HermesPlay is a fully custom, toddler-proof local media player built natively for Android tablets. Designed from the ground up to solve the frustrations of generic video players, it provides a distraction-free, fully offline viewing experience for kids.
Built entirely with Jetpack Compose and ExoPlayer, HermesPlay bypasses the need for internet connections, cloud syncing, or subscriptions by utilizing Android's Scoped Storage to read video files directly from the device's hard drive.
- Metadata-First Discovery Engine: Scans local directories for
.mp4files and instantly matches them with localizedposter.jpgorthumb.jpgfiles for lightning-fast UI rendering. - Persistent Disk Caching: Remembers your folder structures across reboots using a custom SharedPreferences vault, resulting in zero-lag navigation.
- Toddler-Proof UI: * Massive touch targets and an adaptive grid layout.
- True Immersive Fullscreen (hides system nav bars).
- A 3-second long-press "Hide/Reveal" mechanic to keep specific folders out of sight.
- Smart Binge Mode: Automatically queues up the next 5 episodes in a folder so kids don't have to navigate menus between shorts, pausing after 5 to save battery.
- Resume Playback Memory: Seamlessly remembers the exact millisecond a video was exited and resumes instantly upon returning.
- Parent HUD: A subtle, unobtrusive clock and battery indicator overlaid on the main menu.
- Kotlin & Jetpack Compose (100% declarative UI)
- Media3 / ExoPlayer (High-performance video rendering)
- Coil (Asynchronous image loading and video-frame extraction)
- Coroutines & ViewModels (Asynchronous background file scanning)
- Gemini AI