Intro and credits skipping
Kino detects shared TV intros and end credits automatically, then shows a Skip button at the right moments during playback.
Detection runs entirely on your own machine — no per-show database lookups, no external services, no licensing. Kino fingerprints the audio of each new episode, compares fingerprints across the season, and saves the start and end timestamps of the segments that match.
How it works in practice
Section titled “How it works in practice”When a new episode imports, Kino fingerprints the first ten minutes and the last seven and a half minutes of the audio. If at least one other episode in the same season has been fingerprinted, it compares them; the longest shared region near the start of the file is the intro, and the longest shared region near the end is the credits. Detected boundaries are then snapped to natural breaks — silences, chapter markers, and keyframes — so the Skip button doesn’t dump you into the middle of a line of dialogue.
You don’t have to do anything for this to happen. Analysis runs automatically in the background after import, prioritised below playback so it can’t slow streams down.
Skip buttons during playback
Section titled “Skip buttons during playback”When playback enters an intro or credits segment, a small Skip Intro → or Skip Credits → button appears in the bottom-right of the player. Click it (or press S) to jump past the segment.
There’s a global Auto-skip mode under Settings → Playback → Intro & Credits with three options:
| Mode | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Off | Always show the button; never skip without input |
| On | Auto-skip every intro silently |
| Smart (default) | Show the button on the first episode of a season you watch; auto-skip every subsequent episode |
When auto-skip fires, a small Intro skipped · Undo toast appears for three seconds. Clicking Undo seeks back and disables auto-skip for the rest of that episode.
Auto-skip credits is off by default; credits usually fold naturally into the next episode anyway.
Per-show override
Section titled “Per-show override”The Skip Intro button can be turned off for individual shows from the show’s detail page. Useful if you actually like a particular opening — the toggle stops the button appearing on every episode of that show without affecting any others.
Credits handling is unaffected by the per-show intro toggle.
When it doesn’t fire
Section titled “When it doesn’t fire”Some shows just won’t get clean detections. Kino silently shows no button rather than guessing.
| Situation | Why |
|---|---|
| New season, only one episode imported | Nothing to compare against — detection runs once a second episode lands |
| Single-episode limited series | Same reason; no pair to fingerprint |
| Anime with rotating opening sequences | Detection finds the dominant intro; minority openings may be missed |
| Cold-open episodes (intro starts mid-scene) | Usually still works — the button just appears wherever the intro actually starts |
| End credits over live footage (no fade to black) | Credits-end accuracy drops; the button still appears at the start, just may not snap precisely to the credits’ end |
The catch-up scheduler re-checks for missing detections daily, so seasons that grow or detection runs that previously failed will fill in over time.
What it doesn’t do
Section titled “What it doesn’t do”- No manual timing editor. If detection is wrong for a show, disable it for that show — there’s no per-episode timestamp UI.
- No movie credits detection — out of scope.
- No “skip recap” for episodes that start with previous-episode recaps — they don’t share audio with other episodes’ recaps, so fingerprinting doesn’t help.
Settings reference
Section titled “Settings reference”All under Settings → Playback → Intro & Credits:
| Setting | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Detect intros | On | Master toggle for intro detection |
| Detect credits | On | Master toggle for credits detection |
| Auto-skip intros | Smart | Off / On / Smart |
| Auto-skip credits | Off | Skip straight to end-of-episode when credits start |
| Minimum intro length | 15 s | Don’t show Skip for intros shorter than this |
Common issues
Section titled “Common issues”- Skip button never appears — check that detection is enabled, that the season has at least two episodes imported, and that the show’s per-show Show intro toggle is on.
- Skip jumps slightly past the intro — boundary refinement snaps to keyframes; on some encodes the nearest keyframe sits a second or two into the next scene. Detection will improve as more episodes from that season fingerprint.
- Auto-skip keeps firing on credits I don’t want skipped — set Auto-skip credits to off in settings; smart mode applies to intros only.