anirpc

Discord Rich Presence for ani-cli.

Rich Presence is the box on your Discord profile that shows what you are doing. This puts your anime there while you watch: the title, which episode you are on, whether it is subbed or dubbed, how much time is left, and the cover art.

_{An example of how the card looks.}

You do not run anything alongside ani-cli. You install this once, then keep using ani-cli exactly the way you already do.

What you need first

ani-cli is a bash script, so a Unix shell is required either way. On Windows that comes from Git for Windows, which ani-cli already needs.

You need	Why
ani-cli 5.x	The program this attaches to
mpv	The video player ani-cli opens
Git for Windows	Provides the bash shell that ani-cli and this both run in
The Discord desktop app	Rich Presence does not exist in Discord in a browser
Python 3.8 or newer	Only if you install from source. The download below does not need it

This is a Windows tool today. See Linux for where that stands.

Quick start

1. Download anirpc-windows-x64.zip from Releases.

2. Extract it anywhere, as long as the folder path has no spaces in it. This matters more than it looks: ani-cli starts the player without quoting the path, so a space in it breaks the launch. C:\Tools\anirpc is fine, C:\My Programs\anirpc is not.

3. Double-click anirpc.exe. It changes one setting on your account and exits straight away. That is the whole install.

4. Open a new terminal and run ani-cli the way you normally would.

That is it. Nothing sits running in the background until you play something, there is no extra command to remember, and you never hand over any Discord login details. The presence appears when playback starts.

Note

Windows will probably warn you the first time. You will see "Windows protected your PC". That happens because the file is not code-signed, which costs money, so Windows does not recognise it yet. Click More info and then Run anyway. If you would rather not, use Install from source instead. It does exactly the same job and is a short PowerShell script you can read first.

To undo everything, run anirpc.exe --uninstall.

What it shows, and where each part comes from

On the card	Comes from
Anime title and episode	The title ani-cli hands to mpv
Sub or Dub	The audio track language, falling back to the --dub flag
Time remaining	mpv's live position and total length
Resolution	mpv's video height
Cover art, episode count, AniList link	AniList, cached on your machine

Sub or dub has to be worked out rather than read, because ani-cli never tells the player which one you picked. The audio track's language tag is the most reliable answer, since it describes what is actually playing. When a stream carries no language tag, the --dub flag ani-cli was run with is used instead.

How it works

ani-cli lets you choose which player it opens, through a setting called ANI_CLI_PLAYER. Installing points that setting at bin/anirpc-mpv, a small script that starts the presence program and then opens the real mpv.

ani-cli itself is never modified. That is deliberate. ani-cli -U updates itself by patching its own file, and an edited copy would make that fail.

ani-cli ──ANI_CLI_PLAYER──> bin/anirpc-mpv ──starts──> mpv.exe
                                  │                      │
                          run/session.json        private connection
                                  └──────> anirpc.exe <──┘
                                               │
                                               └──> Discord

Two details that look strange but are doing real work:

• The shim's filename has to contain mpv. ani-cli looks at the player's name and only passes the media title along when the name looks like mpv. That title is where the anime name and episode number come from.
• Cover art is a link, not an upload. The image is AniList's own URL, so there is nothing to upload or set up on the Discord side.

Settings

Everything lives in config.json, in the same folder as the exe. It works as shipped, so all of this is optional.

Setting	Default	What it does
client_id	(included)	The Discord application whose name shows as the heading. See below
activity_type	3	3 reads "Watching", 2 reads "Listening", 0 reads "Playing"
timestamp_mode	"remaining"	remaining counts down, elapsed counts up
show_cover_art	true	Show the AniList cover image
show_anilist_button	true	Show a "View on AniList" button
detect_dub_from_audio_track	true	Trust the audio language over the command line flag
idle_exit_seconds	300	Shut down after this many seconds with nothing playing
debug	false	Print more detail while running

If timestamp_mode is "remaining", then activity_type has to stay 2 or 3. Discord refuses a countdown on any other type. With 0 (Playing), use "elapsed".

Changing the "Watching Anime" heading

The bold line above the title is the name of a Discord application, not something this tool sets. The included one is named Anime, which is why profiles read "Watching Anime".

To change it, make your own application:

1. Go to the Discord Developer Portal and click New Application.
2. Name it whatever you want the heading to say.
3. Copy the Application ID from General Information.
4. Put it in config.json:

{ "client_id": "1234567890123456789" }

There is no bot and no login involved. An Application ID is a public identifier rather than a secret, which is why one can be included here at all. This tool never asks for your Discord account details.

Install from source

Use this if Windows quarantined the exe, or if you would rather read the code you are about to run:

git clone https://github.com/KernelSpecter/anicli-rpc
cd anicli-rpc
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\install.ps1

Uninstall with -Uninstall. This route needs Python 3.8 or newer on your PATH, but nothing to install with pip: it uses only what comes with Python.

Both routes can sit side by side. The shim uses anirpc.exe if it finds one and falls back to Python if not.

If something is not working

Look at run/anirpc.log first. A healthy session looks like this, with one presence: line each time something actually changes rather than a constant stream:

11:06:30 daemon: start
11:06:30 mpv: connected \\.\pipe\anirpc-mpv-1868-1786599389
11:06:31 discord: connected via \\.\pipe\discord-ipc-0
11:06:31 presence: Frieren: Beyond Journey's End | Episode 4 of 28 · Sub

Nothing appears on my profile at all

Discord has to be the installed desktop app, not Discord in a browser tab, and it has to be open before you start playing. Then check that Settings > Activity Privacy > Share your detected activities is turned on.

The log says discord: pipe closed during handshake

Discord was not running, or was in the middle of restarting, when this tried to connect. Start Discord, then start the next episode.

ani-cli says "Program ... not found"

Extracting a zip drops the permission that marks the shim as runnable. Re-run anirpc.exe, which fixes and then checks it. Or do it yourself in git-bash:

chmod +x ./bin/anirpc-mpv

The buttons on the card do not show up

Discord never shows activity buttons on your own profile. Other people can see them.

It says Sub when it is Dub, or the other way round

Some streams carry no audio language tag to read. Set "detect_dub_from_audio_track": false to use ani-cli's --dub flag instead.

I want to see what it would post, without involving Discord

anirpc.exe --dry-run

This prints each update as it happens, and can run at the same time as the real thing. It never contacts Discord, so it cannot tell you whether your client_id or your connection is good, only what would be sent.

I moved the folder and it stopped working

Run anirpc.exe again to update the path. The new path still cannot contain spaces.

Linux

The Linux code is here and installs with ./install.sh, but treat it as untested.

Windows and Linux need genuinely different plumbing for this. Windows uses named pipes, Linux uses Unix sockets, and one piece of code cannot open both. The Linux version is written, and an automated test of it runs on a real Linux machine in CI, which is good evidence that the connection logic works.

What nobody has checked is the part that test cannot cover: whether the presence really shows up on a Linux Discord client. If you use Linux, trying it and opening an issue with the result is the most useful thing you could contribute right now.

Thanks

ani-cli by pystardust, which this hooks into without changing a line of it. Anime data and cover art from AniList.

MIT licensed, see LICENSE.