# cliamp

6 Hacker News commenters recommended cliamp and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free open source terminal music player inspired by Winamp; people praise its simplicity. Common caveat: it makes outbound network connections a local player shouldn't need.

## Why people recommend it

- Simple, small console music player (2 comments): "It just sends a random UUID. It is just a personal disappointment for the fact that it is something so simple as a console player and yet connects somewhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497598)) "Open source and super impressive little app in Go" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49535490))

## What people warn about

- Phones home with tracking identifier (3 comments): "It just sends a random UUID. It is just a personal disappointment for the fact that it is something so simple as a console player and yet connects somewhere." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497598)) "Why a local CLI player needs outbound TCP connection to play a local file from my local disk" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47497557)) "This is basically a tracking cookie." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47498860))
- Stops playback on close; confusing TUI (1 comments): "kills playback when the TUI is closed and the TUI is honestly confusing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960989))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [cmus](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cmus.md): 7 recommend
- [Retro Music Player](https://hackerapproved.com/p/retro-terminal-music-player-inspired.md): 6 recommend
- [ncmpcpp](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ncmpcpp.md): 6 recommend

## Cite as

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