mplay is a command-line music player inspired by cplay, but with a richer terminal interface and a strong emphasis on customization.
The project is built around mpv via python-mpv, supports playlist-based playback from the terminal, and is designed for users who want to browse music collections, audition files quickly, and work with a wide range of audio formats including tracker modules and MIDI.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Terminal-based music player with file list and playlist views for navigating directories and queueing tracks.
- Includes 8 built-in themes, color overrides, and support for fully custom themes defined in the configuration file.
- Offers multiple screensavers and visual effects, including modes such as eink, matrix, khaos, plankton, tetragon, rave, and pixels.
- Can display metadata and use configurable custom views, with support for ffprobe and music-tag for richer audio information.
- Supports editing tags such as title, artist, album, genre, and year, and can also display album art.
- Can open the selected audio file directly in external tools such as Audacity, MilkyTracker, and LMMS when available.
- Provides net radio support and can record compatible streams with streamripper.
- Includes master and sync modes for running multiple copies of the player in coordinated terminals.
Website: github.com/unpythonic-coder/mplay
Support:
Developer: unpythonic-coder
License: MIT License

mplay is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Music Players | |
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| tap | The lightest music player with gapless playback |
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| cmus | Great set of features including the essential gapless playback |
| termusic | Music Player TUI written in Rust |
| kew | Music player written in C |
| spectrum | Simple and intuitive music player for tech enthusiasts |
| ncmpc | Frugal Music Player Daemon client |
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| MOC | Designed to be powerful and easy to use |
| RMuP | Simple music player lacking gapless playback |
| Siren | Extremely frugal with system resources |
| grump | CLI audio player written in Go |
| Gomu | Another Go music player |
| mpvc | mpc-like control interface for mpv |
| RustPlayer | Audio and radio player written in Rust |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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