termidi

A tiny MIDI player for your terminal. It ships with a built-in software synth, so no SoundFont or external synthesizer is needed.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EmreErdogan/termidi/main/install.sh | sh

The binary is installed to ~/.local/bin (override with INSTALL_DIR=/path). If that directory is not on your PATH, it is added to your shell config automatically.

On Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/EmreErdogan/termidi/main/install.ps1 | iex

This installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\termidi and adds it to your user PATH.

Supported platforms: macOS, Linux and Windows (amd64, arm64).

Usage

termidi song.mid
termidi intro.mid verse.mid   # play several files in order
termidi ~/midi/               # play every .mid/.midi file in a folder

While playing, termidi shows a level meter for each channel and a keyboard that lights up the notes being played.

Key	Action
space	pause / resume
← / →	seek 5 s back / forward
↑ / ↓	volume up / down
+ / -	speed up / slow down
n / p	next / previous song (p restarts the current song after 3 s)
q	quit

Updating

termidi update     # update to the latest release
termidi version    # print the installed version

Building from source

make build   # Go 1.27+; Linux also needs libasound2-dev

Releasing

1. In CHANGELOG.md, move the [Unreleased] entries under a new version heading.
2. Commit, push, then run make release V=x.y.z. It pushes the tag; GitHub Actions builds the binaries and attaches them to the release.