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Playback options

consume

    consume {STATE}

Sets consume state to STATE, STATE should be 0 or 1. When consume is activated, each song played is removed from playlist.

crossfade

    crossfade {SECONDS}

Sets crossfading between songs.

mixrampdb

    mixrampdb {deciBels}

Sets the threshold at which songs will be overlapped. Like crossfading but doesn't fade the track volume, just overlaps. The songs need to have MixRamp tags added by an external tool. 0dB is the normalized maximum volume so use negative values, I prefer -17dB. In the absence of mixramp tags crossfading will be used. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/mixramp

mixrampdelay

    mixrampdelay {SECONDS}

Additional time subtracted from the overlap calculated by mixrampdb. A value of "nan" disables MixRamp overlapping and falls back to crossfading.

random

    random {STATE}

Sets random state to STATE, STATE should be 0 or 1.

repeat

    repeat {STATE}

Sets repeat state to STATE, STATE should be 0 or 1.

setvol

    setvol {VOL}

Sets volume to VOL, the range of volume is 0-100.

single

    single {STATE}

Sets single state to STATE, STATE should be 0 or 1. When single is activated, playback is stopped after current song, or song is repeated if the 'repeat' mode is enabled.

replay_gain_mode

    replay_gain_mode {MODE}

Sets the replay gain mode. One of off, track, album, auto.

Changing the mode during playback may take several seconds, because the new settings does not affect the buffered data.

This command triggers the options idle event.

replay_gain_status

    replay_gain_status

Prints replay gain options. Currently, only the variable replay_gain_mode is returned.

volume

    volume {CHANGE}

Changes volume by amount CHANGE.

Note: volume is deprecated, use setvol instead.

Controlling playback

next

    next

Plays next song in the playlist.

pause

    pause {PAUSE}

Toggles pause/resumes playing, PAUSE is 0 or 1.

Note: The use of pause command w/o the PAUSE argument is deprecated.

play

    play [SONGPOS]

Begins playing the playlist at song number SONGPOS.

playid

    playid [SONGID]

Begins playing the playlist at song SONGID.

previous

    previous

Plays previous song in the playlist.

seek

    seek {SONGPOS} {TIME}

Seeks to the position TIME (in seconds; fractions allowed) of entry SONGPOS in the playlist.

seekid

    seekid {C<SONGID>} {TIME}

Seeks to the position TIME (in seconds; fractions allowed) of song SONGID.

seekcur

    seekcur {TIME}

Seeks to the position TIME (in seconds; fractions allowed) within the current song. If prefixed by '+' or '-', then the time is relative to the current playing position.

stop

    stop

Stops playing.

The current playlist

add

    add {URI}

Adds the file URI to the playlist (directories add recursively). URI can also be a single file.

addid

    addid {URI} [POSITION]

Adds a song to the playlist (non-recursive) and returns the song id.

URI is always a single file or URL. For example:

    addid "foo.mp3"
    Id: 999
    OK

clear

    clear

Clears the current playlist.

delete

    delete [{POS} | {START:END}]

Deletes a song from the playlist.

deleteid

    deleteid {SONGID}

Deletes the song SONGID from the playlist

move

    move [{FROM} | {START:END}] {TO}

Moves the song at FROM or range of songs at START:END to TO in the playlist.

moveid

    moveid {FROM} {TO}

Moves the song with FROM (songid) to TO (playlist index) in the playlist. If TO is negative, it is relative to the current song in the playlist (if there is one).

playlist

    playlist

Displays the current playlist.

Note: Do not use this, instead use playlistinfo.

playlistfind

    playlistfind {TAG} {NEEDLE}

Finds songs in the current playlist with strict matching.

playlistid

    playlistid {SONGID}

Displays a list of songs in the playlist. SONGID is optional and specifies a single song to display info for.

playlistinfo

    playlistinfo [[SONGPOS] | [START:END]]

Displays a list of all songs in the playlist, or if the optional argument is given, displays information only for the song SONGPOS or the range of songs START:END.

playlistsearch

    playlistsearch {TAG} {NEEDLE}

Searches case-insensitively for partial matches in the current playlist.

plchanges

    plchanges {VERSION} [START:END]

Displays changed songs currently in the playlist since VERSION. Start and end positions may be given to limit the output to changes in the given range.

To detect songs that were deleted at the end of the playlist, use playlistlength returned by status command.

plchangesposid

    plchangesposid {VERSION} [START:END]

Displays changed songs currently in the playlist since VERSION. This function only returns the position and the id of the changed song, not the complete metadata. This is more bandwidth efficient.

