Media RPC: Discord Rich Presence for PotPlayer, VLC, MPC-HC and more

Show what you're watching on Discord. Media RPC is a free Discord Rich Presence app for Windows. It detects the film or TV episode playing in your video player (PotPlayer, VLC, KMPlayer, MPC-HC, MPC-BE, SMPlayer, mpv, GOM Player) and displays it on your Discord profile as a "Watching ..." card, complete with poster, season and episode, and episode title.

Windows only. No Python, no API keys, no setup: download the exe and run it.

Features

• Automatic detection. Reads the player's window title and works out whether it's a film or a series episode.
• Posters and episode names. Fetched automatically from TVmaze, iTunes, IMDb and Wikipedia.
• Smart filename cleanup. Strips release noise such as 1080p, x265, BluRay, English, Sinhala Sub and site tags like [CineSubz.com].
• Safe matching. A poster is only used when the title (and year) really match your file, so you never get the wrong film's artwork.
• System tray. Closing the window keeps the app running quietly in the tray.
• Desktop shortcut. The first time you open the exe, it adds a "Media RPC" shortcut to your desktop.
• Start with Windows. Optional auto-start, minimized to the tray.
• One instance only. Opening it twice just tells you it's already running.
• Online updates. Shows a tray notification when a new version is out and updates itself in one click.
• Pause detection. Shows "Paused" on your Discord card while the video is paused, and the timer continues from where it stopped when you resume.
• Progress bar. For PotPlayer, VLC, MPC-HC and MPC-BE the card shows a real progress bar that follows seeking (VLC and MPC need their web interface switched on once, see Progress bar).
• Films on websites. Optionally detects films playing in your browser, for the sites you list (see Films on websites).
• Settings. Hide the status while paused, hide the button, or use privacy mode to keep the film name off Discord (see Settings).

Supported players

PotPlayer, VLC, KMPlayer, MPC-HC, MPC-BE, SMPlayer, mpv and GOM Player.

Windows Media Player and the Windows 11 "Media Player" app don't put the film name in their window title, so they can't be detected.

Quick start

1. Download the latest MediaRPC.exe from the Releases page.
2. Put it somewhere permanent (for example C:\Apps\MediaRPC\) and double-click it. "Start with Windows" uses the location of the exe, so don't move it afterwards without toggling the option off and on.
3. Keep the Discord desktop app open.
4. Play a film or episode in your player. It now shows on your Discord profile.

You only need Windows and the Discord desktop app. The Discord Application ID is built in, so there's nothing to create or configure, and you can copy the exe to other PCs.

Windows SmartScreen may warn about an "unrecognized app" because the exe isn't code-signed. Click More info > Run anyway.

The app window

• Status: Connected, or "Discord not found, retrying...".
• Now watching: the player, the detected title, whether a poster was found, and elapsed time.
• Start / Stop: switch the presence off and on.

System tray

• Closing the window with X minimizes Media RPC to the system tray (the ^ arrow next to the clock).
• Double-click the tray icon to reopen the window. Right-click for: Show window, Start/Stop, Start with Windows, Quit.
• Use Quit from the tray menu to fully close the app.
• Start with Windows turns on by default the first time you run the app. You can switch it off in the window or the tray menu.

Updates

Media RPC checks GitHub Releases shortly after it starts and then every 6 hours. When a newer version exists, the window shows Update available with an Update and restart button. Nothing is installed until you click it.

What happens when you click:

1. The new MediaRPC.exe and its MediaRPC.exe.sha256 checksum are downloaded from this repository's Releases page.
2. The download is only installed if the SHA-256 checksum matches, the size looks right and it is a real Windows exe. Otherwise it is discarded.
3. The running exe is swapped for the new one and Media RPC restarts itself (minimized to the tray if it was hidden). Your settings and "Start with Windows" are kept.

Good to know:

• The check is a single request to the GitHub API. It sends no personal data (GitHub sees your IP address and the app version, like any download). Only HTTPS connections to GitHub are allowed.
• Turn automatic checks off with Check for updates automatically in the window. You can still use Check for updates in the tray menu.
• If the exe sits in a folder that needs administrator rights (like C:\Program Files), or you run from source, the button opens the download page instead.
• The first release that contains the updater must be installed manually. After that, updates are one click.

