YTKTV 4.0.0

What's new in 4.0.0

🖥 YTKTV Desk: Server Mode

• A server console instead of the front desk. Settings → Staff Terminals → Switch to Server Mode… turns the main Desk's computer into the server: it shows rooms and staff terminals online, requests per minute, CPU, memory and database size, today's takings, and a live log you can filter and export. Staff work on the staff terminals.
• It stays in Server Mode across restarts until you leave it (with the Desk password, if one is set), keeps the computer awake, can start with the computer, and backs the records up with one button.

🎮 The Desk's GPU works for every room

• Process songs for the rooms: with a GPU on the Desk, it removes the vocals and writes the lyrics of the songs every room has queued. The rooms' own computers need no GPU, even a Raspberry Pi will do.
• Every room's current song comes first, then every room's next one. A song sung in two rooms is done once.
• When the Desk is off, busy, or cannot download a song, the room sends it the audio or does the song itself, as before.
• Server Mode shows a Songs for rooms card: queue, the song being worked on, the GPU and the cache.

🎤 Lyrics that match the video

• With a GPU, every song's lyrics are written on your computer by Whisper, from the singer separated from the band, so the timing matches this video. The lyrics found online are shown until then and help Whisper with the words.
• Songs singing now or next are done in 30-second pieces: the lyrics appear piece by piece within seconds, while the rest of the song is still being worked on.
• Without a GPU, lyrics come from online as before; Whisper writes only songs that have none.

🎚 Original and Instrumental line up

• The instrumental is lined up with the original to the sample after it is separated, so switching between them no longer sounds doubled.

🔧 Also

• Pull requests from forks get area labels too (GitHub restricts pull_request_target from December 2).
• Fixed a CI crash in the Server Mode tests and a flaky test on Windows.

✅ Works with older versions

• Rooms and Desks of any 3.x version keep working with 4.0. To have songs processed on the Desk, update both the Desk and the rooms to 4.0.
• Instrumentals already in the cache line up the next time they are separated. Lyrics written before stay until the song is written again.

YTKTV 3.2.1

What's new in 3.2.1

🛎 YTKTV Desk

• The 3.x look comes to the Desk: the same night sky as the console behind see-through panels, and glossy room tiles in the usual status colours.
• Fix: the Maintenance / Back in Service button no longer shows a system emoji next to its icon.

📖 Docs

• The Desk screenshot in the README shows the new look.

✅ Works with older versions

Only how the Desk looks has changed: it works with rooms of any 3.x version, and nothing needs setting up again.

YTKTV 3.2.0

What's new in 3.2.0

The TV and the phones now match the console's 3.0 look.

📺 MV screen

• Between songs, the TV shows the console's night sky, with the QR code in a glass panel with a glowing pink-to-cyan edge.
• The Now Playing / Up Next banner is a glossy pink-to-violet pill.

📱 Phone page

• The same night sky behind everything.
• Tabs with icons: search, queue, lists, remote and games, with the queue count on the mic.
• Big glossy tiles in the console's colours for playback, vocals, crowd sounds and moods.

📖 Docs

• The README tells why YTKTV was made.

✅ Works with older versions

Only how things look has changed: rooms, the Desk and phones of any 3.x version work together, and nothing needs setting up again.

YTKTV 3.1.0

What's new in 3.1.0

🎤 YTKTV

• Background videos. Settings → Background Videos (off by default) plays music videos while nobody has chosen a song, like a KTV room before the first song. Play from your favorites and sung songs, or from one playlist. The first song anyone chooses takes over at once; background videos are not scored and not added to Sung.
• Confetti for a great song. A score of 90 or more, or the best of the night, bursts confetti over the MV behind the score card.

🛎 YTKTV Desk

• Tonight's best on the lobby screen. Rooms send their scores to the Desk, and the lobby screen shows the five best of the day with the singer and the song.
• A room's Admin Settings can turn background videos on or off.

🔧 Under the hood

• Pull requests run fewer macOS and Windows tests, so checks finish sooner; main still tests everything.
• The benchmark check measures again before calling something a slowdown.

