How to Open CUE File: Mount, Play, Split or Fix a Cue Sheet

What is a CUE file?

A CUE file is a plain-text cue sheet that describes how one or more data or audio files are laid out as CD tracks. It doesn't contain any audio or data itself. Instead, each line tells a program which file to read (FILE), where each track starts (TRACK and INDEX), what kind of track it is, and optionally the album and song names (TITLE, PERFORMER). The format was introduced by CDRWIN, a CD-burning program from Golden Hawk Technology, and is now read by many burning tools, media players and emulators.

You'll meet CUE files in two very different situations:

• CD disc images (BIN/CUE): a large .bin (or .img) holds every raw sector of a CD, and the small .cue says where the data track and any CD-audio tracks begin. This is how PlayStation 1, Sega Saturn and many old PC CDs are archived. Our guide to opening BIN files covers the BIN side in depth.
• Album rips (FLAC + CUE, APE + CUE, WAV + CUE): a whole CD ripped into one long audio file, with the cue sheet marking where each song starts and naming it. Players that read the .cue show the separate songs; players that don't show one hour-long track.

Because it's plain text, you can open CUE files in Notepad or TextEdit to read them, or drop one into the reader above for a decoded track list. What you can't do is play or mount the .cue on its own: the BIN or audio file it names has to be next to it.

How to open a CUE file: quick answer

Short answer: open the .cue, not the big file, in a program made for its content, with both files in the same folder:

1. Keep the pair together. The .cue and the BIN/FLAC/APE/WAV it names must sit in the same folder, and the name on the cue sheet's FILE line must match the real file name exactly.
2. Find out what it describes. Drop the .cue in the checker: data tracks (MODE1 or MODE2) mean a disc image, AUDIO tracks pointing to a FLAC or WAV mean an album.
3. Load the .cue, not the big file. Open CUE files in a program that matches their content (table below).
4. Error about a missing file? Fix the FILE line as shown in common errors.

Open BIN/CUE disc images on Windows 11 and 10

To open CUE files that come with a game or software BIN, you need a mounting tool, because Windows can't mount a BIN/CUE image by itself: double-clicking only works for ISO (and VHD) images. Install the free, open-source WinCDEmu, then right-click the .cue and choose Select drive letter & mount; the disc appears in File Explorer as a new drive. DAEMON Tools Lite and PowerISO do the same job.

• Games: you usually don't need to mount anything. DuckStation reads bin/cue images directly (as well as CHD, MDS/MDF and other formats), and RetroArch cores for disc-based consoles load the .cue too.
• Multi-file dumps such as Game (Track 1).bin, Game (Track 2).bin: keep every BIN in the folder; the single .cue lists them all with one FILE line each.
• Mac and Linux mount BIN/CUE after converting the data track to ISO with bchunk; see the BIN guide's Mac and Linux sections.

Mounting tools, firmware vs. disc BINs and BIN-to-ISO conversion are explained step by step in BIN/CUE disc images, so this page focuses on the cue sheet itself.

Play a FLAC + CUE album (or APE, WAV)

To open CUE files from a music rip, use a player that reads cue sheets and load the .cue, not the FLAC. The player then lists each song with its title, and you can skip between them as with a normal album.

1. Windows: install foobar2000 and drag the .cue into the playlist (or File > Open). Each track appears separately; foobar2000 also reads cue sheets embedded inside FLAC files.
2. Windows, Mac or Linux: VLC opens a .cue as a playlist of the album's tracks.
3. Android: Poweramp detects .cue files automatically when it scans your music and shows the album as a folder of separate songs.

Seeing every song twice? The FLAC probably also has an embedded cue sheet. Open either the .cue or the .flac, not both; the checker above tells you when a dropped FLAC has an embedded cue sheet.

Split a FLAC, APE or WAV album into tracks with a CUE file

Most programs that open CUE files for playback can also split the album. Splitting creates one audio file per song from the single image file, so the album works in any player. The cue sheet supplies the cut points and track names; the audio isn't re-recorded, and with a lossless output format (FLAC, WAV) there's no quality loss.

