Apache-2.0 — available on crates.io & AUR
audium is a keyboard-driven music player for people who live in the terminal. No Electron. No cloud sync. No background daemons. No FFmpeg. Your files, your library, your rules.
Installation
Cargo (all platforms)
cargo install audium
# requires Rust 1.85+
AUR (Arch Linux)
paru -S audium
# or yay, or manually with makepkg
Linux requires ALSA to run and its development headers to build. See the README for distro-specific instructions. macOS and Windows have no extra dependencies.
Features
Plays MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, M4A, Opus, AIFF and more via Symphonia — no FFmpeg required.
Every action is a single keypress. Tab between panels, j/k to navigate, space to play.
Browse your filesystem and import audio without ever leaving the app.
15 built-in themes — dark, light, nord, gruvbox, catppuccin, rosé pine, dracula, tokyo night, and more. Switch live with instant preview. Transparency support for composited terminals.
Create, rename, and delete playlists. Loop a single track or the whole queue — toggle with l.
Playback runs on a dedicated thread. UI interactions will never stutter your music.
Stored at ~/.audium/library.json — plain JSON, human-readable, editable by hand. audium doesn't rename your files, doesn't embed metadata, and never phones home.
Why audium
Alternatives like termusic ship with heavy dependency trees, FFmpeg requirements, daemon processes, or config formats that take longer to learn than the app itself. audium takes a different approach.
One binary. Zero background processes. Symphonia handles every format natively in-process.
Fewer dependencies means shorter compile times and a ~3 MB release binary with no runtime surprises.
Built on ratatui with a layout designed for daily use — not just feature completeness. Panels, queue, progress bar, volume: everything visible at once.
Written in Rust edition 2024. No unsafe, no global state, no legacy baggage.
Your library is a JSON file you can read, edit, back up, or move between machines freely. audium is a tool, not a platform.
audium plays through your default system output. Switch devices at the OS level and it follows — no in-app device picker that fights your setup.
Keybindings
Playback
| Space | Play / Pause |
| n | Next track |
| N | Previous track |
| ← / → | Seek backward / forward |
| + / = | Volume up |
| - | Volume down |
| l | Cycle loop mode |
Navigation
| Tab | Cycle panel focus |
| j / ↓ | Move down |
| k / ↑ | Move up |
| Enter | Play selected |
| ? | Help overlay |
Library & Queue
| f | Open file picker |
| a | Add to queue |
| p | Add to playlist |
| c | New playlist |
| z | Shuffle playlist into queue |
| d | Remove |
| r | Rename |
| m | Menu |
| q | Quit |