A blazing-fast, keyboard-first audio player for the terminal — with built-in fuzzy search for an intuitive, seamless way to find and play your music.

Written in Rust, fully configurable, and cross-platform — tap puts powerful playback and search features in a minimal, distraction-free UI that runs smoothly even on modest hardware.

Quick links: Usage, Options, Controls, Configuration, Installation.

• Fuzzy Finder Interface

  • fzf-style search for albums, artists, or folders
  • Launches into fuzzy mode by default when run in a music library
  • Jump back to fuzzy search any time with Tab
  • Search results are shuffled by default, with sorting toggle

• Full Playback Control

  • Play, pause, stop, skip and seek
  • Shuffle and randomized playback modes
  • Mute and volume controls
  • Gapless playback support
  • Jump to first/last track or a specific track number

• Keyboard-First UI

  • Vim-inspired, fully customizable keybindings
  • Intuitive shortcuts for playback, search and navigation
  • All functionality accessible via keyboard (mouse optional)

• Mouse Support

  • Full mouse navigation in the UI
  • Supports scroll, click, and cursor movement

• Cross-Platform Support

  • Runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows
  • Optimized for low resource usage

• Customizable Appearance

  • Configurable themes via CLI flags or config file
  • Terminal background/foreground color support
  • Fine-grained color control with named themes or hex values

• Configurable Behavior

  • Optional tap.yml config file with support for:
    • Custom keybindings
    • Default start path
    • Color themes
  • Default music directory support with persistent caching

• Flexible CLI Options

  • CLI-only playback mode (--cli)
  • Set or print default path
  • Launch with or without custom colors/themes

• Wide Format Support

  • Plays: mp3, flac, aac, m4a, ogg, wav

> tap [options] [path]

Run tap in a directory containing music folders to launch the fuzzy-finder:

> cd ~/path/to/my_music
> tap

Playback will begin on selection and you can return to the fuzzy-finder by pressing Tab.

If no path is specified, tap defaults to the current working directory.

To skip the fuzzy-finder and directly open an audio file or album:

> tap ~/path/to/my_album

tap doesn't create the config file for you, but it looks for one in the following locations:

• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tap/tap.yml
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/tap.yml
• $HOME/.config/tap/tap.yml
• $HOME/.tap.yml

A example config file can be found here.

Keybindings for the player can be set in the config file. You can bind multiple keys to an event.

Colors can be set in the config file or using the --color command.

The following example will set a Solarized theme:

--color fg=268bd2,bg=002b36,hl=fdf6e3,prompt=586e75,header_1=859900,header_2=cb4b16,progress=6c71c4,info=2aa198,err=dc322f

The default path can be set in the config file. This allows you to load the default directory with the -d --default command and also provides faster load times by caching.

When setting a default path tap will write a small amount of encoded data to ~/.cache/tap. This is guaranteed to be at least as small as the in-memory data and will be updated everytime the default path is accessed. Using the -s --set command will update the path field in the tap.yml config file.

Without setting a default path tap is read-only.

> brew install timdubbins/tap/tap
> tap --version
0.5.2

> curl -LO https://github.com/timdubbins/tap/releases/download/v0.5.2/tap_0.5.2.deb
> sudo dpkg -i tap_0.5.2.deb
> tap --version
0.5.2

> scoop bucket add tap https://github.com/timdubbins/scoop-tap
> scoop install tap
> tap --version
0.5.2

> yay -S tap
> tap --version
0.4.11

> git clone https://github.com/timdubbins/tap
> cd tap
> cargo install --path .
> tap --version
0.5.2

The binaries for each release are also available here.

Suggestions / bug reports are welcome!

• cmus - popular console music player with many features
• fzf - command line fuzzy finder

• cursive - TUI library for Rust with great documentation
• rodio - audio playback library for Rust