# OfflineU Self-hosted course viewer for a local video/audio/text training library. Runs as a single Flask app in Docker, tracks watch progress and notes per lesson, and gives the whole library a dashboard-style home page instead of a bare file browser. This is a personal deployment, not a public project — this doc is internal reference for running/maintaining it, not a pitch. ![Lesson view](images/lesson-0-8-2025-08-04-04_58_17.png) *Screenshot predates the current theming/icon work — kept for a rough idea of layout, not pixel-accurate.* --- ## Deployment Deployed via `docker-compose.yml`, built directly from the `Dockerfile` in this repo (`pull_policy: build`, not a registry pull): ```yaml services: offlineu: build: . pull_policy: build container_name: offlineu network_mode: host ports: - "5000:5000" environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=10 - TZ=America/New_York - FLASK_ENV=production volumes: - /volume1/files/training:/app/courses # course library - /volume2/docker/offlineu/data:/app/data # settings/progress/notes restart: unless-stopped ``` **Auto-deploy:** the Gitea repo has a webhook to Dockhand — a push to `main` triggers a full image **rebuild** from the Dockerfile (confirmed, not just a container restart), so Dockerfile changes (e.g. adding `ffmpeg`) take effect on the very next push without any manual step. --- ## Local development ```bash pip install -r requirements.txt python offlineu_core.py --library-path /path/to/courses --debug ``` Opens on `http://127.0.0.1:5000`. `ffprobe` (from ffmpeg) needs to be on `PATH` for video-duration lookups to work locally; without it those just silently stay blank instead of erroring. ### CLI options | Option | Description | | ---------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------- | | `--host` | Bind host (default `0.0.0.0`) | | `--port` | Bind port (default `5000`) | | `--debug` | Enable Flask debug mode | | `--create-templates` | Regenerate default templates if missing | | `--library-path` | Course library root (overrides `COURSES_LIBRARY_PATH`) | | `course_path` (positional) | Load a specific course directly at startup | ### Environment variables | Variable | Default | Purpose | | ---------------------- | -------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | `COURSES_LIBRARY_PATH` | `/app/courses` | Course library root | | `OFFLINEU_DATA_DIR` | `/app/data` | Where settings/progress/notes data lives | | `AUTO_LOAD_COURSE` | — | Course path to load automatically on start | --- ## Features **Library browsing** - Lazy-loading folder browser (grid or list view) with search, including an opt-in transcript search across subtitle files - Course cards show media file count, total video/audio runtime, and completion % at a glance - Cover art: uses a manually-placed `cover`/`folder`/`thumbnail`/`thumb`/ `poster` image if a course has one, otherwise auto-generates one via `ffmpeg` from a frame of the course's first video - Hide courses/folders from the browser without touching anything on disk; bulk-select to hide or queue several at once - Bulk rename across course/folder names (find & replace) - **Sort Unsorted** ([/unsorted](templates/unsorted.html), linked from Settings): drop new/incoming courses into an `Unsorted` folder at the library root, then scan proposes a destination for each one by keyword overlap against the *existing* category tree - read fresh from disk every scan, so it adapts to whatever folders you actually have rather than any hardcoded subject list. Three outcomes per item: a confident match to an existing folder, a suggested new subfolder under a broader category match, or "needs review" (unchecked by default) when nothing overlaps at all. Every destination is editable before applying, and nothing on disk moves until you review and hit Apply. **Dashboard** - Library-wide stats (courses, lessons completed, time watched, time remaining, day streak) and a 90-day activity heatmap - Next Up queue (manually curated, reorderable) - Pick Back Up (courses with progress that have gone stale) - Recently Added / Recently Viewed - Surprise Me — dice icon in the header, random pick weighted toward incomplete courses **Playback & progress** - Video/audio player with resize, playback-speed presets, and resume-from- last-position - Auto-tracks watch progress and completion per lesson - Video/audio durations read via `ffprobe` and cached persistently per course (`.offlineu_duration_cache.json`), so total runtime and