If you just want a basic command line mp3 player, you could use afplay, but if that’s not enough for you, install ViTunes. The little VIM plugin gives you full access to iTunes directly from the command line text editor VIM, but don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just a boring old music player, it actually has some nice features, including:

Keyboard-only based controls

Control iTunes from another computer via SSH

Let multiple users access and control iTunes from SSH

Controlling iTunes without ever leaving VIM

Navigate your music, manage playlists, copy tracks, control volume, all from Vim

Accessible through a linux client too

Installing ViTunes is easy, but first you’ll need to make sure you have Ruby 1.8.6 or higher installed, Mac OS X 10.6 or later, and Vim 7.2 or greater, then it’s just a matter of launching the Terminal and installing the plugin (it goes into ~/.vim/plugin/ if you’re wondering):



gem install vitunes

Now if your $PATH is properly configured you can just type ‘vitunes-install’ but that didn’t work for me, so you can try this command instead:

sudo gem install vitunes-install

Once it’s installed you can launch it directly by typing ‘vitunes’ or by hitting ,i within Vim.

This app is obviously geared towards people who have prior command line experience, and many of the keystrokes will be familiar to those who do.

Basic ViTunes player commands include the following:

Spacebar to play and pause

Hitting Enter starts playing the highlighted song

+ to increase volume

– to lower volume

Shift , and . to go back or forward

,s to search iTunes library

,p selects playlist

,a selects artist

There are many more commands to manipulate the player so be sure to check out the devs web page for those.

This is a nice little find!