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Documentation

Install a skin

The easy way: download the skin's .mpcskin file from the skin store and double-click it. MPC-XS copies the skin into %APPDATA%\MPC-HC\skins and tells you when it is done. A logo you put in a skin's folder is kept when the skin is updated.

By hand: extract the skin ZIP and copy the folder (for example aurora) into one of these places. The folder name must equal the skin id.

WhereFolder
Program folder, including portable installs<folder of mpc-hc64.exe>\skins\<id>\
Per user%APPDATA%\MPC-HC\skins\<id>\

A per-user skin replaces a program-folder skin with the same id.

Select and reset

  1. Make sure Use Modern Theme is on (Options > Player > User Interface). Skins do nothing without it.
  2. Open the Skin menu (between Favorites and Help) and click a skin. The look changes at once, without a restart. The same list is in Options > Player > User Interface.
  3. To reset, choose Built-in (no skin).

The choice is stored in the player settings and survives restarts. A skin that is missing or broken is ignored and the built-in look is used.

Make a skin

A skin is a folder with a skin.json. The smallest useful one is:

{
  "format": 1,
  "id": "myskin",
  "name": "My Skin",
  "mode": "dark",
  "colors": { "accent": "#ff7a59", "windowBackground": "#1a1a22" }
}

Anything you leave out comes from the built-in theme. The full manifest reference, the list of colour keys, the toolbar art format and the safety rules are in the skin documentation in the repository.

Contribute a skin

Fork the repository, add your folder under skins/, run the manifest check (build-setup\skin-tests\run-tests.bat skins) and open a pull request. Only submit art you made or art whose licence allows redistribution, and name the licence in the manifest. Please include a real screenshot taken from the running player.

Report a bug

Open an issue at the MPC-XS issue tracker. Say which skin, your Windows version, your display scaling, and attach a screenshot if you can. Problems in MPC-HC itself (playback, codecs, filters) are best reported upstream at clsid2/mpc-hc after checking that they also happen without a skin.

Build from source

MPC-XS builds like MPC-HC: Visual Studio 2019, 2022 or 2026 with C++, ATL and MFC, the Windows SDK, NASM and Git. Follow the upstream guide, Compilation.md, and clone with submodules:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/XexFlare/mpc-xs.git
cd mpc-xs

The repository also contains two one-file builds for machines that only have the Visual Studio Build Tools and NASM (no MSYS2 needed): build-setup\build-full-x64.bat builds ffmpeg, the LAV Filters and the player, and build-setup\build-lite-x64.bat builds the quicker "Release Lite" binary without the LAV codecs. Both copy the skins next to the exe.

Limitations