audacious - Man Page

an advanced audio player.

Examples (TL;DR)

Launch the GUI: audacious
Start a new instance and play an audio: audacious --new-instance path/to/audio
Enqueue a specific directory of audio files: audacious --enqueue path/to/directory
Start or stop playback: audacious --play-pause
Skip forwards ([fwd]) or backwards ([rew]) in the playlist: audacious --fwd|rew
Stop playback: audacious --stop
Start in CLI mode (headless): audacious --headless
Exit as soon as playback stops or there is nothing to playback: audacious --quit-after-play

Audacious is a free advanced audio player for Linux and many other UNIX-compatible systems. It focuses on low resource usage, high audio quality, and support for a wide range of audio formats. It was originally based on Beep Media Player, which was in turn based on XMMS.

Options

Getting help

-h, --help: Show a brief list of options.

Opening files

-e, --enqueue: Add the files on the command line to the current playlist but do not start playback.
-E, --enqueue-to-temp: Add the files on the command line to the “Now Playing” playlist and start playback.

Controlling playback

-p, --play: Start playback. If paused, playback will resume from the same point. If already active and not paused, it will restart from the beginning of the song.
-u, --pause: Pause playback, or resume if already paused.
-t, --play-pause: Equivalent to --pause if playback is active, otherwise --play.
-s, --stop: Stop playback.
-r, --rew: Skip to the previous song in the playlist.
-f, --fwd: Skip to the next song in the playlist.

Miscellaneous

-m, --show-main-window: Show the Audacious window if it is hidden and bring it to the top.
-j, --show-jump-box: Show the Jump to Song window.
-H, --headless: Start in command-line mode; i.e., without any graphical user interface.
-q, --quit-after-play: Exit as soon as playback stops, or immediately if there is nothing to play.
-v, --version: Print version information and exit.
-V, --verbose: Print debugging output while running (may be used twice for even more output).
-N, --new-instance: Starts a new instance. The second instance started may be controlled with audtool -2, the third with audtool -3, etc. (up to 9 instances).

Keybindings

Control + Return	Play
Space, Control + ,	Pause
Control + .	Stop
Alt + Up	Previous song
Alt + Down	Next song
Right arrow	Seek forward (by default 5 seconds)
Left arrow	Seek backward (by default 5 seconds)
Escape	Scroll to current song
Control + a	Select all songs in playlist
Shift + Control + a	Cancel selection
Control + + (plus)	Increase volume 5 percent
Control + - (minus)	Decrease volume 5 percent
Control + s	Toggle shuffle
Control + r	Toggle repeat
Control + n	Toggle advancing in playlist
Control + m	Toggle stopping after current song
Control + e	Display Equalizer
Control + y	Display Search Tool
Control + i	Display Song Information dialog
Control + k	Display Jump to Time dialog
Control + j	Display Jump to Song dialog
Control + p	Display Playlist Manager dialog
Control + u	Display Queue Manager dialog
Control + o	Display Open Files dialog
Shift + Control + o	Display Add Files dialog
Control + l	Display Open URL dialog
Shift + Control + l	Display Add URL dialog

Files

~/.config/audacious/config, ~/.config/audacious-2/config, etc.: Configuration file for each Audacious instance.
~/.config/audacious/playlists, ~/.config/audacious-2/playlists, etc.: Folders in which playlists are stored.
~/.local/share/audacious/Skins, share/audacious/Skins: Default locations where Audacious should look for skin files.

Environment

SKINSDIR: Colon separated list of paths where Audacious should look for skin files.
TARCMD: Tar command supporting GNU tar style decompression. Used for unpacking gzip and bzip2 compressed skins. Default is tar.
UNZIPCMD: Command for decompressing zip files (skins). Default is unzip.