Playback modes
The top bar has two independent choices, each its own segmented control: which source is active (Video or Audio), and how navigation behaves (Normal or Sentence by sentence). Any combination of the two works.
Sentence by sentence
This is the mode built for language learning, and the one TrangoPlayer starts in by default. Playback is driven by the subtitle's cue timing instead of the clock:
- Right Arrow jumps to the start of the next subtitle line and pauses there.
- Left Arrow jumps to the start of the previous line, same way.
- Clicking a row in the sentence list (the scrollable list on the right) jumps straight to that line, exactly like the arrow keys.
- Space plays the line you're currently on, from its start to its end, then pauses automatically. Press it again and it replays the same line from the start — it never advances to the next one on its own.
Nothing plays until you press Space. Jumping between lines with the arrow keys or the sentence list only moves the playhead and leaves playback paused — this is deliberate, so you can look at a line as long as you like before deciding to hear it.
This mode needs a subtitle file to know where the sentence boundaries are. See Subtitles for linking or generating one.
Normal
Continuous playback with a scrub bar, closer to an ordinary video player. Space still works here — it's a plain play/pause toggle, with no per-line seeking or auto-pausing. Click or drag the scrub bar to seek to any point.
Video / Audio source
Video plays a loaded video file through the scrub bar and speed
slider, same as always. Audio shows a Rec/Stop panel instead of a
picture, but plays a loaded .wav file through that same scrub bar and
speed slider once one is loaded — there's just no picture to go with it.
The sentence list and Ctrl+A word analysis still work on whatever
subtitle is linked, regardless of which source is selected.
The top bar's Open button opens the same in-app file browser in both
sources: in Video it lists video files, in Audio it lists .wav
recordings, from whichever folder you last opened one of that kind from.
Either way, a same-name .srt next to the picked file is linked
automatically, same as opening a video always has.
Ctrl+Space, in the Audio source — or the Audio panel's Rec/Stop
button — starts capturing your system's own audio output (whatever is
currently playing on your PC, e.g. a browser video) to a single WAV file;
pressing it again stops the recording. The panel shows the recording
state and a default <date>_<time>.wav filename while it runs; once
stopped, you can rename the file by editing that field and pressing
Enter, and the finished recording loads straight into the scrub bar for
playback, just like opening it with "Open" would. A failed start/stop
(e.g. pactl/ffmpeg aren't installed) shows an explanatory message
instead of silently doing nothing. See Settings for where
the monitor source and recording folder come from and how to override
them, and note recording only works on Linux with PulseAudio/PipeWire
(see the developer docs' architecture section for why).
Playback speed
A speed slider sits below the scrub bar, always visible in the Video source. Its right edge is normal speed (1.0x) — dragging it left only slows the video down, in steps down to 0.5x, marked "0.5x"/"0.75x"/"1.0x" along the track. Useful for hearing a fast line more clearly without losing per-sentence navigation in Sentence by sentence mode.
Common to all combinations
- Ctrl+T toggles a translated line underneath the current sentence, if a translation subtitle is linked. Purely visual — it doesn't affect playback. See Subtitles.
- Ctrl+A looks up a word-by-word breakdown of the current sentence. See Word-by-word analysis.
The bottom hint bar always shows whichever of these shortcuts actually do something in the navigation mode you're currently in.
For the full shortcut list, see Keyboard shortcuts.