Is cliamp in the official Debian repositories?

No, cliamp is not packaged in the official Debian archives. This repository is currently the only apt source, serving cliamp 1.63.2.

How do I install the latest cliamp on Debian?

Add the deb.griffo.io repository once using the instructions above, then run: sudo apt install cliamp. New releases arrive through the normal sudo apt upgrade.

Are the packages signed and how are they built?

Every package is signed with the repository's GPG key (EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256) and built from upstream releases in public GitHub packaging repositories that anyone can inspect.

Which Debian releases are supported?

Debian 12 Bookworm, Debian 13 Trixie, Forky and Sid.

Install Latest cliamp on Debian via apt

Source	Version
deb.griffo.io	1.63.2 ✅
Official Debian	🚫 not packaged

← Back to home

📌 Installing on a specific release? Debian 12 (bookworm) · Debian 13 (trixie) · Debian 14 (forky) · Debian Sid

What is cliamp?

cliamp is Winamp 2.x rebuilt for the terminal: a playlist editor, a graphic equaliser, a spectrum visualiser and a skin-like theme system, all drawn in text. It plays local files (MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV), internet radio and podcasts, and streams from Spotify, Qobuz, Navidrome, Jellyfin, Emby, Plex, SoundCloud, NetEase and YouTube Music through one interface. Run it with --daemon and the same binary becomes a headless player driven over an IPC socket, so your status bar, your keybindings and your scripts all talk to the music that is already playing.

            🚀 Why Latest Versions Matter: Most of cliamp is glue to services that keep moving: Spotify, Qobuz, SoundCloud, NetEase and YouTube Music all change their endpoints without warning, and a provider that broke this month is fixed in this month's release, not in a build from last year. cliamp ships several releases a week for exactly that reason. Neither Debian nor Ubuntu packages it at all, so a current build is not a nicety here; it is the only way to have it through apt.
        

⚡ Key Features of cliamp

🎚️ Winamp, in Text

The playlist editor, the graphic equaliser and the classic peak-meter layout, redrawn with box characters. 20 built-in themes, from dracula and nord to vantablack, change the whole look like a skin used to.

📡 Radio and Streaming

An internet-radio catalogue with favourites, plus Spotify, Qobuz, Navidrome, Jellyfin, Emby, Plex, SoundCloud, NetEase and YouTube Music behind one --provider flag and one interactive cliamp setup wizard.

📊 29 Visualisers

Spectrum bars, oscilloscope, stereo field, matrix rain, flame, fireworks and more, all fed by the same FFT. cliamp vis switches them at runtime; --low-power turns the whole thing off when battery matters.

🎛️ Real Audio Controls

A parametric equaliser with presets, playback speed from 0.25× to 2×, mono downmix, gapless playback, per-device output switching and explicit control of sample rate, bit depth and buffer size.

🖥️ Headless Daemon and IPC

cliamp --daemon plays with no TUI and answers cliamp status, next or volume over its socket, while cliamp visstream emits visualiser bands as NDJSON for Waybar, quickshell and anything else that reads a pipe.

🧩 Sandboxed Lua Plugins

A plugin API with hooks for playback events, keymaps, notifications, HTTP and storage, all inside a sandbox. The bundled examples cover now-playing files, webhooks and automatic EQ per genre.

            🚀 Always ahead of the official archives: Debian and Ubuntu freeze package versions when a release ships. This repository publishes new upstream releases typically within hours. A simple apt upgrade keeps you on the latest version.
        

📦 Installation from deb.griffo.io

Run the commands

Step 1: Add Repository

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update

install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
apt update

sudo apt install extrepo
sudo extrepo enable griffo
sudo apt update

🆓 Free forever alternative. cliamp is also in the always-free mirror at deb-free.griffo.io, no account, no subscription, at most 2 months behind upstream, and security fixes published immediately. Add that repository instead of the one above:

sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb-free.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb-free.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb-free.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb-free.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb-free.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
sudo apt update

install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb-free.griffo.io/EA0F721D231FDD3A0A17B9AC7808B4DD62C41256.asc | gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/deb-free.griffo.io.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/deb-free.griffo.io.gpg] https://deb-free.griffo.io/apt $(lsb_release -sc 2>/dev/null) main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb-free.griffo.io.list > /dev/null
apt update

sudo apt install extrepo
sudo extrepo enable griffo-free
sudo apt update

How the free mirror works →

🧩 About the extrepo option. extrepo is Debian's own tool for external repositories: it writes the sources file and installs the signing key for you, checking the key against signed metadata first. This repository is registered with it as griffo, and the always-free mirror as griffo-free, so on Debian (bookworm, trixie, forky and sid) the commands above are the whole setup.

extrepo sets up the sources file and the key only, so a subscription's credentials still go in /etc/apt/auth.conf.d/deb.griffo.io.conf. Ubuntu is not covered, because extrepo publishes metadata for Debian suites only: there, use the sudo or root commands.