To detect songs that were deleted at the end of the playlist, use playlistlength returned by status command.

prio

    prio {PRIORITY} {START:END...}

Set the priority of the specified songs. A higher priority means that it will be played first when "random" mode is enabled.

A priority is an integer between 0 and 255. The default priority of new songs is 0.

prioid

    prioid {PRIORITY} {ID...}

Same as prio, but address the songs with their id.

rangeid

    rangeid {ID} {START:END}

Specifies the portion of the song that shall be played. START and END are offsets in seconds (fractional seconds allowed); both are optional. Omitting both (i.e. sending just ":") means "remove the range, play everything". A song that is currently playing cannot be manipulated this way.

shuffle

    shuffle [START:END]

Shuffles the current playlist. START:END is optional and specifies a range of songs.

swap

    swap {SONG1} {SONG2}

Swaps the positions of SONG1 and SONG2.

swapid

    swapid {SONG1} {SONG2}

Swaps the positions of SONG1 and SONG2 (both song ids).

addtagid

    addtagid {SONGID} {TAG} {VALUE}

Adds a tag to the specified song. Editing song tags is only possible for remote songs. This change is volatile: it may be overwritten by tags received from the server, and the data is gone when the song gets removed from the queue.

cleartagid

    cleartagid {SONGID} [TAG]

Removes tags from the specified song. If TAG is not specified, then all tag values will be removed. Editing song tags is only possible for remote songs.

Stored playlists

Playlists are stored inside the configured playlist directory. They are addressed with their file name (without the directory and without the .m3u suffix).

Some of the commands described in this section can be used to run playlist plugins instead of the hard-coded simple m3u parser. They can access playlists in the music directory (relative path including the suffix) or remote playlists (absolute URI with a supported scheme).

listplaylist

    listplaylist {NAME}

Lists the songs in the playlist. Playlist plugins are supported.

listplaylistinfo

    listplaylistinfo {NAME}

Lists the songs with metadata in the playlist. Playlist plugins are supported.

listplaylists

    listplaylists

Prints a list of the playlist directory.

After each playlist name the server sends its last modification time as attribute "Last-Modified" in ISO 8601 format. To avoid problems due to clock differences between clients and the server, clients should not compare this value with their local clock.

load

    load {NAME} [START:END]

Loads the playlist into the current queue. Playlist plugins are supported. A range may be specified to load only a part of the playlist.

playlistadd

    playlistadd {NAME} {URI}

Adds URI to the playlist NAME.m3u.

NAME.m3u will be created if it does not exist.

playlistclear

    playlistclear {NAME}

Clears the playlist NAME.m3u.

playlistdelete

    playlistdelete {NAME} {SONGPOS}

Deletes SONGPOS from the playlist NAME.m3u.

playlistmove

    playlistmove {NAME} {FROM} {TO}

Moves the song at position FROM in the playlist NAME.m3u to the position TO.

rename

    rename {NAME} {NEW_NAME}

Renames the playlist NAME.m3u to NEW_NAME.m3u.

rm

    rm {NAME}

Removes the playlist NAME.m3u from the playlist directory.

save

    save {NAME}

Saves the current playlist to NAME.m3u in the playlist directory.

The music database

count

    count {TAG} {NEEDLE} [...] [group] [GROUPTYPE]

Counts the number of songs and their total playtime in the db matching TAG exactly.

The group keyword may be used to group the results by a tag. The following prints per-artist counts:

    count group artist

find

    find {TYPE} {WHAT} [...] [sort TYPE] [window START:END]

Finds songs in the db that are exactly WHAT. TYPE can be any tag supported by MPD, or one of the special parameters:

  • any checks all tag values

  • file checks the full path (relative to the music directory)

  • base restricts the search to songs in the given directory (also relative to the music directory)

  • modified-since compares the file's time stamp with the given value (ISO 8601 or UNIX time stamp)

WHAT is what to find.

sort sorts the result by the specified tag. Without sort, the order is undefined. Only the first tag value will be used, if multiple of the same type exist. To sort by "Artist", "Album" or "AlbumArtist", you should specify "ArtistSort", "AlbumSort" or "AlbumArtistSort" instead. These will automatically fall back to the former if "*Sort" doesn't exist. "AlbumArtist" falls back to just "Artist".

window can be used to query only a portion of the real response. The parameter is two zero-based record numbers; a start number and an end number.

findadd

    findadd {TYPE} {WHAT} [...]

Finds songs in the db that are exactly WHAT and adds them to current playlist. Parameters have the same meaning as for find.

list

    list {TYPE} [FILTERTYPE] [FILTERWHAT] [...] [group] [GROUPTYPE] [...]

