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 playlist ...               your own named playlists (see Playlists below)
ttyplayer tui [--video]              full-screen: search box, results list, now-playing bar
ttyplayer serve [--host] [--port]    play headless, driven over HTTP from any device (see Server below)
ttyplayer config                     list the settings (see Settings below)
ttyplayer doctor                     check Python, yt-dlp, mpv and ttyplayer's folders
ttyplayer version

Channels and playlists in search results are skipped; a track that cannot be played is reported and skipped.

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>

Playlists

Playlists are named lists you keep, in the order you choose, separate from history and favorites. A name is 1 to 40 letters, digits, spaces, _ or -.

ttyplayer playlist list                          every playlist and how many videos it holds
ttyplayer playlist show <name>                   its videos, numbered
ttyplayer playlist create <name>                 a new, empty playlist
ttyplayer playlist add <name> <url | words...>   append a link, every entry of a playlist link, or search picks
ttyplayer playlist remove <name> 3               drop the third video
ttyplayer playlist move <name> 3 1               move the third video to the top
ttyplayer playlist delete <name> [--yes]         delete it (asks first unless --yes)
ttyplayer playlist play <name> [--video] [--shuffle]   queue the whole playlist, in order or shuffled
ttyplayer playlist import <playlist url> [--as <name>] save a YouTube playlist, named after its title
ttyplayer playlist save-queue <name>             save what the playing ttyplayer has queued, replacing <name>

save-queue works from another terminal while ttyplayer plays, like pause and status; it creates the playlist if there is none by that name. import refuses a name that is already taken; give another with --as.

Keys in ttyplayer play (the terminal player; ttyplayer tui has its own table below):

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 / Playlists tabs, and a now-playing panel. Type a search or paste a link and press Enter. Ctrl-P opens the command palette (search, playlists, save queue as playlist, next theme, settings, 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.

Settings

ttyplayer keeps its preferences in ~/.config/ttyplayer/settings.toml ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ttyplayer/ when that is set, %APPDATA%\ttyplayer\ on Windows). Every key is optional; a missing file means the defaults.

ttyplayer config                     every setting, (default) when unchanged
ttyplayer config get <key>           one setting's value
ttyplayer config set <key> <value>   change it: ttyplayer config set show_clock false
ttyplayer config path                where the file is

In the TUI, S (or Settings… in Ctrl-P) lists the settings: Enter on a true / false one flips it and saves it (the clock shows or hides at once); the others are set with ttyplayer config set.

Server

ttyplayer serve runs the player headless on the machine with the speakers (no keyboard, no TUI) and lets any device on the network drive it through a small HTTP + WebSocket API. The other terminals' ttyplayer pause, next, status and stop keep working too.

ttyplayer serve                      listen on 127.0.0.1:7700 (this machine only)
ttyplayer serve --host 0.0.0.0       listen on every address, so a phone on the LAN can reach it
ttyplayer serve --port 8000          another port

It prints the address to open, with the token, and a QR code of it for a phone:

Serving ttyplayer at http://192.168.1.20:7700/?token=…

Open that address on a phone and it is a remote: what plays (with a moving progress bar), previous / play-pause / next, a volume slider and mute, a search box (a pasted link plays at once; each result has Play and Queue), the queue (tap a row to jump there, × removes it, Clear keeps only what plays), your favorites (the heart on any row adds or drops one) and your playlists. It follows the phone's dark or light mode, reconnects by itself when the server restarts, and "Add to Home Screen" makes it an app icon. The page keeps the token only for that browser tab; opened without one (from the home screen, say) it asks you to paste the token serve printed. Ctrl-C (or ttyplayer stop, or a stop command) stops the server and the player.

Every /api/… request and the socket need the token, as Authorization: Bearer <token> or ?token=<token>; without it the reply is 401 {"error": "unauthorized"}. Replies are JSON; errors are {"error": "…"}.

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" http://host:7700/api/status
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -d '{"query": "lofi beats"}' http://host:7700/api/play
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" -d '{"name": "volume", "value": -5}' http://host:7700/api/command

The TUI as a remote

ttyplayer tui --remote http://host:7700 opens the same screen, with the same keys and tabs, on another machine (a laptop, say) while the server plays: Enter on a result makes the server's speakers play, and the now-playing panel and the Queue tab follow the server over its socket (the header says remote: host:7700). The token is the server_token setting, so copy it into the laptop's settings with ttyplayer config set server_token <token>; --token <token> works too, but leaves it in your shell history. ttyplayer config set remote_url http://host:7700 makes the remote the default, so a plain ttyplayer tui drives it.

Searching still happens on the laptop; the server looks each picked video up again before it plays or queues it, so a long queue fills in over a few seconds. History stays the server's: the laptop records nothing. When the server cannot be reached the TUI says so once and keeps trying; a refused token says Server rejected the token.

Security: the token is the only gate, and plain HTTP carries it in clear text. That is fine on a home network you trust; it is why serve listens on 127.0.0.1 unless told otherwise. To reach it beyond your LAN (a VPS, say), put it behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS. Anyone with the token can control the player, including stopping it; change the token with ttyplayer config set server_token <new> and restart.

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, and each playlist in playlists/<name>.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.