✅ Works with older versions

• A 3.1 room works with an older Desk, and an older room works with Desk 3.1; older rooms just do not send scores to the lobby board.
• The Desk's records are upgraded in place the first time it starts; nothing is lost.
• Background videos stay off until you turn them on.

YTKTV 3.0.0

What's new in 3.0.0

YTKTV 3.0 has a new look: our own icons everywhere and a console that feels like a KTV touch screen.

🎤 YTKTV

• Our own icons. 71 icons drawn for YTKTV replace the system emoji on the console, the phone page, the games and the MV screen. Reactions fly across the TV as coloured icons.
• A KTV-style console. A night-sky background, glossy tiles with the icon and name in the middle, and an on-screen Keyboard on the Search page for touch screens (initials still work: yldb).
• Mood scenes. Party → Mood, or the phone page: Birthday, Romantic, Party or Chill keeps the TV's edge lights and smart lights in that scene's colours, with a cheer or an air horn to start.
• Menu pictures. Items on the staff terminal's menu show their picture when guests order from the console or a phone.

🛎 YTKTV Desk

• Lobby screen. Settings → Lobby Screen puts a board on a TV outside the desk: free rooms, when busy rooms come free, and today's bookings. It goes full screen on the chosen display, like a room's MV screen.
• Service calls that wait too long turn bright red, show how long they have waited and beep again (Settings → Service Calls, 3 minutes by default). The shift report counts them.
• Pictures for menu items: Settings → Menu and Prices → Picture.

📖 Docs

• The user guide has a new More features page, and the changelog is complete again.

✅ Works with older versions

Nothing to redo when you update:

• A 3.0 room works with an older YTKTV Desk, and an older room works with Desk 3.0. Older rooms just do not show menu pictures.
• The Desk's records are upgraded in place the first time it starts; rooms, members, bookings and history are all kept.
• Settings, playlists, favorites and downloads stay as they were.

YTKTV 2.5.1

Fixes

• The voice effect box on each mixer channel is no longer cut off ("Voice: C" now reads "Voice: Off").

Docs

• The README describes the newer features: service charge and tax at the Desk till, Admin Settings from the Desk, low-power mode and problem reports.
• New screenshots from the current version.

v2.5.0

What's new in 2.5.0

🎤 YTKTV

• TV without a cable: use the TV as a wireless second screen (AirPlay on a Mac, Miracast with Win + K on Windows). The MV moves there by itself, lyrics and effects included, and a picture delay setting keeps the sound in step with a wireless picture. Settings → TV Without a Cable.
• Spotify and Apple Music playlists: paste a public playlist link (Playlists → Import Playlist), or a list of songs one per line; each song is found on YouTube, karaoke versions first.
• Voice effects: Chipmunk, Deep or Robot voice on any microphone, from its channel strip in the Mixer.
• Kids mode: for a children's room, songs not meant for children are left out and cannot be chosen, and the volume has a ceiling.

🛎 YTKTV Desk

• Service charge and tax on bills and receipts (Settings → Menu and prices), added after discounts.
• Kids mode and the wireless TV's picture delay can be set per room in ⚙ Admin Settings.

🔧 Fixes

• Number boxes use the dark theme everywhere.

Install

• Windows: winget install TonyD365.YTKTV (YTKTV Desk: winget install TonyD365.YTKTVDesk)
• macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://tonyd365.github.io/YTKTV/install.sh | bash (YTKTV Desk: add -s -- --desk after bash)

Installed already? YTKTV and YTKTV Desk update themselves. Step-by-step instructions are in the README.

Full Changelog: v2.4.1...v2.5.0

v2.4.1

What's fixed in 2.4.1

• Vocal separation and AI lyrics work again after updating (macOS, Apple Silicon). YTKTV keeps a copy of ffmpeg in its data folder; an update overwrote it in place, and macOS then stopped that copy from running, so song audio could not be downloaded. The copy is now replaced as a new file, checked at start, and made again (or the bundled one used) if it will not run.
• No stall a few seconds after a song starts. Background downloads (vocal separation, AI lyrics, the next songs) now wait while a song that has just started buffers, and playback starts once a little is buffered.