Lists unique tags values of the specified type. TYPE can be any tag supported by MPD or file.

Additional arguments may specify a filter like the one in the find command.

The group keyword may be used (repeatedly) to group the results by one or more tags. The following example lists all album names, grouped by their respective (album) artist:

    list album group albumartist

listall

    listall [URI]

Lists all songs and directories in URI.

Do not use this command. Do not manage a client-side copy of MPD's database. That is fragile and adds huge overhead. It will break with large databases. Instead, query MPD whenever you need something.

listallinfo

    listallinfo [URI]

Same as listall, except it also returns metadata info in the same format as lsinfo.

Do not use this command. Do not manage a client-side copy of MPD's database. That is fragile and adds huge overhead. It will break with large databases. Instead, query MPD whenever you need something.

listfiles

    listfiles [URI]

Lists the contents of the directory URI, including files are not recognized by MPD. URI can be a path relative to the music directory or an URI understood by one of the storage plugins. The response contains at least one line for each directory entry with the prefix "file: " or "directory: ", and may be followed by file attributes such as "Last-Modified" and "size".

For example, "smb://SERVER" returns a list of all shares on the given SMB/CIFS server; "nfs://servername/path" obtains a directory listing from the NFS server.

lsinfo

    lsinfo [URI]

Lists the contents of the directory URI.

When listing the root directory, this currently returns the list of stored playlists. This behavior is deprecated; use "listplaylists" instead.

This command may be used to list metadata of remote files (e.g. URI beginning with "http://" or "smb://").

Clients that are connected via UNIX domain socket may use this command to read the tags of an arbitrary local file (URI is an absolute path).

readcomments

    readcomments [URI]

Read "comments" (i.e. key-value pairs) from the file specified by URI. This URI can be a path relative to the music directory or an absolute path.

This command may be used to list metadata of remote files (e.g. URI beginning with "http://" or "smb://").

The response consists of lines in the form KEY: VALUE. Comments with suspicious characters (e.g. newlines) are ignored silently.

The meaning of these depends on the codec, and not all decoder plugins support it. For example, on Ogg files, this lists the Vorbis comments.

    search {TYPE} {WHAT} [...] [sort TYPE] [window START:END]

Searches for any song that contains WHAT. Parameters have the same meaning as for find, except that search is not case sensitive.

searchadd

    searchadd {TYPE} {WHAT} [...]

Searches for any song that contains WHAT in tag TYPE and adds them to current playlist.

Parameters have the same meaning as for find, except that search is not case sensitive.

searchaddpl

    searchaddpl {NAME} {TYPE} {WHAT} [...]

Searches for any song that contains WHAT in tag TYPE and adds them to the playlist named NAME.

If a playlist by that name doesn't exist it is created.

Parameters have the same meaning as for find, except that search is not case sensitive.

update

    update [URI]

Updates the music database: find new files, remove deleted files, update modified files.

URI is a particular directory or song/file to update. If you do not specify it, everything is updated.

Prints updating_db: JOBID where JOBID is a positive number identifying the update job. You can read the current job id in the status response.

rescan

    rescan [URI]

Same as update, but also rescans unmodified files.

Mounts and neighbours

A "storage" provides access to files in a directory tree. The most basic storage plugin is the "local" storage plugin which accesses the local file system, and there are plugins to access NFS and SMB servers.

Multiple storages can be "mounted" together, similar to the mount command on many operating systems, but without cooperation from the kernel. No superuser privileges are necessary, beause this mapping exists only inside the MPD process

mount

    mount {PATH} {URI}

Mount the specified remote storage URI at the given path. Example:

    mount foo nfs://192.168.1.4/export/mp3

unmount

    unmount {PATH}

Unmounts the specified path. Example:

    unmount foo

listmounts

    listmounts

Queries a list of all mounts. By default, this contains just the configured music_directory. Example:

    listmounts
    mount:
    storage: /home/foo/music
    mount: foo
    storage: nfs://192.168.1.4/export/mp3
    OK

listneighbors

    listneighbors

Queries a list of "neighbors" (e.g. accessible file servers on the local net). Items on that list may be used with the mount command. Example:

    listneighbors
    neighbor: smb://FOO
    name: FOO (Samba 4.1.11-Debian)
    OK

Stickers

 "Stickers" are pieces of information attached to existing MPD objects (e.g. song files, directories, albums). Clients can create arbitrary name/value pairs. MPD itself does not assume any special meaning in them.

