Command Line Options

See cmus --help for more information.

Remote Control

CMus can be controlled via UNIX-socket using cmus-remote command. This is very useful feature because it allows you control CMus without having to switch to the desktop where CMus window is.

See cmus-remote --help for more information.

Views

There are 5 views in cmus:

• Artist/Album/Track Tree View (1)
• Shuffle List (2)
• Sorted List (3)
• Play Queue (4)
• Directory Browser (5)

To switch between the views use keys '1' - '5'. Views 1-3 display current playlist. View 3 can be sorted (see sort option).

View 4 displays play queue. Tracks in the play queue are played first and removed from the queue immediately after playing starts. After last track from play queue has been played CMus starts playing tracks in the playlist.

View 5 allows you to browse filesystem, add tracks to playlist, enqueue tracks, delete files and even play tracks directly from the browser. You can also 'cd' into a playlist.

Normal Mode

Command Mode

Press ':' any time to enter command mode. The command mode works much like VIM's Ex mode. Tabulator expansion works for files/dirs, commands and options. There's command history too (up/down arrow keys). Press 'ESC' to leave command mode and return to Normal Mode.

You don't have to type whole command name if it is unambiguous. For example :a somefile.mp3.

:set format_trackwin= %02n. %t (%y)%= %d
:set format_current= %n. %-30t %40F (%y)%= %d

Searching

WORDS is list of words separated by spaces. Search is case insensitive and works in every view.

In views 1-4 words are compared to artist, album and title tags. Use //WORDS and ??WORDS to search only titles. If the file doesn't have tags words are compared to filename without path.

In view 5 words are compared to filename without path.

Status Display

CMus can run external program which can be used to display player status on desktop background (using root-tail for example), panel etc.

For example if you use WMI you can write a script that displays currently playing file on the wmi statusbar using wmiremote command:

:set status_display_program=cmus-status-display

To disable status display set status_display_program to empty string.

#!/bin/bash
#
# cmus-status-display
#
# Usage:
#   in cmus command ":set status_display_program=cmus-status-display"
#
# This scripts is executed by cmus when status changes:
#   cmus-status-display key1 val1 key2 val2 ...
#
# All keys contain only chars a-z. Values are UTF-8 strings.
#
# Keys: status file url artist album discnumber tracknumber title date
#   - status (stopped, playing, paused) is always given
#   - file or url is given only if track is 'loaded' in cmus
#   - other keys/values are given only if they are available
#  

output()
{
        # write status to /tmp/cmus-status (not very useful though)
        echo "$*" >> /tmp/cmus-status 2>&1

        # WMI (http://wmi.modprobe.de/)
        #wmiremote -t "$*" &> /dev/null
}

while [[ $# -ge 2 ]]
do
  eval _$1=\"$2\"
  shift
  shift
done

if [[ -n $_file ]]
then
        output "[$_status] $_artist - $_album - $_title ($_date)"
elif [[ -n $_url ]]
then
        output "[$_status] $_title"
else
        output "[$_status]"
fi

User Interface Colors

If you want to customize colors edit ~/.config/cmus/config. Change *_fg and *_bg variables. Don't change these while cmus is running because it overwrites the config file at exit.

Bugs

If you configured cmus with DEBUG=2 then debugging information will be written to /tmp/cmus-debug file. After a crash last lines of these files should contain useful information.

Author

Timo Hirvonen <tihirvon AT ee.oulu.fi>