Troubleshooting playback

Two commands cover most of it:

anistream --doctor                        # does mpv run at all, and which config is it reading
anistream --stream-url 154587 --episode 1 # resolve one episode, print the URL, keep it served

--stream-url separates the two failure modes. If mpv --no-config <that url> plays, the problem is in anistream. If it does not, it is the player or the source, and mpv says which.

anistream captures mpv’s stderr and shows the relevant line. L opens the in-app logs.

Slow starts

A slow start is usually plugin compilation. The JavaScript reference plugin takes about 874 ms, and anistream --plugins lists what is installed. Drop "plugins" from providers.order if you do not use them.

No images

Cover art needs a terminal graphics protocol: Ghostty, Kitty, iTerm2 or WezTerm. Elsewhere it falls back to halfblocks, and anistream --doctor reports which protocol was detected. --no-images forces halfblocks if a terminal advertises a protocol it does not deliver.

“Which one?” when opening episodes

A torrent source has no catalogue, so titles are matched by name and two releases can score within a point of each other. Rather than fail, the episodes screen lists the candidates best-first with the score each got, and ↵ picks one. Your choice is stored as an override, so you are asked once per title.

Nothing plays at all

Check the Providers screen (7 by default). It names which source broke and why, from the same health tracking that drives failover. Then check configuration: a source that is not configured and guarded is not reachable.