The goal is to allow clients to share additional (possibly dynamic) information about songs, which is neither stored on the client (not available to other clients), nor stored in the song files (MPD has no write access).

Client developers should create a standard for common sticker names, to ensure interoperability.

Objects which may have stickers are addressed by their object type ("song" for song objects) and their URI (the path within the database for songs).

sticker

    sticker get {TYPE} {URI} {NAME}

Reads a sticker value for the specified object.

sticker

    sticker set {TYPE} {URI} {NAME} {VALUE}

Adds a sticker value to the specified object. If a sticker item with that name already exists, it is replaced.

sticker

    sticker delete {TYPE} {URI} [NAME]

Deletes a sticker value from the specified object. If you do not specify a sticker name, all sticker values are deleted.

sticker

    sticker list {TYPE} {URI}

Lists the stickers for the specified object.

sticker

    sticker find {TYPE} {URI} {NAME}

Searches the sticker database for stickers with the specified name, below the specified directory (URI). For each matching song, it prints the URI and that one sticker's value.

sticker

    sticker find {TYPE} {URI} {NAME} = {VALUE}

Searches for stickers with the given value.

Other supported operators are: "<", ">"

Connection settings

close

    close

Closes the connection to MPD. MPD will try to send the remaining output buffer before it actually closes the connection, but that cannot be guaranteed. This command will not generate a response.

kill

    kill

Kills MPD.

password

    password {PASSWORD}

This is used for authentication with the server. PASSWORD is simply the plaintext password.

ping

    ping

Does nothing but return OK.

tagtypes

    tagtypes

Shows a list of available tag types. It is an intersection of the metadata_to_use setting and this client's tag mask.

About the tag mask: each client can decide to disable any number of tag types, which will be omitted from responses to this client. That is a good idea, because it makes responses smaller. The following tagtypes sub commands configure this list.

tagtypes

    tagtypes disable {NAME...}

Remove one or more tags from the list of tag types the client is interested in. These will be omitted from responses to this client.

tagtypes

    tagtypes enable {NAME...}

Re-enable one or more tags from the list of tag types for this client. These will no longer be hidden from responses to this client.

tagtypes

    tagtypes clear

Clear the list of tag types this client is interested in. This means that MPD will not send any tags to this client.

tagtypes

    tagtypes all

Announce that this client is interested in all tag types. This is the default setting for new clients.

Partition commands

These commands allow a client to inspect and manage "partitions". A partition is one frontend of a multi-player MPD process: it has separate queue, player and outputs. A client is assigned to one partition at a time.

partition

    partition {NAME}

Switch the client to a different partition.

listpartitions

    listpartitions

Print a list of partitions. Each partition starts with a partition keyword and the partition's name, followed by information about the partition.

newpartition

    newpartition {NAME}

Create a new partition.

Audio Output Devices

disableoutput

    disableoutput {ID}

Turns an output off.

enableoutput

    enableoutput {ID}

Turns an output on.

toggleoutput

    toggleoutput {ID}

Turns an output on or off, depending on the current state.

outputs

    outputs

Shows information about all outputs.

    outputid: 0
    outputname: My ALSA Device
    outputenabled: 0
    OK

Return information:

  • outputid: ID of the output. May change between executions

  • outputname: Name of the output. It can be any.

  • outputenabled: Status of the output. 0 if disabled, 1 if enabled.

Reflection

config

    config

Dumps configuration values that may be interesting for the client. This command is only permitted to "local" clients (connected via UNIX domain socket).

The following response attributes are available: Name Description music_directory The absolute path of the music directory.

commands

    commands

Shows which commands the current user has access to.

notcommands

    notcommands

Shows which commands the current user does not have access to.

urlhandlers

    urlhandlers

Gets a list of available URL handlers.

decoders

    decoders

Print a list of decoder plugins, followed by their supported suffixes and MIME types. Example response:

    plugin: mad
    suffix: mp3
    suffix: mp2
    mime_type: audio/mpeg
    plugin: mpcdec
    suffix: mpc

Client to Client

subscribe

    subscribe {NAME}

Subscribe to a channel. The channel is created if it does not exist already. The name may consist of alphanumeric ASCII characters plus underscore, dash, dot and colon.

unsubscribe

    unsubscribe {NAME}

Unsubscribe from a channel.

channels

    channels

Obtain a list of all channels. The response is a list of "channel:" lines.

readmessages

    readmessages

Reads messages for this client. The response is a list of "channel:" and "message:" lines.

sendmessage

    sendmessage {CHANNEL} {TEXT}

Send a message to the specified channel.