Review: MusiQt – simple music player

MusiQt is a lightweight audio player built with the Qt application framework.

The software provides a directory-based view view for browsing storage and bookmarking folders containing music. Selecting a directory automatically populates the playlist with its supported audio files.

You can also assemble and save custom playlists by dragging tracks from the directory browser. MusiQt offers compact and full interface layouts and supports conventional audio formats, tracker modules, chiptunes and game-music formats through multiple playback backends.

This is free and open source software.

Installation

I evaluated MusiQt with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS.

MusiQt is not currently packaged in the Ubuntu repositories, so I built it from source using Qt 6. Optional libraries add support for additional audio formats.

Let’s install the dependencies, many of which my test system already has installed.

$ sudo apt install git build-essential cmake pkg-config gettext qt6-base-dev qt6-multimedia-dev libsndfile1-dev libmpg123-dev libvorbis-dev libopusfile-dev libgme-dev libsidplayfp-dev libstilview-dev libopenmpt-dev libmpcdec-dev libwavpack-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libbs2b-dev zlib1g-dev

Download the complete MusiQt source code repository from GitHub into a new directory named musiqt.

$ git clone https://github.com/MusiQt/musiqt.git

Change the current working directory to the downloaded musiqt directory.

$ cd musiqt

Configure the build:

• -S . tells CMake that the source files are in the current directory.
• -B build places the generated build files in a separate directory named build.
• -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release enables compiler optimisations and creates a release build rather than a debugging build.

$ cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

Compile MusiQt:

• --build build builds the project configured in the build directory.
• -j"$(nproc)" runs multiple compiler jobs in parallel.
• nproc returns the number of available CPU threads, allowing the build to use all of them.

$ cmake --build build -j"$(nproc)"

In Operation

Here’s an image of MusiQt in action.

The interface uses a traditional two-pane layout. A playback toolbar runs across the top, with transport controls for previous, stop, pause, and next, and a digital elapsed-time display. The other two icons switch to a nifty compact view and open the settings. Below the toolbar are navigation and playback controls, including track position, volume, and playlist controls.

The main area is divided between a playlist on the left, showing numbered tracks with the current song highlighted, and a file browser on the right, which displays the filesystem as an expandable directory tree. Tabs above the left pane provide access to the playlist and bookmarks.

Along the bottom are shortcut buttons, a now-playing field showing the current track and album, the track duration, and a status bar identifying the application version. Overall, it is a compact, functional interface that prioritises direct access to music files and playback controls over visual polish.
Here’s the compact view. I wish more music players offered this type of view.

MusiQt supports gapless playback. That’s an essential requirement for many music lovers. There is no separate option in the interface; it is handled automatically during normal sequential playback.

Other Features

• Bookmark frequently accessed music directories.
• Automatically populate the playlist from the selected directory.
• Create, edit and save custom playlists.
• Drag files from the directory view into a playlist.
• Play an entire playlist or an individual track.
• Compact and full interface layouts.
• MPRIS integration for controlling playback from compatible desktop tools.
• Last.fm scrobbling.
• Supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, FLAC, WAV, AAC, WMA, Musepack, WavPack and MIDI, depending on the available backends.
• Plays tracker modules, SID files and numerous console and computer game-music formats.
• Can be built with Qt 5 or Qt 6.
• Optional support for interface translations.

Summary

MusiQt is better than I expected. Its interface is functional, the compact view is useful, and it offers essential gapless playback together with support for a wide range of audio formats. If you’re looking for a directory-based interface and don’t need all the bells and whistles offered by fooyin, it might be just the ticket.

The volume control is curious. I initially thought its presentation was a bug, but after installing the program on several Linux distributions, I confirmed that it behaves consistently.

ps_mem reports memory usage is around 90MB. That’s perfectly reasonable for a GUI music player.

Website: github.com/MusiQt/musiqt
Support:
Developer: Leandro Nini
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

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