FAQ

FAQ

Does tunetape download music? No. It streams. yt-dlp only resolves a stream URL, and mpv plays it live. Nothing lands on disk except your listening history and settings.

Does it show video? No. tunetape asks for audio only and runs mpv without a window. It is a music player.

Do I need a Spotify account or Spotify Premium? No. tunetape reads the public song list of a Spotify link and plays each song's match from YouTube. No login, no Spotify audio. See Sources.

Why is a Spotify song playing a live version / cover / different mix? Because it is YouTube's best match for <artist> <title>. Most of the time it is the right track; occasionally it is not. Press n to skip.

Can I play local files? Not currently. tunetape is built around the three online sources. If you want this, open an issue.

Do I need an API key? Only for Discover. Everything else works with no keys or accounts at all. See AI Discovery.

Can I use a local model for Discover? Yes. Set the provider to openai, point the endpoint at your Ollama or other OpenAI-compatible server, and pick a model. Details in AI Discovery.

Does it work over SSH? Yes, it is a plain terminal app. Audio comes out of the machine that runs tunetape, so run it where the speakers are.

Where does it keep my history and settings? ~/.local/share/tunetape/ on macOS and Linux, %LOCALAPPDATA%\tunetape\ on Windows. See Settings.

How do I change the colors? Settings → Theme. More than twenty themes, previewed live as you move through the list; ctrl+p → Theme works from any screen too. See Settings.

Can I use the mouse? Yes. Every button can be clicked, the wheel sets the volume in the player (and scrolls lists), a click on the progress bar seeks, and a click on the volume gauge sets the volume. The keyboard does everything too.

What are the graphs in the player? The level panel shows the left and right audio levels in dB as you hear them, with a graph of the loudness over the last seconds. The stream panel graphs the download speed: a burst at the start of a track, then flat once it is cached. See Usage and Controls.

Playback starts but sits at 0:00. What now? YouTube changed something again. See Troubleshooting for the one-line workaround.

How do I update? brew upgrade tunetape on macOS; re-run the pip install command with -U elsewhere; re-run the install script if you used it. See Installation.

Why a tuna? Because it is a tunetape. The mascot is a tuna carrying a cassette, drawn in ASCII on the welcome screen (and as pixel art when the terminal is small).

Is it free? Yes. MIT licensed. See the LICENSE.

Is it affiliated with YouTube, Spotify or KHInsider? No. tunetape is an independent client that uses publicly available tools. All trademarks belong to their owners, and you are responsible for respecting each platform's terms of service. The full disclaimer is in the README.