6 ms·

I find the fetish for terminal-based music players a bit odd. I associate terminals with doing work, so the idea of having one whose sole purpose is playing mus

I find the fetish for terminal-based music players a bit odd. I associate terminals with doing work, so the idea of having one whose sole purpose is playing music (presumably in the background while you do other stuff) to feel like a waste of screen real-estate and something I'm likely to accidentally pull up while trying to cycle between my other terminal windows where I'm doing stuff. I much prefer something that I can kick off to play an album or a playlist and have it all but vanish from sight, either into the taskbar or, preferably, into the system tray.

pram 8y ago
Ah but how else are you going to have enough stuff open in tmux to impress people with your screenshot on r/unixporn
- Tehchops 8y ago
  Found the elephant in the room, you did.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Tsiklon 8y ago
  Shoot, you're onto us. Any time I was posting there included screenshots of 'ranger', various permutations of 'htop', and a 'Matrix' style scrolling character feed.
number-sequence 8y ago
I like terminal based music players when I’m doing work exactly because the terminal already feels like work, so it doesn’t feel as much like Tidal or Bandcamp or SoundCloud are open in the background and something I could get distracted by. For keeping it out of sight, tmux or any terminal multiplexer is great at that.
- Tehchops 8y ago
  Is there one that works with Soundcloud and Spotify?
  - FreeFull 8y ago
    There are multiple terminal-based Spotify players, with the caveat that you need a paid Spotify account to use them (because they're incapable of playing ads)
deadbunny 8y ago
If you're using mpd the terminal interface can be opened/closed at will so you can just openit, queue up some music then quit. Exactly the workflow you're on about.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Exactly. It's especially nice since you can use the same UI to control different mpd servers - I have one running on my laptop and another on a machine plugged to my home stereo. And I can also control both from my phone using MPDroid.
meditate 8y ago
The tiling window manager equivalent would be to put it off in a high-numbered workspace, or alternatively, in a detached screen/tmux session.
noahadavis 8y ago
I put my terminal based music player (cmus) in a Quake-style drop-down terminal (Yakuake). It's easy to access, doesn't add any clutter, works with ReplayGain, and it works with media keys.
geggam 8y ago
You just need a bigger monitor. I hooked a 4k 42 inch LCD to my laptop and for the first time ever I had visible desktop space
- rikkus 8y ago
  This works really well if you have excellent eyesight or if the screen is curved but so have to physically move sideways to see different windows with this size screen. It’s a good problem to have, of course!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
I find ncmpcpp (a terminal-based controller for the excellent mpd) great for being able to quickly and easily navigate through my music library and add/remove/edit tracks from playlists. Then I minimise it, and launch Cantata which I immediately minimize, and I thereafter just interact via the Cantata interface in the systemtray (or via kdeconnect on my phone), until I need to do something more involved than play/pause or switch tracks, and then I un-minimize ncmpcpp, quickly find new tracks or whatever, minimize it and so on and so forth.
sgeisenh 8y ago
mpd is the single best music player for what you're describing. You can choose how you want to interact with it. And if you can't find an implementation you like, the API is simple enough you can write something yourself.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Even better, you don't have to 'choose' - in the sense that you can simultaneously connect to mpd via different interfaces (in this same thread I mention how I use ncmpcpp for some things, and cantata for other things).
boudin 8y ago
With a tiling display manager like i3, dwm or awesome, system tray isn't that useful. You tends to have one app (or a group of app that you always use together) per virtual desktop that you access in one keyboard shortcut. You never circle through apps as it's not necessary. Most of the apps are in fullscreen or tiled depending on your need. No window is hiding another one. When you're use to it, having to move your hand to the mouse or trackpad and click on stuff feels painful. Then keyboard driven apps (which terminal apps are usually really good at) makes total sense because you still don't want to have to move your hands and click in stuff. Basically usability switches from graphical apps made for mouse/trackpad to keyboard driven. It's a quite different way to manages windows that have usually a learning curve as it is keyboard driven, but it's really efficient.
- the_duke 8y ago
  Excellent analysis. After using i3 for about 3-4 years, I have to admit that I'm always a bit lost on floating WMs now and feel like an idiot for a few minutes until I'm somewhat comfortable again. To me tiling WMs are just vastly superior. Anecdotally, most people I know that have seriously tried to use a tiling WM usually end up sticking with them.
  - wpietri 8y ago
    Is this true for you on a laptop as well? I could imagine this on something where I had a lot of screen real estate. But when I'm coding, in one virtual desktop I'll typically have the IDE, a few terminal windows, and a couple of browsers going. With a 14" screen, I can't imagine how I'd make a tiling window manager work.
    - syrrim 8y ago
      Tiling wms support tabs and workspaces, not just tiling. Similar to how floaings wms support fullscreen and workspaces, not just floating
    - the_duke 8y ago
      Sure. The great thing about i3 (and also other tiling WMs) is that they are very flexible and customizable to your preferred workflow. Together with them being centered around the keyboard and easily scriptable, you can use them in a way that works best for your preferences and your environment. For coding on my laptop, the active main workspace is split into three parts, with the editor taking the left half of the screen, and the right half split into browser and terminal (with the terminal being a TAB container with multiple terminals that I can quickly switch between). When I need to focus on either the editor or the browser, I make them full screen (I have shortcuts to jump between full screen browser and full screen editor directly with one keystroke). On other workspaces I have setups with music player, email, Jira/Bug tracker/etc that are always launched in the same configuration on boot and are also just a shortcut away. So it works great on a laptop too, even if you spend a lot of time with one app maximized.
naibafo 8y ago
That is how my setup works in the terminal. MPD (music player daemon) runs from the start in the background and I can start ncmpcpp in the terminal to choose a album/playlist and then I can close it again or leave it on a different workspace. Play Pause etc. just work without the terminal. The biggest advantage in comparison most graphical players for me is that there is no startup time. If I want to play a song I can do so immediately and even without leaving the terminal I am currently working in.
bitwize 8y ago
The neat thing about terminal-based music players is that you can put them in tmux and not have them take up any screen real estate when you're not using them. :)
djmobley 8y ago
I use mpd/ncmpcpp and couldn’t be happier. It’s lightweight, responsive, and makes me feel like I have much more control over my music. I have it always open in the corner of my sceeen with a tiling window manager.
ajuc 8y ago
I usually run 2 konsole windows with several tabs in them. One is for git, building, packaging, etc, and the other is for random tasks on the side, and in a second tab there is mplayer playing some internet radio. It's less clutter IMHO. But i don't use tiling wm.
isostatic 8y ago
I run mplayer up in it's own rxvt
AsyncAwait 8y ago
I use cmus on the command line because it enables me to quickly slide over and really quickly adjust my playlist using only the keyboard. With a GUI player that would require much more steps.
thomastjeffery 8y ago
> I associate terminals with doing work Most of us Linux users find you a bit odd. That's just how it goes. The shell is a very useful interface. It allows abstractions that just aren't tractable with GUIs. Many of us have found that those abstractions are quite useful for fun things, too.
amyjess 8y ago
For me, no screen real estate is wasted. I keep about 40 tabs open in Konsole at all times, and if I'm not actively on a tab, I don't see it. I'm so used to playing all of my media with mpv that using any kind of GUI app would feel like sludging through molasses.
kgwxd 8y ago
Command line interfaces can be put in the background just as easily as any GUI.

