mf - Media File Finder

A cross-platform command-line tool for finding and playing video files in large collections

Features

• 🔍 Fast file search - Uses vendored fd binary with automatic fallback to Python scanning
• 🎯 Flexible pattern matching - Glob-based search patterns with automatic wildcard wrapping
• 🚀 Quick access to search results - Access found files by index number
• 📋 Search results as playlists - Play through search results in order
• 💾 Caching of library metadata - Cache library metadata for fast file lookups in network storage
• 📁 Multi-path scanning - Search across multiple configured directories simultaneously
• 🕒 Latest additions - Find newest files by modification time
• 🎬 Media player integration - Launch files directly in VLC or mpv
• 📦 RAR archive support - Automatically extract and play video files from RAR archives
• 🌐 IMDB lookup - Automatically open IMDB pages for media files
• ⚙️ Flexible configuration - TOML-based config with extension filtering and path management
• 📜 Scriptable output - Plain text output mode for easy piping and scripting
• 🖥️ Cross-platform - Works on Windows, Linux, and macOS

Installation

Install with uv:

uv tool install mediafinder

Quick Start

Note

If mf is shadowed by another command on your system (e.g., Metafont), use mediafinder instead — it's already installed and works exactly the same way.

1. Configure search paths where your media files are located:

mf config set search_paths "/path/to/movies" "/path/to/tv-shows"

2. Optional: Activate library caching

If your collection is stored on the network, activate caching for fast file searches:

mf config set cache_library true

3. Find media files matching a filename pattern:

mf find "batman" # Finds files containing "batman"
mf find "*.mp4" # Finds all MP4 files
mf find "2023" # Finds files from 2023

4. Play a file from search results:

mf play 1 # Play first result
mf play next # Search results as playlist: play next result
mf play list # Send current search results to video player as a playlist
mf play # Play random file

5. Find latest additions:

mf new # Show 20 newest files
mf new 50 # Show 50 newest files

Core Commands

• mf find [pattern] - Search for media files matching the glob pattern (supports --plain/-p for scriptable output)
• mf new [n] - Show latest additions (default: 20 files, supports --plain/-p for scriptable output)
• mf play [index] - Play a file by index, or random file if no index given
• mf imdb <index> - Open IMDB page for a media file
• mf filepath <index> - Print full path of a search result
• mf version - Print version information or run version check
• mf cleanup - Reset mediafinder by deleting all configuration and cache files
• mf stats - Show library statistics
• mf last - Show last search result index with the last played file highlighted
• mf config - Configure mf
• mf cache - Manage library cache (rebuild, show location, clear)
• mf or mf --help - Print help

Scripting and Automation

The find, new, and last commands support plain text output for easy scripting and piping.

Automatic Plain Mode (TTY Detection)

Plain mode is automatically enabled when output is piped or redirected - no flags needed:

# Automatically outputs plain text
mf find batman | head -5
mf new 10 | grep 1080p
mf last > results.txt

# Find and play first result
vlc "$(mf find batman | head -1)"

# Count search results
mf find 2023 | wc -l

# Process multiple files
mf find "*.mkv" | while read -r file; do
    echo "Processing: $file"
done

Interactive terminal usage displays rich formatted output, while piped/redirected commands automatically get plain text.

Explicit Plain Mode

Use --plain or -p when you want plain output directly in your terminal without piping:

# View plain paths in terminal (useful for copying paths, etc.)
mf find batman --plain
mf new 5 -p

Library Statistics

Use the mf stats command to print various statistics that describe your collection:

RAR Archive Support

On-demand extraction: mf can extract and play video files from RAR archives. When you play a RAR file, it's automatically extracted to a temporary directory.

Requirements: Requires one of these extraction tools installed:

• unrar (official UnRAR utility)
• unar (The Unarchiver command-line tool)
• 7z (7-Zip)
• bsdtar (libarchive with RAR support)
• WinRAR (Windows)

Example usage:

mf find "*.rar"      # Find RAR archives
mf play 1            # Automatically extracts and plays the video

Note: The mf play list command (playing multiple files as a playlist) is not supported for RAR archives. Play individual RAR files by index instead.

Last search results

• mf last / mf last show- Show indexed results from the last file search (supports --plain/-p for scriptable output)
• mf last file - Print search result file location
• mf last clear - Clear last search results

Cached indices remain valid until you run another find or new command that overwrites the last search.

