wrolpi-help/docs/system/viewing-progress.md
Roland 0bb877057b
Document resuming where you left off, and recently_viewed.yaml
A new page explains what WROLPi remembers for videos, audio, EPUB eBooks and
comic books, how resume works (and when it does not), `?t=`, progress bars,
the Dashboard's Continue view, and the recently_viewed.yaml config.  The
configs page lists the new config, and PDFs and eBooks link to the page.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-08 18:22:28 -06:00

3.9 KiB

Resume Where You Left Off

WROLPi remembers how far you are through your videos, audio, eBooks and comic books. When you open one again, it picks up where you stopped — even on a different phone, tablet or computer.

What is remembered

File type Where you left off Finished when
Videos and audio The playback time You are 95% of the way through, or it plays to the end
EPUB eBooks The page you were reading You reach the end of the book
Comic books (.cbz, .cbr, .cbt, .cb7) The page you were on You reach the last page

PDFs are shown in your browser's built-in PDF viewer, which does not tell WROLPi what page you are on, so PDFs are only marked as viewed. Archives, images and text files are also only marked as viewed, and Zim articles are not tracked.

Files in directories you Ignore are never tracked.

Resuming

Open a file from anywhere — its page, a search result, the Files browser, or a preview — and it opens where you left off:

  • A video or audio file jumps to where you stopped and keeps playing. If your browser blocks automatic playback (some phones do), it waits at that spot for you to press play.
  • An eBook opens on the page you were reading.
  • A comic book opens on the page you were on.

A file you finished starts again from the beginning.

A file you only just started is not resumed: the first 10 seconds of a video, the cover of a comic book, or the first page of an eBook. Flipping back to the cover of a comic, or to the start of an eBook, does not lose your place.

To start a video at a particular time instead, add ?t= and the number of seconds to its address. For example, /videos/123?t=90 starts at 1:30.

Opening an eBook from a search result still opens at the match, not where you left off.

Using more than one device

Your place is saved on your WROLPi, not in your browser, so you can stop watching on a phone and continue on a laptop. Whichever device saved most recently wins.

Your place is saved every 15 seconds while you watch or read, and again when you pause, close the page or switch to another tab.

Progress bars

Videos, audio files, eBooks and comic books show a bar along the bottom of their picture showing how far through them you are. A full bar means you finished it. A file you have not started has no bar.

Continue on the Dashboard

The Recently Viewed Files panel at the bottom of the Dashboard has two views:

  • All shows the files you viewed most recently.
  • Continue shows only the files you are part way through, most recent first.

To find what you were in the middle of, click Continue in the Recently Viewed Files panel on the Dashboard.

The Continue view of Recently Viewed Files

WROLPi remembers which view you chose on each browser.

The recently viewed config

Your viewing history is saved in the recently_viewed.yaml config, so it survives a rebuilt database, like your Tags and Channels do. It holds the 1,000 most recently viewed files: each file's path, when you last viewed it, and how far through it you are.

files:
  - path: videos/Channel Name/Video Title.mp4
    viewed: '2026-10-08T21:13:07+00:00'
    progress: 0.4
    position:
      kind: time
      seconds: 338.0
  • The config is saved when you open a file, when you pause or close it, and after files are moved, renamed or deleted. While you are watching, your place is saved to the database every 15 seconds, but the config is only written when you stop, so your drive is not written to constantly.
  • When the config is imported, a file you viewed more recently than the config was written keeps its newer place.
  • Files that were deleted are skipped.
  • Files older than the 1,000 most recent are still marked as viewed in the database, but are not in the config.