cmus

A console‑based music player that runs in a terminal, offering playback of a wide range of audio formats through optional plugins. It supports common codecs and devices such as ALSA, PulseAudio, JACK, and various file types including MP3, FLAC, Ogg, and more. Users interact via keyboard shortcuts and a curses interface, allowing playlist management, library browsing, and on‑the‑fly searching without leaving the command line.

The software is built from source using a standard configure‑make workflow; configuration detects available libraries and can be customized with flags like --prefix. Dependencies include ncurses, iconv, and optional codec or I/O libraries, with package lists provided for major Linux distributions, BSD, Alpine, Termux, and Homebrew. Installation follows typical make‑install steps, and a manual page and tutorial are available.

It targets users who prefer lightweight, keyboard‑driven audio control, especially on headless or low‑resource systems. Development follows the Linux kernel coding style, and contributions are accepted via GitHub pull requests.