The audio file must be the one the cue sheet was made for. If the last track in the checker's Tracks tab starts after the end of your file, or the songs are cut mid-word, the .cue belongs to a different rip.

Burn a BIN/CUE image or audio CUE to a CD

Burning software can open CUE files directly, and you should always burn through the .cue so the disc gets the correct track layout. In ImgBurn (free, Windows):

1. Choose Write image file to disc on the start screen (or Mode > Write).
2. Insert a blank CD large enough for the image.
3. Click the folder icon and select the .cue file, not the .bin.
4. Click Write and wait for it to finish and verify.

An audio CD must be 44.1 kHz, 16-bit stereo. A cue sheet pointing to a FLAC or APE file only burns if the burning program can decode that format; if it can't, convert the album to WAV first and edit the FILE line to the new name.

Open CUE files on Mac, Linux, Android and iPhone

Which apps can open CUE files depends on your device and on what the cue sheet describes:

On a phone, the simplest way to listen to a single-file album is to split it on a computer first; separate tracks then work in every music app. On Mac, open CUE files as text by right-clicking > Open With > TextEdit, since double-clicking a .cue usually finds no app.

CUE file syntax: every command explained

You don't need to know the syntax to open CUE files, but it helps when one fails or you want to edit one. A cue sheet is a list of commands, one per line. Lines before the first TRACK describe the whole disc; lines after a TRACK belong to that track. File names with spaces go in double quotes. This is a typical album rip:

Track types and sector sizes

The track type tells software how many bytes each sector takes in a BIN. Choosing the wrong one is the most common reason a hand-made BIN/CUE fails to mount.

How INDEX times work (mm:ss:ff to sectors)

An INDEX time is minutes:seconds:frames, and a CD has 75 frames per second. One frame equals one sector, so the time is also a sector count from the start of the file named on the FILE line (00:00:00 is the file's first byte, not the disc's two-second lead-in).

Worked example: INDEX 01 03:25:40

• Seconds: 3 × 60 + 25 = 205 s, plus 40 ÷ 75 = 0.53 s → the track starts at 3:25.53.
• Sector: 205 × 75 + 40 = 15,415.
• Byte offset in a BIN with 2,352-byte sectors: 15,415 × 2,352 = 36,256,080.

That's why the last field never goes above 74, and why 04:31:80 is an error. The reader at the top does this conversion for every track, and with the BIN dropped too, it checks the real sector header at each computed offset.

INDEX 00 vs INDEX 01: INDEX 00 is the start of the gap before a track (often 2 seconds of silence on audio CDs); INDEX 01 is where the track really begins and where a player jumps when you skip to it. Rippers store these gaps in different ways ("gaps appended", "gaps prepended", "gaps left out"), which is why two cue sheets for the same CD can differ.

How to create a CUE file

The quickest way is the generator in the tool above: pick the file, and it reads the BIN's first sector to suggest MODE1/2352 or MODE2/2352 automatically. To write one by hand in Notepad, a single-track disc image needs only three lines (the BIN-specific steps are in open a BIN without a CUE file):

FILE "game.bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

For a one-file album, add one TRACK per song with its start time. Get the times from the CD's track list or the rip log; converting "4:31" gives 04:31:00.

PERFORMER "Example Quartet"
TITLE "Live Sessions"
FILE "Album.flac" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Opening Theme"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Second Song"
    INDEX 01 04:31:20

Save with Save as type: All files and encoding UTF-8 so it isn't stored as Album.cue.txt. Then open CUE files you made exactly like original ones: load the .cue, never the BIN or FLAC. A guessed cue sheet can't recreate the exact track gaps of an original disc, so for multi-track games look for the original .cue from the same dump.

Fix "file not found" and other CUE errors

When a program refuses to open CUE files, most failures come down to the FILE line not matching the real file. Drop the .cue together with its BIN or FLAC into the checker; it pinpoints the line and can download a corrected copy.

