audium 1.2.0

A terminal music app
audium-1.2.0 is not a library. 
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A terminal music player.

crates.io AUR License

Website · Installation · Keybindings · Building

demo

Features

  • Keyboard-driven — every action is one key. No mouse required.
  • Track metadata — artist, album, year and genre are read automatically from file tags on import and shown throughout the UI. Edit any field in-app with e.
  • Lyrics — store plain text or LRC synced lyrics per track. Toggle an overlay with y — synced lyrics auto-scroll to the current line; plain lyrics scroll with j/k. Edit directly in the built-in text editor.
  • It's your library — your tracks are stored as plain JSON at ~/.audium/library.json. Edit it by hand, back it up, move it anywhere. audium doesn't rename your files and never phones home.
  • Themes — 15 built-in themes (dark, light, nord, gruvbox, catppuccin, rosé pine, dracula, tokyo night, and more). Switch live from the settings menu with instant preview. Transparency support for composited terminals.
  • Playlists — create, rename, delete. All Tracks is always there.
  • Loop modes — off, loop queue, or loop track. Toggle with l.
  • Playback speed — adjustable from 0.05× to 3.0× in 0.05× steps with [ / ].
  • Tracklist filter — press / to search across title, artist, album, year and genre in real time.
  • Built-in file picker — import audio files without leaving the app.
  • Threaded audio — playback runs on its own thread; the UI never stutters your music.
  • System audio output — audium plays through your default system output. Change the output device in your OS and audium follows — no in-app device switching, no surprises.
  • Format agnostic — MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A, Opus, AIFF and more via Symphonia. No FFmpeg required.
  • Tiny binary — ~3 MB stripped release build. No runtime dependencies on macOS.

Installation

Cargo

cargo install audium

Requires Rust 1.85+ (MSRV). Installs the audium binary to ~/.cargo/bin/.

On Linux, ALSA is required to run and its development headers are required to build — see Building from source for distro-specific instructions.

AUR (Arch Linux)

paru -S audium
# or: yay -S audium

Usage

# Launch with your library
audium

# Open a specific file immediately (imports it to your library)
audium path/to/song.flac

audium stores your library at ~/.audium/library.json and your music at ~/.audium/music/.

Keybindings

Global

Key Action
q Quit (confirm)
Tab Cycle panel focus
? Toggle help overlay

Playback

Key Action
Space Play / Pause
n Next track
N Previous track
← / → Seek backward / forward
+ / = Volume up
- Volume down
l Cycle loop mode
[ / ] Speed down / up (0.05× steps)

Navigation

Key Action
j / ↓ Move cursor down
k / ↑ Move cursor up
Enter Play selected track

Library & Queue

Key Action
f Open file picker
/ Filter tracklist
a Add selected track to queue
p Add selected track to a playlist
c Create new playlist
z Shuffle playlist into queue
d Remove selected item
r Rename selected track or playlist
e Edit track metadata & lyrics
y Toggle lyrics overlay
m Open menu

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/takashialpha/audium
cd audium
cargo build --release
# binary is at ./target/release/audium

Linux requires ALSA and its development headers:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install alsa-base alsa-utils libasound2-dev

# Arch
sudo pacman -S alsa-utils alsa-lib

# Fedora
sudo dnf install alsa-utils alsa-lib-devel

macOS has no extra dependencies.

Windows: audium compiles on Windows (no additional dependencies) but is not an officially supported platform and has not been tested.

Library layout

~/.audium/
├── library.json   # track registry + playlists
├── settings.json  # user preferences (volume, theme, seek step)
└── music/         # copies of all imported audio files

library.json is human-readable and editable by hand. audium re-validates it on next launch, so feel free to reorganise playlists, fix track names, or move the file to another machine.

Why audium?

Alternatives like termusic and cmus are solid, but they come with tradeoffs: heavy dependency trees, FFmpeg requirements, daemon processes, or configuration formats that take longer to learn than the app itself. audium is different in a few concrete ways:

  • No FFmpeg, no daemon — one binary, zero background processes.
  • Smaller and faster to build — fewer dependencies means shorter compile times and a ~3 MB release binary.
  • Cleaner UI — built on ratatui with a layout designed for actual daily use, not just feature completeness.
  • More modern codebase — written in current Rust with edition 2024, Symphonia for decoding, and rodio for playback.
  • Plain JSON library — your data is always readable, portable, and yours.

TODO

  • YouTube audio import (no external binary deps)

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue before starting work on a large change.