cmus

From Encoresoup - The Ultimate Guide to Free/Open Source Software

cmus (C* Music Player) is a small and fast console audio player for Unix-like operating systems. cmus is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and operates exclusively through a text-only interface, built with ncurses.

The text-only design vastly reduces the resources needed to run the program, making it a strong choice for very light computers as well as systems where a graphical environment (such as the X Window System) is not available. By eliminating the use of mouse, the program performs a wide array of tasks faster than its mouse-driven counterparts, albeit after some practice with the non-mouse paradigm.

cmus in the Tree view

cmus in the Filter view

cmus in the Playlist view

Contents 1 Basic Use 2 Features 3 See also 4 External links

[edit] Basic Use

Owing to the console-orientation and portability goals of the project, cmus is controlled exclusively via the keyboard (excepting the operation through cmus-remote). Commands are loosely modeled after those of the vi text editor. General operation mimics being in command-mode of vi, where complex commands are issued by prepending them with a colon, (e.g. ":add /home/user/music-dir"), simpler, more common commands are bound to individual keys, such as "j/k" moving down/up, or "x" starting playback, and searches beginning with "/" as in "/the beatles" searching (case insensitive) for any tracks containing both "the" and "beatles," order irrelevant. Note that default case insensitivity and searching for each of the space-separated terms is a deviation from the Regular Expressions engine that vi uses.

Any command may be bound to a single key, expediting complex commands' repeated use. The default configuration is fully customizable, which is a boon to non-English keyboard layouts.

A small tool called 'cmus-remote' allows manipulation of any aspect of cmus available in the interactive program from externally.

[edit] Features

• Input Plugins
  • FLAC
  • Ogg/Vorbis
  • MP3 (libmad)
  • Wav
  • WMA (ffmpeg)
  • .mod, .s3m, ... (libmodplug)
  • .mpc, mpp, .mp+ (libmpcdec)
  • MPEG-4/AAC (libmp4v2, libfaad2)
• Output Plugins
  • ALSA
  • libao
  • ARTS
  • OSS
  • Sun Audio
• Playing
  • Artist/album/track tree view
  • List view
  • Editable playlists
  • Play queue
  • MP3, Ogg and AAC streaming (Shoutcast/Icecast)
  • Powerful playlist filters
• Interface
  • Simple directory browser
  • Fully customizable colors
  • Tab-completion on commands
• Misc
  • UTF-8 support
  • Execute external commands for marked files
  • Tested on Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD

[edit] See also

• Herrie
• Music On Console
• Free audio software
• Linux audio software

[edit] External links

• Official website
• cmus source mirror
• cmus-devel mailinglist archive
• cmus on Freshmeat