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https://github.com/ravachol/kew

A command-line music player
https://github.com/ravachol/kew

command-line kew linux music music-player player terminal

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A command-line music player

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README 

        

# kew

[![GitHub license](https://img.shields.io/github/license/ravachol/kew?color=333333&style=for-the-badge)](https://github.com/ravachol/kew/blob/master/LICENSE)



Listen to music in the terminal.



![Example screenshot](images/kew-screenshot.png)  

*Example screenshot running in Konsole: [Jenova 7: Lost Sci-Fi Movie Themes](https://jenova7.bandcamp.com/album/lost-sci-fi-movie-themes).*



  

  \

kew (/kjuː/) is a terminal music player for Linux.



## Features



 * Search a music library with partial titles.

 * Creates a playlist based on a matched directory.

 * Control the player with previous, next and pause.

 * Edit the playlist by adding and removing songs.

 * Supports gapless playback (between files of the same format and type).

 * Supports MP3, FLAC, MPEG-4 (AAC, M4A), OPUS, OGG and WAV audio.

 * Private, no data is collected by kew.



## Installing



Packaging status



### Installing in Debian, Ubuntu



It's available from Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13.



```bash

$ apt install kew

```



### Installing via AUR



On Arch Linux, and Arch-based distributions, kew can be found in the AUR. Install with pamac or an AUR helper like yay:



```bash

$ yay kew-git

```



Or



```bash

$ yay kew

```



### Installing via Brew



For [Homebrew](https://brew.sh/) user, you can install [kew](https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/kew) with:



```bash

$ brew install kew

```



### Installing with quick install script



To quickly install kew, just copy and paste this to your terminal (if you have curl installed):



```bash

sudo bash -c "curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ravachol/kew/main/install.sh | bash"

```



Please note that this script might do a system update before installing kew.



### Standalone AppImage for musl systems



If you are running a musl-based system, for instance Alpine Linux, you can download a standalone appImage of kew:



https://github.com/ravachol/kew/releases/tag/stable-musl



### Building the project manually



kew dependencies are:



* FFmpeg

* FFTW

* Chafa

* FreeImage

* libopus

* opusfile

* libvorbis

* pkg-config

* glib2.0 and AVFormat. These should be installed with the others, if not install them.

* libnotify (optional)



Install FFmpeg, FFTW, Chafa and FreeImage using your distro's package manager. For instance:



```bash

apt install ffmpeg libfftw3-dev libopus-dev libopusfile-dev libvorbis-dev git gcc make libchafa-dev libfreeimage-dev libavformat-dev libglib2.0-dev libnotify-dev

```

Or:



```bash

pacman -Syu ffmpeg fftw git gcc make chafa freeimage glib2 opus opusfile libvorbis libnotify

```



Or (for Fedora for instance):



```bash

dnf install -y pkg-config ffmpeg-free-devel fftw-devel opus-devel opusfile-devel libvorbis-devel git gcc make chafa-devel freeimage-devel libavformat-free-devel libnotify-devel libatomic

```



Notice that for some packages not only the library needs to be installed, but also development packages, for instance libopus-dev or opus-devel.



Then run this (either git clone or unzip a release zip into a folder of your choice):



```bash

git clone https://github.com/ravachol/kew.git

```

```bash

cd kew

```

```bash

make

```

```bash

sudo make install

```



A sixel (or equivalent) capable terminal is recommended, like Konsole or kitty, to display images properly.



For a complete list of capable terminals, see this page: [Sixels in Terminal](https://www.arewesixelyet.com/).



#### LibNotify is (should be) optional

By default, the build system will automatically detect if `libnotify` is available and include it and enable notifications if found. 



### Uninstalling



If you installed kew manually, simply run:



```bash

sudo make uninstall

```



## Usage



Run kew. It will first help you set the path to your music folder, then show you that folder's contents.



kew can also be told to play a certain music from the command line. It automatically creates a playlist based on a partial name of a track or directory:



```bash

kew cure great

```



This command plays all songs from "The Cure Greatest Hits" directory, provided it's in your music library.



kew returns the first directory or file whose name matches the string you provide. It works best when your music library is organized in this way: artist folder->album folder(s)->track(s).



#### Some Examples:



 ```

kew (starting kew with no arguments opens the library view where you can choose what to play)



kew all (plays all songs, up to 20 000, in your library, shuffled)



kew albums (plays all albums, up to 2000, randomly one after the other)



kew moonlight son (finds and plays moonlight sonata)



kew moon (finds and plays moonlight sonata)



kew beet (finds and plays all music files under "beethoven" directory)



kew dir  (sometimes it's necessary to specify it's a directory you want)



kew song  (or a song)



kew list  (or a playlist)



kew shuffle  (shuffles the playlist)



kew artistA:artistB:artistC (plays all three artists, shuffled)



kew --help, -? or -h



kew --version or -v



kew --nocover



kew --noui (completely hides the UI)



kew -q , --quitonstop (exits after finishing playing the playlist)



kew -e , --exact (specifies you want an exact (but not case sensitive) match, of for instance an album)



kew . loads kew.m3u



kew path "/home/joe/Musik/" (changes the path)



 ```



Put single-quotes inside quotes "guns n' roses"



#### Key Bindings

* Use + (or =), - keys to adjust the volume.

* Use ←, → or h, l keys to switch tracks.

* Space, p to toggle pause.

* F2 to show/hide the playlist and information about kew.

* F3 to show/hide the library.

* F4 to show/hide the track view.

* F5 to search.

* F6 to show/hide key bindings.

* u to update the library.

* v to toggle the spectrum visualizer.

* i to switch between using your regular color scheme or colors derived from the track cover.

* b to toggle album covers drawn in ascii or as a normal image.

* r to repeat the current song.

* s to shuffle the playlist.

* a to seek back.

* d to seek forward.

* x to save the currently loaded playlist to a m3u file in your music folder.

* gg go to first song.

* number +G, g or Enter, go to specific song number in the playlist.

* g go to last song.

* . to add current song to kew.m3u (run with "kew .").

* Esc to quit.



## Configuration



kew will create a config file, kewrc, in a kew folder in your default config directory for instance ~/.config/kew. There you can change key bindings, number of bars in the visualizer and whether to use the album cover for color, or your regular color scheme. You can also change the default color of the app here. To edit this file please make sure you quit kew first.



## Nerd Fonts



kew looks better with Nerd Fonts: https://www.nerdfonts.com/.



## License



Licensed under GPL. [See LICENSE for more information](https://github.com/ravachol/kew/blob/main/LICENSE).



## Attributions



kew makes use of the following great open source projects:



Chafa by  Petter Jansson - https://hpjansson.org/chafa/



FFmpeg by FFmpeg team - https://ffmpeg.org/



FFTW by Matteo Frigo and Steven G. Johnson - https://www.fftw.org/



Libopus by Opus - https://opus-codec.org/



Libvorbis by Xiph.org - https://xiph.org/



Miniaudio by David Reid - https://github.com/mackron/miniaudio



Img_To_Txt by Danny Burrows - https://github.com/danny-burrows/img_to_txt



Comments? Suggestions? Send mail to [email protected].