ytm-player is a terminal client for browsing and playing music from a YouTube Music account. It uses mpv for audio playback and Textual for its interface.
A YouTube Music account is required, but a Premium subscription is optional. The setup process supports browser-cookie authentication, while the application combines keyboard-driven navigation with desktop media integration.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Navigate with Vim-style controls, including j/k movement, multi-key sequences, and numeric count prefixes.
- Display synchronised lyrics with live highlighting and an LRCLIB fallback when lyrics are unavailable from YouTube.
- Use gapless playback and stream prefetching through the mpv backend.
- Retain previously heard audio in a local cache managed using a least-recently-used policy.
- Restore the last-playing track and playback queue when the application starts.
- Import Spotify playlists through the Spotify API or a scraper fallback.
- Control a running player from another terminal through command-line and inter-process communication commands.
- Choose Textual themes and override application colours in a separate theme configuration file.
- Integrate with MPRIS on Linux, Now Playing on macOS, and media keys on Windows.
- Optionally publish listening activity through Discord Rich Presence.
- Optionally scrobble played music to Last.fm.
- Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Website: github.com/peternaame-boop/ytm-player
Support:
Developer: Peter Naame
License: MIT License
ytm-player is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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