# quodlibet

## audio library manager and player

Manual section:

  1

### SYNOPSIS

quodlibet [ –print-playing | control ]
exfalso [ directory ]

### DESCRIPTION

Quod Libet is a music management program. It provides several different ways to view your audio library, as well as support for Internet radio and podcasts. It has extremely flexible metadata tag editing and searching capabilities.

This manual page is only a short reference for Quod Libet. Complete documentation is available at https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/index.html.

### OPTIONS

`--add-location=<location>`

  Add a file or directory to the library

`--debug`

  Print debugging information

`--enqueue=<filename|query>`

  Enqueue a filename or query results

`--enqueue-files=<filename[,filename..]>`

  Enqueue comma-separated files

`--filter <tag=value>`

  Filter on a tag value

`--focus`

  Focus the running player

`--force-previous`

  Jump to previous song

`--help`

  Display brief usage information

`--hide-window`

  Hide main window

`--list-browsers`

  List available browsers

`--next`

  Jump to next song

`--no-plugins`

  Start without plugins

`--open-browser=BrowserName`

  Open a new browser

`--pause`

  Pause playback

`--play`

  Start playback

`--play-file=filename`

  Play a file

`--play-pause`

  Toggle play/pause mode

`--previous`

  Jump to previous song if near the beginning, otherwise restart

`--print-playing`

  Print out information about the currently playing song. You may provide in a string like the kind described in the RENAMING FILES section below, plus special tags ~#elapsed or ~elapsed.

`--print-playlist`

  Print the current playlist

`--print-query=<query>`

  Print filenames of results of query

`--print-query-text`

  Print the active text query

`--print-queue`

  Print the contents of the queue

`--query=search-string`

  Search your audio library

`--queue=<on|off|t>`

  Show or hide the queue

`--quit`

  Exit Quod Libet

`--random=tag`

  Filter on a random value

`--rating=<[+|-]0.0..1.0>`

  Set rating of playing song

`--rating-down`

  Decrease rating of playing song by one star

`--rating-up`

  Increase rating of playing song by one star

`--refresh`

  Refresh and rescan library

`--repeat=<off|on|t>`

  Turn repeat off, on, or toggle

`--repeat-type=<current|all|one|off>`

  Repeat the currently playing song, the current list, stop after one song, or turn repeat off

`--run`

  Start Quod Libet if it isn’t running

`--seek=<[+|-][HH:]MM:SS>`

  Seek within the playing song

`--set-browser=BrowserName`

  Set the current browser

`--show-window`

  Show main window

`--shuffle=<off|on|t>`

  Turn shuffle off, on, or toggle

`--shuffle-type=<random|weighted|off>`

  Set the shuffle type to be random, to prefer higher rated songs, or turn shuffle off

`--start-hidden`

  Don’t show any windows on start

`--start-playing`

  Begin playing immediately

`--status`

  Print playing status

`--stop`

  Stop playback

`--stop-after=<0|1|t>`

  Stop after the playing song

`--toggle-window`

  Toggle main window visibility

`--unfilter`

  Remove active browser filters

`--unqueue=<filename|query>`

  Unqueue a file or query

`--version`

  Display version and copyright

`--volume=<[+|-]0..100>`

  Set the volume

`--volume-down`

  Turn down the volume

`--volume-up`

  Turn up the volume

`--with-pattern=<pattern>`

  Set the output format of the –print-playing, –print-playlist, –print-query, and –print-queue commands. You may provide in a tag-pattern string like the kind described in the RENAMING FILES section below.

### ALBUM COVERS

Album covers should be put in the same directory as the songs they apply to, and have “folder”, “front”, or “cover” in their filenames. If you want to store multiple albums in the same directory but keep distinct cover images, the name of the appropriate image file must contain the labelid tag value, e.g. COCX-32760 cover.jpg.

### TIED TAGS

Many places in Quod Libet allow you to use “tied tags”. Tied tags are two tag names joined together with a “~” like “title~version” or “album~part”. Tied tags result in “nice” displays even when one of the tags is missing; for example, “title~version” will result in Title - Version when a version tag is present, but only Title when one isn’t. You can tie any number of tags together.

### SEARCH SYNTAX

All of Quod Libet’s search boxes support advanced searches of the following forms:

tag = value
tag = !value
tag = “value”
tag = /value/
tag = &(value1, value2)
tag = |(value1, value2)
!tag = value
|(tag1 = value1, tag2 = value2)
&(tag1 = value1, tag2 = value2)
#(numerictag < value)
#(numerictag = value)
#(numerictag > value)

The ‘c’ postfix on strings or regular expressions makes the search case-sensitive. Numeric values may be given as integers, floating-point numbers, MM:SS format, or simple English, e.g. “3 days”, “2 hours”.

See https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/searching.html.

All internal tags begin with a ~ character. Non-numeric internal tags are ~basename, ~dirname, ~filename, ~format, ~length, ~people, and ~rating. Numeric internal tags are ~#added, ~#bitrate, ~#disc, ~#lastplayed, ~#laststarted, ~#length, ~#mtime, ~#playcount, ~#skipcount, and ~#track.

See https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/tags/internal_tags.html.

### RENAMING FILES

Quod Libet allows you to rename files based on their tags. In some cases you may wish to alter the filename depending on whether some tags are present or missing, in addition to their values. A common pattern might be

`<tracknumber>. <title~version>`

You can use a ‘|’ to only insert text when a tag is present:

`<tracknumber|<tracknumber>. ><title~version>`

You can also specify literal text to use if the tag is missing by adding another ‘|’:

`<album|<album>|No Album> - <title>`

See https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/renaming_files.html.

### AUDIO BACKENDS

Quod Libet uses GStreamer for audio playback. It tries to read your GConf GStreamer configuration, but if that fails it falls back to osssink. You can change the pipeline option in ~/.quodlibet/config to use a different sink, or pass options to the sink. For example, you might use esdsink or alsasink device=hw:1.

See https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/playback/backends.html.

### FILES

~/.quodlibet/songs

  A pickled Python dict of cached metadata. Deleting this file will remove all songs from your library.

~/.quodlibet/config

  Quod Libet’s configuration file. This file is overwritten when Quod Libet exits.

~/.quodlibet/current

  A “key=value” file containing information about the currently playing song.

~/.quodlibet/control

  A FIFO connected to the most-recently-started instance of the program. –next, –previous, etc., use this to control the player.

~/.quodlibet/plugins/

  Put plugins here.

~/.quodlibet/browsers/

  Put custom library browsers here.

See https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/interacting.html.

### BUGS

See https://github.com/quodlibet/quodlibet/issues for a list of all currently open bugs and feature requests.

### AUTHORS

Joe Wreschnig and Michael Urman are the primary authors of Quod Libet.

### SEE ALSO

https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/,
https://quodlibet.readthedocs.io/en/latest/guide/faq.html,
`regex`(7), `gst-launch`(1)