Mac OS X Command Line Audio Player

I've been playing with the Mac OS X "Leopard" command line lately, and one of the cool things I've discovered is a CLI audio player that's already installed out-of-the-box. I know some Mac users out there still don't know this tiny feature so I thought I should share this.

A command line audio player can very useful to those who want to play sound files while conserving system resources. It can also be used along with a shell script and Automator action.

The OS X command line audio player that I'm talking about is called afplay.

Since afplay is in your path by default (located at /usr/bin directory), you can play audio files directly with a simple command like in this example:

afplay audiofile.mp3


There are a few options that you can display using help: afplay -h. You can also display the man page: man afplay.


If you want a powerful CLI audio player, Linux has plenty to offer. Right now I'm using mp3blaster and MPlayer. But, that's another story :-)