playsound3 3.3.2


pip install playsound3

  Latest version

Released: Jul 18, 2026


Meta
Author: Szymon Mikler, Taylor Marks
Maintainer: Szymon Mikler
Requires Python: >=3.10

Classifiers

Development Status
  • 4 - Beta

Intended Audience
  • Developers

License
  • OSI Approved :: MIT License

Operating System
  • OS Independent

Programming Language
  • Python :: 3
  • Python :: 3.10
  • Python :: 3.11
  • Python :: 3.12
  • Python :: 3.13
  • Python :: 3.14

Topic
  • Multimedia :: Sound/Audio :: MIDI
  • Multimedia :: Sound/Audio :: Players
  • Multimedia :: Sound/Audio :: Players :: MP3

Typing
  • Typed

Version 3.0.0

New functionalities:

  • stop sounds by calling sound.stop()
  • check if sound is still playing with sound.is_alive()

playsound3

PyPi version PyPI license

Cross platform library to play sound files in Python.

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install playsound3

Quick Start

After installation, playing sounds is simple:

from playsound3 import playsound

# Play sounds from disk
playsound("/path/to/sound/file.mp3")

# or play sounds from the internet.
playsound("http://url/to/sound/file.mp3")

# You can play sounds in the background
sound = playsound("/path/to/sound/file.mp3", block=False)

# and check if they are still playing
if sound.is_alive():
    print("Sound is still playing!")

# and stop them whenever you like.
sound.stop()

Reference

playsound

def playsound(
    sound: str | Path,
    block: bool = True,
    backend: str | None = None,
) -> Sound

sound (required)
The audio file you want to play (local or URL).

block (optional, default=True)
Determines whether the sound plays synchronously (blocking) or asynchronously (background).

backend (optional, default=None)
Specify which audio backend to use. If None, the best backend is determined automatically.

To see a list of backends supported by your system:

from playsound3 import AVAILABLE_BACKENDS, DEFAULT_BACKEND

print(AVAILABLE_BACKENDS)  # for example: ["gstreamer", "ffmpeg", ...]
print(DEFAULT_BACKEND)  # for example: "gstreamer"

Sound

playsound returns a Sound object for playback control:

Method Description
.is_alive() Checks if the sound is currently playing.
.wait() Blocks execution until playback finishes.
.stop() Immediately stops playback.

Supported systems

  • Linux
    • GStreamer
    • ALSA (aplay and mpg123)
  • Windows
    • WMPlayer
    • winmm.dll
  • macOS
    • AppKit
    • afplay
  • Multiplatform
    • FFmpeg

Supported audio formats

The bare minimum supported by every backend are .mp3 and .wav files. Using them will keep your program compatible across different systems. To see an exhaustive list of extensions supported by a backend, refer to their respective documentation.

Fork information

This repository was originally forked from playsound library created by Taylor Marks. The original library is not maintained anymore and doesn't accept pull requests. This library is a major rewrite of its original.

Feel free to create an issue or contribute to playsound3!

Wheel compatibility matrix

Platform Python 3
any

Files in release

Extras:
Dependencies:
pywin32