aplay command not found

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

aplay: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: aplay: command not found

Solutions to aplay: command not found

How To Fix aplay: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu aplay is provided by alsa-utils package.

alsa-utils is:

Included tools:

• alsactl: advanced controls for ALSA sound drivers
• alsaloop: create loopbacks between PCM capture and playback devices
• alsamixer: curses mixer
• alsaucm: alsa use case manager
• amixer: command line mixer
• amidi: read from and write to ALSA RawMIDI ports
• aplay, arecord: command line playback and recording
• aplaymidi, arecordmidi: command line MIDI playback and recording
• aconnect, aseqnet, aseqdump: command line MIDI sequencer control
• iecset: set or dump IEC958 status bits
• speaker-test: speaker test tone generator

ALSA is the Advanced Linux Sound Architecture.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install alsa-utils

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install alsa-utils.

sudo apt -y install alsa-utils

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install alsa-utils

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix aplay command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.