Step 2: Install cliamp

# Install latest cliamp
sudo apt install cliamp

# ffmpeg is Recommended (extra formats and stream handling)
# and yt-dlp Suggested, for YouTube and YouTube Music
sudo apt install ffmpeg yt-dlp

# Verify installation
cliamp --version

# Install latest cliamp
apt install cliamp

# ffmpeg is Recommended (extra formats and stream handling)
# and yt-dlp Suggested, for YouTube and YouTube Music
apt install ffmpeg yt-dlp

# Verify installation
cliamp --version

Step 3: First play

# Open a folder of music in the player
cliamp ~/Music

# Or start on the internet-radio catalogue
cliamp --provider radio

# Configure Spotify, Qobuz, Navidrome, Jellyfin, Emby or Plex
cliamp setup

# bash and zsh completions ship with the package
cliamp --help

🎯 Basic Usage Examples

Playing things:

# A file, a folder or a stream URL
cliamp ~/Music/albums/1997
cliamp https://stream.example.org/radio.mp3

# Start playing immediately, shuffled
cliamp ~/Music --auto-play --shuffle

# A saved playlist, by name
cliamp --playlist roadtrip

# A YouTube Music URL (needs yt-dlp)
cliamp "https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=..."

# What did I listen to?
cliamp history

Look and sound:

# List and switch themes
cliamp theme list
cliamp theme tokyo-night

# List and switch visualisers
cliamp vis list
cliamp vis Stereo

# Equaliser presets, and playback speed
cliamp eq Rock
cliamp speed 1.25

# Pick an output device
cliamp --audio-device list
cliamp device "USB Audio"

# 80-column layout for a small terminal
cliamp --compact

Headless and scripted:

# Run without a TUI, serving IPC
cliamp --daemon ~/Music

# Control the running player from anywhere
cliamp toggle
cliamp next
cliamp volume -3
cliamp seek 90
cliamp status

# Feed a status bar with live visualiser bands
cliamp visstream | jq -c .

# Manage Lua plugins
cliamp plugins list

🔧 Tool Integrations

cliamp deliberately builds on what your system already has:

ALSA: audio goes out through libasound, which is why the package depends on it and why it works on a bare server with no desktop session
ffmpeg: Recommended, and used for the formats and streams the built-in decoders do not cover
yt-dlp: Suggested, and required for YouTube and YouTube Music playback
MPRIS over D-Bus: the media keys on your keyboard and your desktop's now-playing widget control cliamp like any other player
Waybar, quickshell and your shell: the IPC socket and cliamp visstream drive status bars and widgets, and bash and zsh completions ship with this package

🚀 Why Choose deb.griffo.io?

📊 Repository Comparison:

Official Debian: does not package cliamp, apt install cliamp fails on a stock system
go install: current, but a cgo build on every machine, needing the ALSA, FLAC, Ogg and Vorbis development headers first
The upstream install script: convenient, but it drops a binary into ~/.local/bin behind the package manager's back, and cliamp upgrade then replaces that binary on its own schedule
deb.griffo.io: latest version with automatic updates

✅ The Only apt Source: cliamp is in neither the Debian nor the Ubuntu archives; this repository packages the official upstream build
✅ Streaming Breaks and Gets Fixed Upstream: the music services cliamp talks to change constantly, so being on this month's release is the difference between a provider working and not
✅ Automatic Updates: packages updated within hours of upstream releases
✅ Complete Package: /usr/bin/cliamp, a man page, a desktop entry with the application icon, and bash and zsh completions
✅ Honest Dependencies: it depends on ALSA, recommends ffmpeg and suggests yt-dlp, so a minimal install stays minimal
✅ Two Architectures: amd64 and arm64, so the same package covers your laptop and your Raspberry Pi
✅ Multi-Distribution: works on Bookworm, Trixie, Forky and Sid
✅ Easy Maintenance: standard apt commands for updates

📦 Package Build Repository

The Debian packages are automatically built and maintained in this GitHub repository:

📻 cliamp-debian - Latest release builds

🔗 Related Packages

Also available from deb.griffo.io:

termusic - Another terminal music and podcast player, if you prefer its layout
lowfi - A one-command lo-fi radio player for when you want no interface at all
yt-dlp - The downloader cliamp calls for YouTube and YouTube Music
Yazi - Terminal file manager for finding the album before you play it

            🎯 Perfect for: playing your own library over SSH on a machine with no desktop, keeping internet radio in a tmux pane all day, driving a Waybar now-playing widget from a headless daemon, and getting the Winamp layout back without giving up FLAC, Navidrome or Spotify.
        

💝 Support This Project

If this repository saves you time and effort, please consider supporting it!

⭐ Star on GitHub 🐦 Share on Twitter

📻 Install Latest cliamp on Debian