ttyplayer

A modern YouTube player for the terminal. Search YouTube, queue videos and playlists, and play audio, or video too, through mpv: from the command line, or from a full-screen TUI. Keep a history and favorites, and drive the player from any other terminal.

Usage

ttyplayer play <url>                 play a video link, audio only
ttyplayer play <playlist url>        queue every entry of a playlist
ttyplayer play <words...>            search, pick one or more results, play them in order
ttyplayer play ... --video           open a video window as well
ttyplayer play ... --limit 10        show more search results

ttyplayer search <words...>          list results with durations
ttyplayer history                    recently played, newest first
ttyplayer history --play             pick from history and play again
ttyplayer history --clear            forget the history
ttyplayer favorite <url | words...>  add a link, a playlist, or search picks to favorites
ttyplayer favorites                  favorites, newest first
ttyplayer favorites --play           pick from favorites and play them
ttyplayer favorites --remove 2       drop the second favorite as listed
ttyplayer favorites --clear          forget all favorites
ttyplayer tui [--video]              full-screen: search box, results list, now-playing bar
ttyplayer doctor                     check Python, yt-dlp, mpv and ttyplayer's folders
ttyplayer version

While ttyplayer plays in one terminal, any other terminal can drive it:

ttyplayer pause                      pause / resume
ttyplayer next                       next in the queue
ttyplayer prev                       previous in the queue
ttyplayer stop                       quit the player
ttyplayer status                     1:23 / 4:56  Playing  <title>

Keys while playing:

On Windows (Windows Terminal, PowerShell) the keys, arrows included, map the same way.

The volume meter, and the volume keys here and in the TUI, follow the Mac's system volume on macOS (the Mac's own volume keys move the meter within 2 seconds) and mpv's device (per-app) volume on Linux and Windows.

Picks accept several numbers at once: 1 3 5 queues those three in that order. After a search, m lists the next batch of results.

TTYPLAYER_TIMING=1 ttyplayer play <words> prints how long the YouTube lookup took and adds started in 2.4s (from loadfile to the first sound) to the status line.

TUI

ttyplayer tui opens a full-screen player: a search box, Search / Queue / History / Favorites tabs, and a now-playing panel. Type a search or paste a link and press Enter. Ctrl-P opens the command palette (search, next theme, help, quit, pause, next, previous, mute, and Textual's own theme picker); ? lists every key and command.

In the search box, letters, digits, / and ? are typed as text; esc leaves it for the table.

Install

One command installs everything ttyplayer needs.

macOS and Linux:

curl -LsSf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webliftro/ttyplayer/main/install.sh | sh

Windows (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/webliftro/ttyplayer/main/install.ps1 | iex

Or clone the repository and run ./install.sh (macOS, Linux) or powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -File .\install.ps1 (Windows) inside it; that installs the checkout you cloned.

The script:

1. installs uv with its official installer if uv is missing (uv brings its own Python 3.13+; it runs as you, without sudo),
2. installs mpv if it is missing: Homebrew on macOS, your package manager on Linux (apt-get, dnf, pacman, zypper or apk, with sudo), winget on Windows,
3. installs ttyplayer with uv tool install,
4. runs ttyplayer doctor: every line should start with ✓.

It prints every command before running it. TTYPLAYER_INSTALL_DRY_RUN=1 ./install.sh and install.ps1 -DryRun only print them. If Homebrew (macOS) or winget (Windows) is missing, the script tells you how to install it and stops. If ttyplayer is not found in a new terminal, run uv tool update-shell.

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
brew install mpv
uv tool install ttyplayer

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
sudo apt-get install -y mpv
uv tool install ttyplayer

powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"
winget install -e --id shinchiro.mpv
uv tool install ttyplayer

uv tool install git+https://github.com/webliftro/ttyplayer

Upgrade with uv tool upgrade ttyplayer. Uninstall with uv tool uninstall ttyplayer.

Development

Install from a checkout, with mpv installed as above:

uv tool install --editable .

The --editable flag means edits to the source are live without reinstalling.

uv run pytest        # unit tests, no network and no mpv needed
uv run ttyplayer ...   # run from the checkout

The live tests talk to the real YouTube through ttyplayer.youtube, so a yt-dlp or YouTube change shows up as a failing test. They are skipped unless TTYPLAYER_LIVE=1 is set:

uv run pytest -q                                      # default suite, live tests skipped
TTYPLAYER_LIVE=1 uv run pytest -q tests/test_live.py    # live tests, needs network

History lives in $XDG_DATA_HOME/ttyplayer/history.jsonl, by default ~/.local/share/ttyplayer/history.jsonl (%LOCALAPPDATA%\ttyplayer\history.jsonl on Windows). Favorites live next to it in favorites.jsonl. History and favorites kept under the player's earlier name are moved here on the first run.

Releasing

CI (.github/workflows/tests.yml) runs the suite on Linux and macOS on every push. Pushing a v* tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml, which builds with uv build and publishes to PyPI through trusted publishing, so there is no token to store.

One-time setup on PyPI: create an account, then under "Publishing" add a pending GitHub publisher for the project ttyplayer with owner webliftro, repository ttyplayer and workflow release.yml. The first tagged release creates the project.

To release, bump the version (uv version --bump minor, or edit version in pyproject.toml), commit, then:

git tag v0.3.0 && git push --tags

How it works

yt-dlp resolves what to play: a search or a playlist becomes a list of videos, a link becomes one. mpv produces the sound, started in the background with a private IPC socket. ttyplayer talks to it in JSON over that socket, owns the keyboard, and redraws a one-line status. See docs/architecture.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.