Cache Management

Configuration:

• mf config set cache_library <true/false> - Turn library caching on or off
• mf config set library_cache_interval <interval> - Set auto-rebuild interval in seconds (default 86400 (1 day), 0 to disable)

Manual control:

• mf cache rebuild - Trigger a library cache rebuild
• mf cache file - Print cache location
• mf cache clear - Clear the cache
• mf stats - Show library statistics

Configuration Management

mf can be configured directly on the command line:

• mf config set <key> <values> - Set configuration values
• mf config add <key> <values> - Add values to list settings
• mf config remove <key> <values> - Remove values from list settings
• mf config get <key> - Get configuration value
• mf config list - Show the current configuration
• mf config edit - Edit config file in default editor
• mf config file - Print config file location
• mf config settings - Print a table of all available settings

Search Paths

Add multiple paths of a (scattered) collection:

mf config set search_paths "/movies" "/tv-shows" "/documentaries"

Media Extensions

Control which file types are considered media files:

mf config set media_extensions ".mp4" ".mkv" ".avi" ".mov" ".wmv" ".rar"

By default, common video formats and .rar archives are included.

Automatic wildcard wrapping

Toggle whether search patterns should be wrapped with wildcards automatically:

# Wraps search patterns with '*' if no wildcards (* ? [ ]) present.
# 'mf find batman' searches for files matching *batman*.
mf config set auto_wildcards true

# Does not wrap search patterns.
# 'mf find batman' searches for files exactly named batman.
mf config set auto_wildcards false

Parallel search

Toggle whether file searches should be parallelized over search paths:

# Runs file searches concurrently over all paths defined in search_paths (potentially faster).
mf config set parallel_search true

# Runs file searches sequentially over all paths defined in search_paths. Use this if
# your search paths are on the same mechanical (but not solid state) hard drive to avoid
# disk thrashing.
mf config set parallel_search false

Other Settings

• video_player (str): Video player to use (vlc, mpv, or auto). Default is auto, which prefers VLC with automatic fallback to mpv.
• fullscreen_playback (bool): If true, mf play launches the video player in fullscreen mode.
• prefer_fd (bool): Use the bundled fd scanner when possible. Automatically ignored for mtime-sorted searches (mf new) which always use the Python scanner.
• display_paths (bool): Turn filepath display in search results on or off.

Editing the Config

mf config edit resolves an editor in this order:

1. $VISUAL or $EDITOR
2. Windows: Notepad++ if present else Notepad
3. POSIX: first available of nano, vim, vi

If no editor is found, it prints the path so you can edit manually.

Input Normalization

• Boolean values accept: true, false, yes, no, y, n, on, off, 1, 0 (case-insensitive; synonyms normalized to true/false).
• Media extensions are normalized to lowercase with a leading dot (mkv → .mkv).
• Paths are stored as absolute POSIX-style strings.

Search Patterns

• Use quotes around patterns with wildcards to prevent shell expansion
• Patterns without wildcards are automatically wrapped: batman becomes *batman*
• Automatic wildcard wrapping only happens if the pattern contains none of: * ? [ ].
• Examples:
  • mf find "*.mp4" - All MP4 files
  • mf find batman - Files containing "batman"
  • mf find "*2023*1080p*" - 2023 releases in 1080p
  • mf find "s01e??" - Season 1 episodes

Integration Features

• Video Player Integration: Automatically launches VLC or mpv media player with configurable preference
• IMDB Lookup: Uses filename parsing to find matching IMDB entries
• Smart Caching: Search results are cached for quick index-based access
• Cross-platform paths: Handles Windows and Unix path conventions
• Random Playback: mf play (without index) randomly selects a file by scanning all configured paths (not just the last cached search).

Performance

• Uses bundled fd binary for fast file scanning when possible
• Automatic fallback to Python scanning if fd unavailable
• Parallel scanning across multiple search paths

Benchmarking fd vs pure python file scanning

• All tests with hyperfine and warm caches: hyperfine --warmup 3 --runs 10 "mf find test".
• Media collection on two separate, mechanical USB drives in a file server on the local network, served via SMB for Windows and NFS for Linux clients, 16.3 TiB / 3540 files total.
• Tested on the file server itself with local file access as well as on a Linux and a Windows desktop with network file access.
• mf find can use both the fd scanner as well as the pure python one. First run was with the default setting prefer_fd = true. After that I switched to the python scanner via mf config set prefer_fd false and tested again.

Platform	Pure Python (ms)	fd Scanner (ms)	Improvement
Linux Server (local file access)	697.9 ± 17.1	443.5 ± 2.6	36% faster
Linux Desktop (NFS)	1,618.0 ± 28.0	478.2 ± 21.2	70% faster
Windows Desktop (SMB)	2,371.0 ± 90.0	1,601.0 ± 94.0	32% faster

• The fd scanner provides 32-70% performance improvement for search operations over pure python file scanning.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• VLC or mpv media player (for play command)
• Internet connection (for IMDB lookup)
• Optional: RAR extraction tool (unrar, unar, 7z, bsdtar, or WinRAR) for playing archived media files

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE-MIT file for details.

Third-Party Software

This package includes the fd file finder binary, which is dual-licensed under MIT OR Apache-2.0. Copyright (c) 2017-present the fd developers.

• MIT License: See src/mf/bin/LICENSE-fd-MIT
• Apache License 2.0: See src/mf/bin/LICENSE-fd-APACHE