cliamp
Shares rank 2 of 4 terminal music players by recommenders
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.
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.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 86%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple, small console music player
“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.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp” “Open source and super impressive little app in Go”
Comment from 2 Sep 2026 in “CLIAmp – TUI for Music/Podcasts/Streams”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Phones home with tracking identifier
“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.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp” “Why a local CLI player needs outbound TCP connection to play a local file from my local disk”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp” “This is basically a tracking cookie.”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “A retro terminal music player inspired by Winamp” Stops playback on close; confusing TUI
“kills playback when the TUI is closed and the TUI is honestly confusing”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “gtm- a (more beautiful) cliamp alternative in the making”
Other terminal music players people recommend
The three most recommended other terminal music players, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| cmus | 7 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| cliampThis page | 6 | 1 | 86% | 4 | — | — |
| Retro Music Player | 6 | 4 | 60% | 2 | — | — |
| ncmpcpp | 6 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
7 of the 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“kills playback when the TUI is closed and the TUI is honestly confusing”
“Open source and super impressive little app in Go”
“Looks like the telemetry was removed”
“this reaction shows how much he cares about the project”
“This is basically a tracking cookie.”
“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.”
“Why a local CLI player needs outbound TCP connection to play a local file from my local disk”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.