pram 8y ago

Ah but how else are you going to have enough stuff open in tmux to impress people with your screenshot on r/unixporn

Tehchops 8y ago
Found the elephant in the room, you did.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Tsiklon 8y ago
Shoot, you're onto us. Any time I was posting there included screenshots of 'ranger', various permutations of 'htop', and a 'Matrix' style scrolling character feed.

number-sequence 8y ago

I like terminal based music players when I’m doing work exactly because the terminal already feels like work, so it doesn’t feel as much like Tidal or Bandcamp or SoundCloud are open in the background and something I could get distracted by. For keeping it out of sight, tmux or any terminal multiplexer is great at that.

Tehchops 8y ago
Is there one that works with Soundcloud and Spotify?
- FreeFull 8y ago
  There are multiple terminal-based Spotify players, with the caveat that you need a paid Spotify account to use them (because they're incapable of playing ads)

deadbunny 8y ago

If you're using mpd the terminal interface can be opened/closed at will so you can just openit, queue up some music then quit. Exactly the workflow you're on about.

icebraining 8y ago
Exactly. It's especially nice since you can use the same UI to control different mpd servers - I have one running on my laptop and another on a machine plugged to my home stereo. And I can also control both from my phone using MPDroid.

meditate 8y ago

The tiling window manager equivalent would be to put it off in a high-numbered workspace, or alternatively, in a detached screen/tmux session.

noahadavis 8y ago

I put my terminal based music player (cmus) in a Quake-style drop-down terminal (Yakuake). It's easy to access, doesn't add any clutter, works with ReplayGain, and it works with media keys.

geggam 8y ago

You just need a bigger monitor. I hooked a 4k 42 inch LCD to my laptop and for the first time ever I had visible desktop space

rikkus 8y ago
This works really well if you have excellent eyesight or if the screen is curved but so have to physically move sideways to see different windows with this size screen. It’s a good problem to have, of course!

