Computer nerd memory leaks Zola 2026-05-16T20:28:09-03:00 https://blog.jutty.dev/tags/software/atom.xml 2026-05-16T20:28:09-03:00 2026-05-16T20:28:09-03:00 Juno Takano https://blog.jutty.dev/notes/2026-linux-music-players/ <p>In composing this list, I was looking for a player with:</p> <ul> <li>Queue controls</li> <li>Library search and filtering</li> <li>Tray icon</li> <li>MPRIs</li> <li>Scrobbling to both ListenBrainz and Libre.fm would be nice to have</li> </ul> <h2 id="best-gui-players">Best GUI players <a class="zola-anchor" href="#best-gui-players" aria-label="Anchor link for: best-gui-players">#</a></h2> <p><a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://github.com/fooyin/fooyin">fooyin</a> and <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/">Quod Libet</a>.</p> <p>fooyin is (clearly) heavily inspired by <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://www.foobar2000.org/">foobar2000</a>, but FOSS and available for Linux. I’ve used foobar2000 a lot in my Windows days, so it feels like home. It did crash a few times when clicking things, but it mostly sits in the back anyways.</p> <p>Quod Libet is also very feature-packed. The tray icon did not show up on my system though.</p> <h2 id="best-tui-clients">Best TUI clients <a class="zola-anchor" href="#best-tui-clients" aria-label="Anchor link for: best-tui-clients">#</a></h2> <p><a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://cmus.github.io/">cmus</a> is perhaps the player I’ve used the most. Shoutout to <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://github.com/clangen/musikcube">musikcube</a>, which looks better, is simpler to navigate, has nice search and filter capabilities that cmus lacks, but that has a single dealbreaker for me: the lack of a hotkey to append the selected track into the queue.</p> <h2 id="mpd-clients">MPD clients <a class="zola-anchor" href="#mpd-clients" aria-label="Anchor link for: mpd-clients">#</a></h2> <p><a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://www.musicpd.org/">MPD</a> (Music Player Daemon) is the queen of music players and has a plethora of available clients: GUI, CLI, TUI, even specialty things like <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://git.sr.ht/~nytpu/bgm-mpd">bgm-mpd</a>, a player that places random breaks between songs to emulate the experience of game soundtracks. Because MPD frees the client developers from having to implement a backend, they can focus on creating excellent frontends, and this yielded a diversity of options.</p> <h3 id="gui">GUI <a class="zola-anchor" href="#gui" aria-label="Anchor link for: gui">#</a></h3> <p>This one was harder than I expected. On the outset, I found players that <em>look</em> very complete, such as <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://github.com/htkhiem/euphonica">Euphonica</a>. It could be my machine and its quirks, but I couldn’t get it to find MPD. So I guess I did <em>not</em> find a maximalist GUI MPD client? At least nothing to the level of the other picks in this list.</p> <h3 id="tui">TUI <a class="zola-anchor" href="#tui" aria-label="Anchor link for: tui">#</a></h3> <p>I usually will say that I like TUI things because they favor a state of flow between activities. They compose well and you can do a lot without changing neither the application, nor the UI paradigm nor the input device. That’s a lot of tunneling for my attention.</p> <p>But, to be fair, a music player is something you use to make your selection, and then it gets out of your way and can go on for hours and hours. So it’s not exactly a huge attention hog, particularly because nearly all of them come with keyboard shortcuts and MPRIS integration.</p> <p>Nonetheless, there are plenty of TUI MPD clients, and the most frutiful lineage seems to have descended from MPD’s own <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://www.musicpd.org/clients/ncmpc/">ncmpc</a>, which inspired the venerable <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://rybczak.net/ncmpcpp/">ncmpcpp</a>, which leads us to… <del>ncmpcpprs</del> <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://rmpc.mierak.dev/overview/">rmpc</a>, which is a full-blown terminal junkie TUI for MPD.</p> <h3 id="honorable-mention">Honorable mention <a class="zola-anchor" href="#honorable-mention" aria-label="Anchor link for: honorable-mention">#</a></h3> <p>An honorable mention is in order for <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://yktoo.com/en/software/ymuse/">Ymuse</a>. As you can see from my top choices, I prefer my music players on the bulkier side with a lot of knobs and pulls. That’s because if I want something simple, I’ll probably reach for plain <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://mpv.io/">mpv</a> or <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://www.musicpd.org/doc/mpc/html/">mpc</a>. But If you are looking for something simple, but polished, Ymuse is my recommendation to you. It has a queue, some filtering and is very light on resources.</p> <h2 id="see-also">See also <a class="zola-anchor" href="#see-also" aria-label="Anchor link for: see-also">#</a></h2> <ul> <li>MPD’s <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://www.musicpd.org/clients/">own list of clients</a>.</li> <li><a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://codeberg.org/GeopJr/Turntable">Turntable</a>, GUI + CLI for scrobbling from MPD to Last.fm, ListenBrainz, Libre.fm and Maloja</li> <li><a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://github.com/natsukagami/mpd-mpris">mpd-mpris</a> and <a class="out-link" rel="external" href="https://github.com/eonpatapon/mpDris2">mpDris2</a>, lets your MPD talk to everything</li> </ul>