A clean, lightweight YouTube music player for your terminal.
Stream music without opening a browser. Features an interactive queue, local playlists, album art, audio spectrum, and seamless background playback.
Requires mpv and yt-dlp.
The visualizer needs pw-cat on Linux, or audiotee on macOS 14.2+, which your terminal must be allowed to use under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording. Press v to cycle through the spectrum, stereo VU meters, and off.
On macOS, the visualizer follows the system default output. Choosing a specific coreaudio/<id> output disables it because audiotee cannot capture that route.
go install -trimpath -ldflags="-s -w" github.com/omegaatt36/ytea/cmd/ytea@latestLaunch ytea in your terminal:
ytea- Press
/to search YouTube, or paste any video / playlist URL directly. - Press
enterto play, orato append to the queue. - Press
?anytime to open the full interactive keymap.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
/ |
Search or paste URL |
space |
Pause / Resume |
← / → |
Seek ±5s |
0–9 |
Seek to 0–90% |
t |
Seek to a time (1:23, 90, or 50%) |
n / p |
Next / Previous |
tab |
Switch pane (Results, Queue, Playlists, History) |
enter |
Play now |
a |
Add to queue |
s |
Save to playlist |
I |
Ignore the selected YouTube playlist (in Playlists) |
o |
Audio output device |
? |
Help |
q |
Quit |
Mouse is also supported: click tabs, search, or list rows, use the scroll wheel to navigate, drag rows to reorder the queue and local playlists, and click the progress bar to seek.
~/.config/ytea/config.toml:
volume = 70
normalize = false
audio-device = "" # mpv audio device name
# optional, for YouTube Premium 256k audio; set one of:
cookies-from-browser = "firefox" # or "firefox:<profile dir>" for Firefox forks, e.g. Zen
# cookies = "cookies.txt" # full login export
# youtube-channel-id = "UC..." # for cookie-backed account playlistsTo show your own YouTube playlists and Liked videos, see YouTube Account Playlists.
Inspired by ytfzf.