# Audacious music player

17 Hacker News commenters recommended Audacious music player and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend it as a fast, minimal, cross-platform music player that plays almost any format and supports classic Winamp skins. The one recurring complaint is that it struggles with HiRes displays.

## Why people recommend it

- Supports Winamp skins (5 comments): "I'm using audacious on macOS installed via homebrew - it has a winamp-like skin." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777037)) "an excellent and cross-platform player, with support for Winamp skins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927941)) "The amazing foss music player audacious supports winamp skins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48763257))
- Plays nearly any format (2 comments): "Audacious with audacious-plugins could play anything (even video game music files)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45940250)) "Audacious comes with Game Music Emu for playing original game music data" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777494))
- Fast, minimal, and simple (3 comments): "simple enough in terms of UI and good enough in terms of features" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777727)) "Is fast, native (gtk or Qt), and you can save playlists." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46787321)) "Minimalistic but quick and effective." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46778126))
- Cross-platform, including macOS (3 comments): "an excellent and cross-platform player, with support for Winamp skins" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927941)) "I'm using audacious on macOS installed via homebrew - it has a winamp-like skin." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46777037)) "Like most days, I am using it right now on macOS." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45928363))

## What people warn about

- Struggles with HiRes displays (1 comments): "it struggles with HiRes displays amongst other things" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45927000))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Winamp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/winamp.md): 60 recommend
- [iTunes](https://hackerapproved.com/p/itunes.md): 55 recommend
- [foobar2000](https://hackerapproved.com/p/foobar2000.md): 54 recommend
- [Plexamp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/plexamp.md): 31 recommend
- [Symfonium](https://hackerapproved.com/p/symfonium.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Audacious music player", https://hackerapproved.com/p/audacious/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).