Cmus
cmus (C* MUsic Player) is a small, fast and powerful console audio player which supports most major audio formats. Various features include gapless playback, ReplayGain support, MP3 and Ogg streaming, live filtering, instant startup, customizable key-bindings, and vi-style default key-bindings.
Installation
Install the cmus package, or cmus-gitAUR for the development version.
Using cmus with alsa
When using cmus with Advanced Linux Sound Architecture the default configuration does not allow playing music. What you might encounter when trying to start cmus is a blank terminal line with no output whatsoever. To fix it, create a new config file and set the following variables
~/.config/cmus/rc
set output_plugin=alsa set dsp.alsa.device=default set mixer.alsa.device=default set mixer.alsa.channel=Master
Usage
Cmus comes with a great reference manual.
$ man cmus $ man cmus-tutorial $ man cmus-remote
Starting Cmus
To start cmus, type:
$ cmus
When you first launch cmus it will open to the album/artist view.
Adding Music
Press 5
to switch to the file-browser view so we can add some music.
Now, use the arrow keys (up
, down
), Enter
and Backspace
to navigate to where you have audio files stored. Alternatively, you may use the vim bindings (k
, j
) to navigate up and down through your music.
To add music to your cmus library, use the arrow keys to highlight a file or folder, and press a
. When you press a
cmus will move you to the next line down (so that it is easy to add a bunch of files/folders in a row) and start adding the file/folder you pressed a
in to your library. This may take a bit if you added a folder with a lot of music in it. As files are added, you will see the second time in the bottom right go up. This is the total duration of all the music in the cmus library.
Playing Tracks
Press 1
to go to the simple library view. Use the up
and down
arrow keys (or k
, j
) to select an artist and album you would like to hear. Pressing space
on the artist name will collapse or expand the albums it contains. Switch between list of tracks and artist/album view by pressing Tab
and press Enter
to play the selected track. Here is some keys to control the playback:
- Press
c
to pause/unpause - Press
right
/left
(orh
,l
) arrow keys to seek by 10 seconds - Press
<
/>
seek by one minute
Keybindings
See the configuration section on how to change keybindings.
Views
cmus has 7 views, which are accessible via the number keys.
Library view (1)
Display all tracks in so-called library. Tracks are sorted artist/album tree. Artist sorting is done alphabetically. Albums are sorted by year.
Sorted library view (2)
Displays same content as view, but as a simple list which is automatically sorted by user criteria.
Playlist view (3)
Displays editable playlist with optional sorting.
Play Queue view (4)
Displays queue of tracks which are played next. These tracks are played before anything else (i.e. the playlist or library).
Browser view (5)
Directory browser. In this view, music can be added to either the library, playlist or queue from the filesystem.
Filters view (6)
Lists user defined filters.
Settings view (7)
Change settings. See configuration for further information.
Configuration
To configure cmus start it and switch to the configuration tab by pressing 7
. Now you can see a list of default keybindings. Select a field in the list with the arrow keys and pressEnter
to edit the values. You can also remove bindings with D
or del
. To edit unbound commands and option variables scroll down in the list to the relevant section. Variables can also be toggled instead of edited with space
. Cmus allows changing the color of nearly every interface element. You can prefix colors with "light" to make them appear brighter and set attributes for some text elements.
Remote Control
Cmus can be controlled externally through a unix-socket with cmus-remote
. This makes it easy to control playback through an external application or key-binding.
One such usage of this feature is to control playback in Cmus with the XF86 keyboard events. The following script when run will start Cmus in an xterm terminal if it is not running, otherwise it will will toggle play/pause:
#!/bin/sh # This command will break if you rename it to # something containing "cmus". if ! pgrep cmus ; then xterm -e cmus else cmus-remote -u fi
To use the previous script in Openbox, copy the code above into a file ~/bin/cplay
. Make the file executable using chmod +x ~/bin/cplay
. Next edit ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml
and change the following key-bindings to look like this:
~/.config/openbox/rc.xml
<keyboard> <keybind key="XF86AudioPlay"> <action name="Execute"> <command>cmus-remote -u</command> </action> </keybind> <keybind key="XF86AudioNext"> <action name="Execute"> <command>cmus-remote -n</command> </action> </keybind> <keybind key="XF86AudioPrev"> <action name="Execute"> <command>cmus-remote -r</command> </action> </keybind> </keyboard>
Now when you use the XF86AudioPlay
key on your keyboard, cmus will open up. If it is opened already it will then start playing. Using the XF86AudioNext and XF86AudioPrev keys will change tracks.