cmus/cmus

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

6222 stars · 522 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

cmus is a small, fast and powerful console music player for Unix-like operating systems, built in C with an ncurses interface. It supports a wide range of audio formats via input plugins, multiple output backends, gapless playback, and vi-style keybindings and command mode.

Use cases

• play music from the terminal
• lightweight music player for a headless or SSH server
• manage and filter large music libraries with playlists
• listen to internet radio streams like SHOUTcast or Icecast
• control music playback remotely via a unix socket
• scrobble plays to Last.fm or Libre.fm

When to choose

• you want a fast, keyboard-driven music player that runs entirely in a terminal
• you need to play music on a remote server over SSH
• you have a large library and want instant startup and live filtering
• you prefer vi-style keybindings and customizable commands

When to avoid

• you want a graphical music player with album art and a mouse-driven UI
• you need a music library manager with tagging and metadata editing as a primary feature
• you are on a platform without Unix-like terminal support outside Cygwin/Windows builds

Facets

application · maturity active

audio-processing cli plugin-system media cross-platform windows bsd cli cross-platform music-player ncurses terminal-ui gapless-playback vi-keybindings audio-scrobbling c-programming audio command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="cmus/cmus")