per-lesson length show up before you've ever pressed play — not just after; the same cache backs the library-wide "time remaining" stat - Settings → "Precompute Lengths & Cover Art" walks the whole library in the background to populate durations and thumbnails up front, with live progress **Notes** - Timestamped notes per lesson, capturable via a keyboard shortcut without leaving the player - Notes Hub: every note across the whole library, searchable, in one list - Per-course study guide export (markdown, organized by section) **Personalization** (Settings) - 46 built-in themes (grouped in the dropdown: Base, Editor Themes, and 5 categories of website-inspired schemes sourced from Figma's "53 Unique Website Color Schemes" - 34 of the 53 kept, all as dark/colored backgrounds rather than the source page's mostly-white mockups, after cutting a couple of neon-bright accents and pruning near-duplicates by actual color distance), or a fully custom accent color, corner radius, and card style - Font, text size, page width, and spacing density - Default library path override + manual "Refresh Library" (bypasses the 5-minute filesystem-scan cache) **Backup & integrations** - One-click backup export and restore: settings, hidden-path choices, the Next Up queue, recent-view history, Outline config, and every course's progress/notes as a zip (not the course files themselves). Restore overwrites current data and needs a matching course folder to already exist for each course's progress to land - it's a "put my data back" action, not a merge - Optional [Outline](https://www.getoutline.com/) integration — push a lesson's notes to an Outline document/collection --- ## Data files Everything under `OFFLINEU_DATA_DIR` (app-wide, not tied to a course): | File | Contents | | ---------------------- | ------------------------------------------ | | `settings.json` | Theme, layout, library path, etc. | | `hidden_paths.json` | Courses/folders curated out of the browser | | `next_up.json` | The Next Up queue, in order | | `recent_views.json` | Cross-course "Recently Viewed" history | | `outline_config.json` | Outline API token/collection mapping | Per-course, written inside the course's own folder on the library volume: | File | Contents | | ----------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------- | | `.offlineu_progress.json` | Per-lesson completed/progress/duration/notes | | `.offlineu_duration_cache.json` | ffprobe duration cache, keyed by (path, size, mtime) | | `.offlineu_thumbnail.jpg` | Auto-generated cover art (only if no manual cover exists) | --- ## Folder structure example ``` MyCourse/ ├── Section 1/ │ ├── 01 - Intro.mp4 │ ├── 02 - Setup Guide.pdf │ └── 03 - Quiz.html ├── Section 2/ │ ├── 04 - Advanced Tips.mp4 │ └── resources/ │ └── extras.md ├── .offlineu_progress.json ← created automatically ├── .offlineu_duration_cache.json ← created automatically └── .offlineu_thumbnail.jpg ← created automatically, only if no manual cover exists ``` No metadata files needed — course/section/lesson names come straight from folder and file names. An `Unsorted/` folder at the library root (alongside the real category folders) is the drop point for new/incoming courses — see Sort Unsorted above. ## Supported file types | Type | Extensions | | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Video | `.mp4` `.mkv` `.avi` `.mov` `.webm` `.m4v` `.flv` `.wmv` | | Audio | `.mp3` `.wav` `.m4a` `.aac` `.ogg` `.flac` | | Documents | `.txt` `.md` `.html` `.htm` `.pdf` `.docx` `.doc` `.rtf` | | Subtitles | `.srt` `.vtt` `.ass` `.sub` `.sbv` | | Quizzes | Any doc file whose name contains `quiz`, `exam`, `test`, `assessment`, `exercise`, `assignment`, or `homework` | --- ## Tools `tools/generate_website_scheme_themes.py` is the one-off script that produced the 34 "website scheme" theme entries in `THEME_PALETTES` (of 53 candidates - all 24 light-mode ones were converted to dark/colored backgrounds per request, then 19 were cut across two review passes: 2 for a neon-bright accent, 17 for landing too close to another kept scheme once mapped into actual UI colors, since forcing everything dark made several collide that hadn't before) - not part of the running app, kept for reference if those palettes ever need regenerating or extending. `build_theme()` takes a `force_mood='dark'|'light'` override for exactly this kind of bulk remapping. See its module docstring for how it turned Figma's color-scheme screenshots into actual UI palettes.