H2PLAYER(1)

📦 version 1.2.6, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

👑 H2PLAYER(1) — the user-commands corner of the manual, but make it cute

okay bestie, so h2player lives in section 1 (User Commands) of the manual, and this is literally its whole page. let's get into it 💖

✨ NAME ✨

h2player — a CLI player for Hydrogen songs. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly 💅

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

h2player *.h2song

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so here's the tea: h2player can play a song created with Hydrogen without starting its GUI. like, no windows, no menus, no drama — just the audio. she does not support any options, but that's fine because you can control her via keyboard inputs while she's running. main character energy tbh 👑

you start h2player using a particular song file. she will use all its solo/mute settings as well as audio driver and transport settings from your last Hydrogen session. iykyk.

⚠️ if you do not hear any sounds, make sure you get some when opening the song in plain Hydrogen and hitting play right away. like, go check. fr fr.

while running, the application can be controlled using your keyboard. typing one of the characters below will result in the following actions:

  • b — rewind to the beginning of the song. back to square one, no cap ⏪
  • p — start playback. the moment we've all been waiting for 🎶
  • s — stop playback. she's resting 😌
  • q — quit h2player. say bye bestie 👋
  • f — show the current transport position in frames. the nerdy one and we love her for it 🧚

🌸 FILES 🌸

for a comprehensive list of files, configuration, and environmental variables, please see the man page of hydrogen itself. she keeps the receipts 📋

💀 BUGS & FEATURES REQUEST 💀

if you find any bug or if you would like to propose a new feature, please report it to https://github.com/hydrogen-music/hydrogen/issues

not me asking you to actually file the issue instead of just complaining in the group chat 🙈

🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

the hydrogen development team. see the complete list at Hydrogen's "About" Dialog. you can contact them at <hydrogen-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>.

subscription to the mailing list can be done here :

http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hydrogen-devel

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

  • the main graphical application — hydrogen(1)
  • a CLI tool for exporting songs and batch processing drumkits — h2cli(1)
Copyright (C) 2002-2008 Alessandro Cominu
Copyright (C) 2008-2025 The hydrogen development team

Hydrogen is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GPL version 2 or later. periodt 💜

and that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by Hydrogen 1.2.6, dated July 29, 2025, and the one and only H2PLAYER(1). slay, go play some drums 🥁✨

📦 where this page comes from