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago

I find ncmpcpp (a terminal-based controller for the excellent mpd) great for being able to quickly and easily navigate through my music library and add/remove/edit tracks from playlists. Then I minimise it, and launch Cantata which I immediately minimize, and I thereafter just interact via the Cantata interface in the systemtray (or via kdeconnect on my phone), until I need to do something more involved than play/pause or switch tracks, and then I un-minimize ncmpcpp, quickly find new tracks or whatever, minimize it and so on and so forth.

sgeisenh 8y ago

mpd is the single best music player for what you're describing. You can choose how you want to interact with it. And if you can't find an implementation you like, the API is simple enough you can write something yourself.

_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Even better, you don't have to 'choose' - in the sense that you can simultaneously connect to mpd via different interfaces (in this same thread I mention how I use ncmpcpp for some things, and cantata for other things).

boudin 8y ago

With a tiling display manager like i3, dwm or awesome, system tray isn't that useful. You tends to have one app (or a group of app that you always use together) per virtual desktop that you access in one keyboard shortcut. You never circle through apps as it's not necessary. Most of the apps are in fullscreen or tiled depending on your need. No window is hiding another one. When you're use to it, having to move your hand to the mouse or trackpad and click on stuff feels painful. Then keyboard driven apps (which terminal apps are usually really good at) makes total sense because you still don't want to have to move your hands and click in stuff. Basically usability switches from graphical apps made for mouse/trackpad to keyboard driven. It's a quite different way to manages windows that have usually a learning curve as it is keyboard driven, but it's really efficient.

the_duke 8y ago
Excellent analysis. After using i3 for about 3-4 years, I have to admit that I'm always a bit lost on floating WMs now and feel like an idiot for a few minutes until I'm somewhat comfortable again. To me tiling WMs are just vastly superior. Anecdotally, most people I know that have seriously tried to use a tiling WM usually end up sticking with them.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Is this true for you on a laptop as well? I could imagine this on something where I had a lot of screen real estate. But when I'm coding, in one virtual desktop I'll typically have the IDE, a few terminal windows, and a couple of browsers going. With a 14" screen, I can't imagine how I'd make a tiling window manager work.
  - syrrim 8y ago
    Tiling wms support tabs and workspaces, not just tiling. Similar to how floaings wms support fullscreen and workspaces, not just floating
  - the_duke 8y ago
    Sure. The great thing about i3 (and also other tiling WMs) is that they are very flexible and customizable to your preferred workflow. Together with them being centered around the keyboard and easily scriptable, you can use them in a way that works best for your preferences and your environment. For coding on my laptop, the active main workspace is split into three parts, with the editor taking the left half of the screen, and the right half split into browser and terminal (with the terminal being a TAB container with multiple terminals that I can quickly switch between). When I need to focus on either the editor or the browser, I make them full screen (I have shortcuts to jump between full screen browser and full screen editor directly with one keystroke). On other workspaces I have setups with music player, email, Jira/Bug tracker/etc that are always launched in the same configuration on boot and are also just a shortcut away. So it works great on a laptop too, even if you spend a lot of time with one app maximized.

naibafo 8y ago

That is how my setup works in the terminal. MPD (music player daemon) runs from the start in the background and I can start ncmpcpp in the terminal to choose a album/playlist and then I can close it again or leave it on a different workspace. Play Pause etc. just work without the terminal. The biggest advantage in comparison most graphical players for me is that there is no startup time. If I want to play a song I can do so immediately and even without leaving the terminal I am currently working in.

bitwize 8y ago

The neat thing about terminal-based music players is that you can put them in tmux and not have them take up any screen real estate when you're not using them. :)

djmobley 8y ago

I use mpd/ncmpcpp and couldn’t be happier. It’s lightweight, responsive, and makes me feel like I have much more control over my music. I have it always open in the corner of my sceeen with a tiling window manager.

ajuc 8y ago

I usually run 2 konsole windows with several tabs in them. One is for git, building, packaging, etc, and the other is for random tasks on the side, and in a second tab there is mplayer playing some internet radio. It's less clutter IMHO. But i don't use tiling wm.

isostatic 8y ago

I run mplayer up in it's own rxvt

AsyncAwait 8y ago

I use cmus on the command line because it enables me to quickly slide over and really quickly adjust my playlist using only the keyboard. With a GUI player that would require much more steps.

thomastjeffery 8y ago

> I associate terminals with doing work Most of us Linux users find you a bit odd. That's just how it goes. The shell is a very useful interface. It allows abstractions that just aren't tractable with GUIs. Many of us have found that those abstractions are quite useful for fun things, too.

amyjess 8y ago

For me, no screen real estate is wasted. I keep about 40 tabs open in Konsole at all times, and if I'm not actively on a tab, I don't see it. I'm so used to playing all of my media with mpv that using any kind of GUI app would feel like sludging through molasses.

kgwxd 8y ago

Command line interfaces can be put in the background just as easily as any GUI.