How detection works

Step	What happens
1. Find the player	Looks for a supported player window and reads its title.
2. Parse the name	Handles S01E01, 1x01, Show - 05, Title (2025), Title.2010.1080p... and similar. Quality, language and site tags are removed.
3. Look up artwork	Series: TVmaze, then IMDb. Films: iTunes, then IMDb, then Wikipedia. Episode names come from TVmaze.
4. Show the card	Sent to Discord as a "Watching" activity with the poster as the large image.

Good to know:

• Lookups use only the cleaned-up title (and year); nothing else about your system or files is sent.
• If no confident match is found, or you're offline, the card shows just the title. Media RPC retries about every 30 seconds.
• If a title is detected wrongly, check parse_filename in media_info.py.
• The window title doesn't contain the playback position, so the progress bar reads it from the player directly. Players that can't report it get an elapsed timer that starts when the title is detected.

Progress bar

When the player reports its position and length, the Discord card shows a progress bar (like Spotify or Crunchyroll) instead of a plain timer. Media RPC re-reads the position every few seconds, so seeking, pausing and resuming keep the bar correct.

Player	Progress bar	Setup
PotPlayer	Yes	None. Read through PotPlayer's own remote messages.
VLC	Yes	Turn on the web interface once (below).
MPC-HC, MPC-BE	Yes	Turn on the web interface once (below).
KMPlayer, SMPlayer, mpv, GOM Player	No	They don't share their position. You get the elapsed timer.

VLC: Tools > Preferences > bottom-left Show settings: All > Interface > Main interfaces, tick Web. Then open Main interfaces > Lua and set a Lua HTTP password. Restart VLC. In Media RPC, open Settings, type the same password, and press Test.

MPC-HC / MPC-BE: View > Options > Player > Web Interface, tick Listen on port (default 13579). Press Test in the Media RPC settings.

Good to know:

• The web interfaces are only read from 127.0.0.1 (your own PC). The VLC password is stored in plain text in your Media RPC settings file.
• The app window shows whether the bar is active: "Progress bar: on (VLC)" or what's missing.
• Turn the bar off with Show a progress bar in Settings to get the simple timer back.

Settings

Open Settings in the app window (or the tray menu). Checkboxes apply immediately.

Setting	What it does
Hide my status while the video is paused	Removes the card from Discord while paused and brings it back when you resume. Off: the card says "Paused".
Hide the "Get Media RPC" button	Removes the button from the card.
Privacy mode: hide the film name	Discord only shows "Watching ". No title, poster or episode, and a local file's name is not looked up online. The progress bar still works.
Detect films on websites in my browser	See Films on websites.
Show a progress bar when the player allows it	See Progress bar.

Films on websites

Media RPC can also show a film you're watching in your browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi). It is on by default, with nothing to set up. You can switch it off in Settings > Websites.

1. Any site: nothing to configure (leave the site list empty). Media RPC then looks only at a browser tab that is playing sound and takes the film name from the start of its title (before the first " - " or " | "). Silent tabs are never read or searched.
2. YouTube: off by default, so YouTube tabs are ignored. Tick "Also detect films and series on YouTube" in Settings > Websites to include them. Only a YouTube tab that is playing sound is looked at, words like "Official Trailer" and "Full Movie" are dropped from the title, and it is shown only if it is a real film or series. Only some sites: type the site's name, one per line, as it appears in the tab title (for example CineSubz). Only those tabs are used, even without sound.
3. Press What do I see now? to check: it lists the tab of each browser window and the film title Media RPC would use.

How it decides what to show:

• A browser window's title is the title of the tab you're looking at. Media RPC only reads tabs whose title contains a site you listed, removes the site name and filler words like "Watch" and "Online", then checks the title online (TVmaze, iTunes, IMDb, Wikipedia). It's only shown on Discord if it's a real film or series, so home pages, search pages and other tabs are ignored.
• Privacy mode still hides the title on Discord (it shows "Watching "), but the online check still happens for listed sites, because otherwise every page of the site would show up.
• Pause is guessed from whether the browser is playing sound.