"File not found" or the album won't load

The name in quotes after FILE must match the file exactly, including the extension. It breaks when you rename the BIN, convert WAV to FLAC, or download a cue sheet made for another rip. Edit the line to the real name, for example FILE "Album.flac" WAVE. Capital letters matter on Mac, Linux, Android and in many emulators, even though Windows ignores them.

A full path in the FILE line

Lines like FILE "C:\Rips\Album.flac" WAVE only work on the PC that made them. Delete the folder part so only the file name is left, and keep the .cue next to the file.

Garbled names with accents or non-Latin letters

The cue sheet format doesn't fix a text encoding. A sheet saved in an old code page (common for Japanese, Cyrillic or accented names) shows garbage in programs expecting UTF-8, and the FILE name then doesn't match. Open it in a text editor that can choose an encoding, check the names look right, and save it as UTF-8.

Disc image mounts but is empty, or the game won't boot

The track type is probably wrong (for example MODE1/2352 on a PlayStation image that needs MODE2/2352). The checker reads the sector header at each track start and tells you which mode the BIN really uses.

Songs start a little early or late

The INDEX times don't match this rip. Either the cue sheet was made for a different pressing, or the gaps were handled differently; use the cue sheet that came with the audio file.

Notepad saved "Album.cue.txt"

Turn on View > Show > File name extensions in File Explorer and rename it so it ends in .cue.

Is a CUE file safe? Can I delete it?

A CUE file is safe: you can open CUE files in any text editor without risk. Each one is a few kilobytes of plain text that no program runs as code. Still, scan the BIN or other files from the same download as you would any download.

Deleting it loses the track list. For an album, your player will then show one long track without song names; for a disc image with audio tracks, the music or the whole game may stop working. Keep it unless you've already split the album into separate files or converted the image to another format.

Convert a CUE file (to ISO, MP3 or CHD)

A cue sheet itself isn't converted; you convert the file it describes, using the .cue as the map:

• BIN/CUE to ISO: possible for the data track only, with bchunk or PowerISO (details). Audio tracks can't go into an ISO.
• BIN/CUE to CHD: a compressed, lossless single file many emulators accept, made with MAME's chdman createcd -i game.cue -o game.chd.
• FLAC/APE + CUE to MP3 tracks: use the splitting tools and pick MP3 as the output format.

Related file extensions

Sources and technical references

The cue sheet format comes from the CDRWIN user guide; there's no formal standard, so these documents and the tools' own pages were used to verify each detail.

• Cue sheet (computing) — Wikipedia — origin in CDRWIN, the command list, INDEX 00/01 and 75 frames per second.
• CUE sheet format — libodraw documentation — FILE types, track types and sector sizes, CD-TEXT 80-character limit, CATALOG and ISRC formats, text encoding.
• Cue sheet specification (CDRWIN syntax) — CueSharp — command syntax, track numbers 1–99, one PREGAP per track, FLAGS values.
• CDRWIN — Wikipedia — Golden Hawk Technology's burning software that introduced the format.
• WinCDEmu — Sysprogs — free LGPL mounter for ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD and IMG images.
• DuckStation — GitHub — supported disc image formats, including bin/cue.
• foobar2000 change log — cuesheet and embedded cuesheet support.
• CUETools — GitHub — formats and cue sheet styles supported, AccurateRip/CTDB verification.
• XLD (X Lossless Decoder) — SourceForge — splitting audio files into tracks with a cue sheet on Mac.
• shntool manual — Debian — split -f with a cue sheet, FLAC and APE support.
• How to write an image file to a disc using ImgBurn — ImgBurn forum — Write mode and selecting the .cue.
• What are CUE sheets? — Poweramp knowledge base — automatic cue sheet parsing on Android.
• Playing .cue files in Windows Media Player — Microsoft Q&A — no cue support in Windows Media Player; VLC suggested instead.

Frequently asked questions