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cmus, a really quick guide

cmus in a terminal window. Artists listed on left, tracks on right.
A screenshot of cmus.

Introduction

Reading a post about the demise of Songbird's Linux client, one comment stood out. Its author complained that Songbird was too bloated and slow and, as such, was better off dead. This commenter recommended a terminal-based player called cmus. I decided to take a look. I'm glad I did.

cmus is efficient, functional, and friendly. To ease your switch to cmus, I've written this page. It has a few reasons why I think cmus excels, as well as instructions on getting cmus up and running quickly.

Selling points for cmus

There are many reasons to use cmus:

Getting cmus up and running in 90 seconds

Start cmus by typing cmus at the command line. Once it's running, you'll need to add your music to its library.

We use the keyboard to bend cmus to our will. cmus uses vi-like keybindings. Simple commands require a single key press, while complex directives like adding music from a directory demands a bit more typing. To begin such a complex command, type :. Notice that a colon and a blinking text-input prompt appear at the bottom of the screen. The program is waiting for a command. To add your music, type :add followed by the path to your music, e.g., :add /home/username/music/albums, and press enter.

The time it takes cmus to import your music depends on how many files you have pointed it to, since cmus reads -- but never alters -- the metadata for each track. If you make changes to songs' metadata, do :update inside cmus. If I've added new files, I typically re-do :add /home/username/music/albums followed by :update. This is much better than waiting for Rhythmbox or GNOME Music to eventually, hopefully, notice the new music you've added to your watched folders. (And that kind of inconvenience is just the tip of the iceberg. The last time I made the mistake of opening Rhythmbox, it reverted the metadata of hundreds of songs back to what was stored in its months-old cache, even though the changes existed because I had spent many hours carefully tweaking this metadata.)

Once your songs are imported you probably would like to play them. Doing so is as simple as using the arrow keys, vi-keys, the page up and page down keys to navigate through the list of artists. When you find an artist, press space to open up a list of albums, or press tab to switch to the list of tracks for the selected artist. Use enter to play a track. To change albums or artists, just press tab to switch back to the artist / album pane and begin the process again.

That's really all there is to using cmus in a basic way. Still, you can and should do much more. So let's start by looking at some more keys you can use to command cmus.

Useful keys

I use these keys most times I run cmus. They're configurable, but these are the defaults.

Conclusion: further guidance

There's more cmus to discover. cmus has a file browser, a playlist view, and some other neat stuff.

Because cmus has no menus or icons, at first it seems harder than using a GUI program. Fortunately, cmus is well-documented. New users should consult the official cmus tutorial. This tutorial will walk them through the basics of setting up and using cmus. Read the tutorial by typing man cmus-tutorial at the command line or by finding the tutorial online. cmus's man page (man cmus) has the full details. The cmus man page is also available online. With these two documents, new users will be on their way to learning how to use a music player that's ultimately easier and more feature-rich than most alternatives.

P.S. Want something similar to cmus, but even simpler? Try siren: a text-based audio player.