays in sync with the video through continuous drift correction, even on long clips.
• 🚀 Streams large files over HTTP Range — the video is never loaded fully into memory.
• ⌨️ Full keyboard controls, adjustable playback speed (0.5×–2×), and picture-in-picture.
• 🔒 Safe by default in untrusted workspaces — stays muted until you trust the workspace.
• ♿ Accessible — keyboard navigation and screen-reader announcements.

Supported formats

Requirements

Needs ffmpeg on your PATH for MP4/MOV/M4V audio; WebM needs nothing. Without ffmpeg the video still plays, just silently.

• VS Code ^1.90.0
• ffmpeg (for .mp4 / .mov / .m4v audio):
  • macOS: brew install ffmpeg
  • Ubuntu/Debian: sudo apt install ffmpeg
  • Windows: install ffmpeg and ensure ffmpeg.exe is reachable

Install

• In VS Code, open the Extensions view and search for Video Player (with Audio).
• Or use Quick Open and run ext install yutabee.unmute-video.
• For VSCodium, Cursor, and other Open VSX clients, install it from there.

Usage

• Open any .mp4 / .mov / .m4v / .webm file from the Explorer — it opens in the player automatically.
• Or run "Open with Video Player (with Audio)" from the Command Palette.

Controls: click the stage or use space/k to play-pause, j/l (or ←/→) to seek by the configured step (±10s by default — change it with unmuteVideo.seekStep), m to mute, the volume slider to adjust audio, f for fullscreen, and p for picture-in-picture when the host supports it. The speed button cycles 0.5×–2×. The action buttons copy the file path or open the file in an external player.

Default editor

The extension registers as the default editor for .mp4, .mov, .m4v, and .webm files. To opt out for a file type or glob, map it back to the built-in editor in workbench.editorAssociations:

{
  "workbench.editorAssociations": {
    "*.mp4": "default",
    "*.mov": "default",
    "*.m4v": "default",
    "*.webm": "default"
  }
}

How it works

VS Code's webview runs on the Electron/Chromium build that ships without the AAC codec (patent licensing). So a normal <video> element shows the picture but stays silent. This extension works around that:

1. The video stream is served from a tiny loopback HTTP server with HTTP Range support, so even large files play without being loaded into memory.
2. ffmpeg extracts the audio track to MP3 in the background.
3. The webview plays a muted <video> alongside a hidden <audio> element and keeps the two in sync (play/pause/seek/speed/volume).

Limitations

• ffmpeg must be installed on the same machine as the extension host.
• In Remote-SSH, WSL, and Codespaces, the extension runs on the remote machine; ffmpeg and the video files need to be available there.
• Virtual and web workspaces are not supported because the player needs a real on-disk path.
• Without ffmpeg, the video still plays, but silently.
• .webm plays with native audio and does not need ffmpeg; .mp4, .mov, and .m4v need ffmpeg for sound.

Security

Media is streamed from a loopback-only, token-gated HTTP server with a strict Host-header check. The webview uses a tight CSP, and ffmpeg is invoked without a shell. See SECURITY.md for the disclosure process and full security model.

Develop

npm install
npm run compile      # compiles host (-> out/) and webview (-> media/player.js)
npm test             # StreamServer / audio unit tests (node:test, no deps)
npm run package      # build a .vsix via @vscode/vsce

The codebase is all TypeScript. The extension host compiles via tsconfig.json to out/; the webview is bundled by esbuild from src/webview/main.ts into a single media/player.js IIFE (a generated, git-ignored artifact) and type-checked via tsconfig.webview.json (DOM lib). npm run watch / npm run watch:webview watch each side.

Press F5 ("Run Extension") to launch an Extension Development Host.

Layout

License

MIT