Install

• Windows: winget install TonyD365.YTKTV (YTKTV Desk: winget install TonyD365.YTKTVDesk)
• macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://tonyd365.github.io/YTKTV/install.sh | bash (YTKTV Desk: add -s -- --desk after bash)

Installed already? YTKTV updates itself. If separation stopped working on your Mac after updating to 2.4.0, this update fixes it on its own.

Full Changelog: v2.4.0...v2.4.1

v2.4.0

What's new in 2.4.0

🎤 YTKTV

• AI lyrics: a song with no lyrics anywhere (no subtitles, nothing on LRCLIB) gets them written by Whisper, with line and word timing, kept for next time. Settings → AI Lyrics, a one-time download: the Apple GPU on Apple Silicon, CUDA on NVIDIA cards, the CPU otherwise.
• Low-power mode for a Raspberry Pi or an old computer: 720p video and no light effects. Turned on by itself on the first start of such a computer; Settings → MV Screen.
• Report a Bug / Suggest a Feature in Settings → Help. After an unexpected error YTKTV asks whether to report it, and only then opens a GitHub issue with the details filled in for you to check. Nothing is sent automatically.

🛎 YTKTV Desk

• Admin Settings: a room bound to a staff terminal now shows only the guests' settings (text size, phone remote, keys, help, unbinding). Video, sound output, vocal separation, AI lyrics, local songs, smart lights, low-power mode and updates are set on the staff terminal: select the room, then ⚙ Admin Settings. Changes travel as signed, numbered messages and the room accepts only those settings, each checked.
• Pairing codes can no longer be guessed: five wrong codes from one address lock it out for five minutes; twenty in all throw away every open code.

🔧 Under the hood

• yt-dlp is checked for new versions every day, so a YouTube change is followed quickly; other dependencies were updated too.
• Every page of YTKTV and YTKTV Desk is checked for white boxes on the dark theme in CI, with screenshots kept.
• Every build now includes the uv installer, so macOS can download the AI lyrics runtime.

Install

• Windows: winget install TonyD365.YTKTV (YTKTV Desk: winget install TonyD365.YTKTVDesk)
• macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://tonyd365.github.io/YTKTV/install.sh | bash (YTKTV Desk: add -s -- --desk after bash)

Installed already? YTKTV and YTKTV Desk update themselves. Step-by-step instructions and manual downloads are in the README.

Full Changelog: v2.3.1...v2.4.0

v2.3.1

What's new in 2.3.1

• Smart lights: WLED strips or Philips Hue lights change colour with the music, like the TV's edge lights. Settings → Smart Lights picks the kind and address, pairs a Hue bridge (press its button first) and has a Test button.
• Phone order menu by category: the phone's service menu is grouped under category headings, and the Drinks/Snacks call buttons hide while there is a menu.
• Local folders from the staff terminal: a room bound to YTKTV Desk gets its local song folders from there (Room settings → Local Folders…, paths on the room's computer); the room's Local Songs card becomes read-only.
• Lists use the dark theme everywhere (the folder list was a white box).
• Installing explained step by step in the README and on the website.

Install

• Windows: winget install TonyD365.YTKTV (YTKTV Desk: winget install TonyD365.YTKTVDesk)
• macOS and Linux: curl -fsSL https://tonyd365.github.io/YTKTV/install.sh | bash (YTKTV Desk: add -s -- --desk after bash)

Installed already? YTKTV and YTKTV Desk update themselves (Settings → Updates). Step-by-step instructions and manual downloads are in the README.

What's Changed

• Local songs: folders set from the staff terminal; dark folder list in #83
• Phone order menu: grouped by category in #84
• Smart lights: WLED and Philips Hue follow the music in #85
• Docs: step-by-step install for each system in #86

Full Changelog: v2.3.0...v2.3.1