Limits:

• Sites that don't put the film name in the tab title can't be detected. Netflix, for example, shows just "Netflix".
• A browser can't share the video's position, so the card shows an elapsed timer, not a progress bar.
• Each browser window only exposes its active tab. Switch to another tab and the status goes away.
• The tab titles of unlisted sites are never stored or sent anywhere.

The "Get Media RPC" button

The card includes a Get Media RPC button linking to this repository. Change the label or link with PROJECT_BUTTON and PROJECT_URL in media_rpc.py.

Discord only shows Rich Presence buttons to other people, never on your own profile. To check it works, ask a friend to open your profile (on the desktop app) while you're watching, or use a second account.

Customization

Add a player

Add a line to the PLAYERS list in players.py: a display name, the start of the process's exe name (lowercase), and a regex for the player name as it appears in the window title.

Player("MyPlayer", ("myplayer",), r"MyPlayer"),

Change the name shown on the card

The text after "Watching" is the name of the Discord Application. Open the Discord Developer Portal, pick your application, then go to General Information > Name and rename it (for example "Media Player"). The Application ID stays the same.

Show an image when there is no poster

When no poster is found Discord shows a "?" placeholder. To replace it, upload an image named default_poster under Rich Presence > Art Assets in the Developer Portal. It is used automatically.

Run from source

Requires Windows and Python 3.

pip install -r requirements.txt
python media_rpc.py

To use your own Discord Application, change CLIENT_ID in media_rpc.py.

Build the exe

Pushing a tag that starts with v (for example v1.6.2), or publishing a release in Releases > Draft a new release, triggers GitHub Actions to build MediaRPC.exe and attach it, together with MediaRPC.exe.sha256, to the release. The tag becomes the app's version number, and installed copies of Media RPC will offer it as an update once the exe is attached. Use a higher version than the previous release (v1.6.2 after v1.6.1).

Without a tag, run Actions > Build Windows exe > Run workflow and download the result from Artifacts.

Project layout

File	Purpose
media_rpc.py	App window, tray and the Discord Rich Presence worker
media_info.py	Filename parsing and poster / episode lookup
players.py	Supported players and window-title detection
web_tabs.py	Reads film names from browser tab titles, for the sites you list
playback.py	Playback position and length for the progress bar (PotPlayer, VLC, MPC-HC/BE)
settings_window.py	The Settings window
app_settings.py	Settings shared between the window and the Discord worker
theme.py	Colours used by the windows
system_integration.py	Start with Windows and single-instance handling
updater.py	Online updates: version check, verified download, exe swap
app_version.py	App version (set from the release tag when building)
app_icon.py	Generates the app icon
site/	The download website (static HTML, deploys to Vercel with root directory site)

Troubleshooting

• Nothing shows on Discord: open Discord Settings > Activity Privacy and make sure Share your detected activity is on.
• "Discord not found, retrying...": make sure the Discord desktop app is running (not just the browser). Discord and Media RPC should run with the same permission level (both normal, not one as administrator). It reconnects automatically after a Discord restart.
• Player not detected: the window title must look like film name - Player name, or be just the file name with its extension. Check that your player is in the list in players.py.
• Wrong or missing poster: see "How detection works" above. A title with an unusual name may need a fix in media_info.py.

Limitations

• Windows only.
• Pause is read from the player where possible (PotPlayer, VLC, MPC) and otherwise guessed from the window title and the player's audio, so it can be a few seconds late.
• The progress bar needs a player that reports its position (see Progress bar); the others get an elapsed timer.
• Websites are detected by tab title only, so only sites that put the film name there work, and there's no progress bar for them (see Films on websites).
• Discord shows your PC's status whatever device you're using. If you leave a player open (even paused) and go play on your phone, the card stays visible. Use Hide my status while the video is paused, or close the player.