// the find
mafintosh/playback
Video player built using electron and node.js
A desktop video player built on Electron that can stream from HTTP links, magnet torrents, and IPFS in addition to local files. Mafintosh is a prolific WebTorrent contributor so this was a natural side project showcasing WebTorrent's peer streaming capabilities. Effectively abandoned since 2019.
Torrent and IPFS streaming built-in without separate clients is genuinely useful. WebTorrent integration means it works with web peers over WebRTC, not just the classic BitTorrent swarm. Chromecast support in an Electron app was non-trivial to get right at the time. Codebase is tiny — the whole player is a handful of files, easy to read.
Last commit was 2019; Electron has gone through roughly six major versions since then, and the app almost certainly won't build without significant dependency surgery. Linux is listed as unsupported in the README, which for an Electron app is an odd omission. No codec flexibility — MP4 and WebM only, so anything H.265 or MKV-based won't play. With VLC, mpv, and IINA all free and actively maintained, the use case for a half-dead Electron video player is hard to justify.