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ncmpcpp: music player

2023-03-10

ncmpcpp takes the cake for having the most unintuitive name of the lot. So much that I have created a shell alias for it. That aside, it is a pretty fantastic client for mpd to play / stream music.

notes

It is important to understand that ncmpcpp isn't actually playing any music, it is simply a client for mpd. Mpd is what plays the music. This has implications:

closing ncmpcpp doesn't stop the music playback
you can have multiple instances of ncmpcpp open to display the playlist, media library and the visualizer at the same time.

The whole thing can look pretty neat in my opinion:

Here's a screenshot

screen and slave screen

`ncmpcpp` can be launched with a specific screen and an additional slave screen right next to it:

`ncmpcpp -s media_library -S playlist` will launch the media library as main screen, and the playlist as slave. You can switch between controling both screens with cursor-right and cursor-left.

Personally I don't use that feature (yet?) since it messes with my head regarding keyboad navigation, I prefer to launch several instances. But that's just me.

keyboard shortcuts

general navigation

| keybind | description                                            |
| ------- | ------------------------------------------------------ |
| 1       | opens the current playlist                             |
| 2       | opens the media folder browser                         |
| 3       | opens the search options                               |
| 4       | opens the media library                                |
| 5       | playlist editor (create/edit playlists)                |
| 6       | tag editor                                             |
| 7       | output options                                         |
| 8       | music visualizer                                       |
| <left>  | move to main screen (when slave screen is present)     |
| <right> | move to slave screen (when present)                    |

playback options

| keybind | description                                            |
| --------| ------------------------------------------------------ |
| <Space> | add the current selection to playlist                  |
| <Enter> | add current selection to playlist and start playing    |
| p       | toggle play/pause                                      |
| s       | stop playback                                          |
| <       | jump to previous song                                  |
| >       | jump to next song                                      |
| z       | toggle random mode                                     |
| r       | toggle repeat mode                                     |

playlist

| keybind | description                                            |
| --------| ------------------------------------------------------ |
| x       | remove highlighted song from playlist                  |
| A       | add file path or URL to playlist                       |

Note that ncmpcpp can play streaming radios if the URL of the stream is

copied into the playlist, try with https://liveradio.swr.de/sw331ch/swr3/play.aac

tweaks and config changes

By default ncmpcpp doesn't use vim keys for navigation. They can however easily be added by tweaking the ~/.config/ncmpcpp/bindings file:

def_key "j"
    scroll_down
def_key "k"
    scroll_up

def_key "ctrl-u"
    page_up
def_key "ctrl-d"
    page_down
def_key "u"
    page_up
def_key "d"
    page_down
def_key "h"
    previous_column
def_key "l"
    next_column
def_key "J"
    move_sort_order_down
def_key "K"
    move_sort_order_up
def_key "h"
  jump_to_parent_directory
def_key "l"
  enter_directory
def_key "l"
  run_action
def_key "l"
  play_item

plugins, addons, dependencies

Remember that ncmpcpp is only a client for mpd, it needs a few other programs installed to work, and work well

mpd - the media player daemon that actually plays the music
mpdris2 - optional. adds multimedia keys support, if you have start/stop/pause/volume keys on your keyboard

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