tidal-cli 1.0.0

Terminal music player for TIDAL — search, browse, queue, and stream lossless audio from your terminal

Ticli

A terminal music player for TIDAL. Search, browse, queue, and play music — all from your terminal.

Ticli connects directly to TIDAL's API using your premium account. No desktop app needed. Just authenticate, search, and play.

Works on macOS and Linux.

╭──────────────────────── Ticli ────────────────────────╮
│                                                        │
│  ▶ ♥ Arlo Parks - Sophie                               │
│     Super Sad Generation                               │
│     1:47 ━━━━━━━━●━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3:28    │
│     Queue: 3/12  LOSSLESS                              │
│     Next: Cola • Arlo Parks                            │
│                                                        │
│  [space] play/pause  [n/→] next  [←] prev             │
│  [s] search  [q] queue  [p] playlists                  │
│  [l] like  [r] radio  [t] mini  [m] more               │
│                                                        │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Features

• Search — Find tracks, albums, artists, and playlists
• Browse — Navigate album and playlist tracklists
• Queue — Manage your playback queue, reorder, remove tracks
• Playlists — Browse and play your saved playlists
• Likes — Toggle favorites on any track
• Radio — Generate a station from any track
• Mini mode — Condensed single-line display
• Session restore — Picks up where you left off
• Lossless & Hi-Res — Stream up to 24-bit/192kHz FLAC
• Secure auth — OAuth tokens stored in your OS keychain

Install

Requires Python 3.10+ and ffmpeg.

# macOS
brew install ffmpeg python3
pip install tidal-cli

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install ffmpeg python3-pip
pip install tidal-cli

For secure token storage in your OS keychain (recommended):

pip install "tidal-cli[keyring]"

Usage

ticli

On first run you'll get a URL to authorize with your TIDAL account. After that, your session is cached and you go straight to the player.

Quality

ticli --quality HIRES      # 24-bit hi-res FLAC
ticli --quality LOSSLESS   # 16-bit FLAC
ticli --quality HIGH       # lossless FLAC (default)
ticli --quality LOW        # 320kbps

Keybindings

Player

Key	Action
space	Play / pause
n →	Next track
←	Previous track
s	Search
q	Queue
p	Playlists
l	Like / unlike track
r	Start radio from track
t	Toggle mini player
m	Show more controls
esc	Quit

Search

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Navigate results
enter →	Play track / open album or artist
backspace	Delete character
esc ←	Back

Queue

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Navigate
enter	Jump to track
x	Remove track
esc ←	Back

How it works

Ticli uses tidalapi to authenticate and fetch audio stream URLs. Audio is played through ffplay. The TUI is built with Rich.

┌─────────┐     OAuth      ┌───────────┐    stream URL    ┌───────────┐
│  Ticli  │ ──────────────► │  TIDAL    │ ──────────────►  │  ffplay   │
│  (TUI)  │ ◄────────────── │  API      │                  │           │
└─────────┘    metadata     └───────────┘                  └───────────┘

Auth & credentials

OAuth tokens are stored in your OS keychain (macOS Keychain or GNOME Keyring). Falls back to ~/.config/ticli/session.json with 0600 permissions if keyring is unavailable.

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Python 3.10+
• TIDAL Premium subscription
• ffmpeg

Support

If you enjoy Ticli, consider buying me a coffee.

License

MIT