Riff

A free, opensource desktop music player for YouTube Music and SoundCloud. No ads, no account and no telemetry

Download · Features · FAQ · Build from source

Riff is a desktop music player for Windows, Linux and macOS. It plays music from YouTube Music, YouTube, and SoundCloud without ads and without a Premium subscription, and it also works as a regular player for your local files (FLAC included).

You don't need to log in or create an account, and Riff doesn't collect telemetry. Install it and press play.

It's built with Electron and Material 3 Expressive UI.

• No ads streaming for YouTube Music, YouTube and SoundCloud
• Plays local audio (FLAC, MP3, WAV, OGG and more)
• Easy audio controls with a built-in equalizer, speed changer, tempo and pitch & distortion & reverb sliders
• Spotify, YT, YT Music, Apple Music, SoundCloud public playlist import in 1 click
• UI customization with dynamic colors, profile banners, and a custom CSS editor for own themes
• Discord Rich Presence integration
• No telemetry and completely open source under MIT license

• Play YouTube Music, YouTube and SoundCloud with no ads
• Very fast track loading

• Quick presets and a 10-band equalizer
• Change tempo (speed up or slow down) in real time
• Add reverb or distortion
• Local FLAC support

Riff can download audio from YouTube, YT Music and SoundCloud. Downloaded tracks go into your local library and play without an internet connection.

Your files stay on your computer. Riff reads title, artist, album, track number, album art and other common tags. You can organize music into folders and playlists, and adding or removing tracks from a playlist never touches the original files.

A small built-in editor for quick fixes, so you don't have to open another program:

• Trim the start or end of a track
• Select part of a song and save it as a separate file
• Change speed, add reverb or distortion, and equalize

Online lyric search is on by default. Riff supports plain text lyrics, LRC files, manual timing, and automatic online timing. If you already have timestamps, use an LRC file. If not, adjust the timing yourself from inside the player.

Show what you're listening to on Discord: track name, artist and progress.

Dynamic Material 3 colors, custom banners and a built-in CSS editor.

Music keeps playing when Riff is minimized or in the background.

Grab the latest build from the Releases page.

Releases already include everything Riff needs (yt-dlp and ffmpeg are bundled), so there's nothing extra to install on Windows or Linux.

macOS support is experimental. It's built in CI and not tested on every Mac, so some things may not work.

1. Download the right file:
   • Riff-<version>-mac-arm64.dmg for Apple Silicon (M1 and newer)
   • Riff-<version>-mac-x64.dmg for Intel
2. Open the dmg and drag Riff into Applications.
3. The app isn't signed. Right-click Riff in Applications, choose Open, and confirm.
4. If macOS says the app is "damaged", run this in Terminal and open the app again:

   xattr -cr /Applications/Riff.app

   If you get a quarantine error when opening the dmg itself, run this instead (use your real dmg name):

   xattr -d -r com.apple.quarantine /path/to/Riff.dmg

5. Install the tools with Homebrew (Riff finds Homebrew installs automatically):

   brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg

Notes for macOS: there are no automatic updates (download the new dmg from Releases), and your data lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Riff.

You need Node.js 18 or newer and npm. yt-dlp and ffmpeg are installed by default in dev and compiled into releases.

git clone https://github.com/rootscripts/riff.git
cd riff
npm install
npm start        # run the dev version
npm run dist     # make a production build

The exact build output depends on the current project configuration.

Riff (1 electron proccess) uses roughly 180 MB of RAM on a typical system. Real usage depends on how many tracks are loaded, which features you're using, and your machine.

There is no official Riff for Android or iOS. The forks below are unofficial and not made by rootless.

More phone apps may come later.

Is Riff free? Yes. Riff is free and open source under the MIT license. There's no subscription or Premium tier.

Does Riff have ads? No. YouTube Music and SoundCloud playback is ad-free.

Do I need an account to use Riff? No. No login, no account, no telemetry.

Which platforms does Riff support? Windows, Linux and macOS. macOS is in beta.

Can Riff play local files? Yes, including FLAC. It reads tags and album art, and you can build playlists without modifying the original files.

Can I use Riff offline? Yes. Downloaded tracks and your local library play without internet.

Can I import my Spotify playlists? Public Spotify playlists, yes, including ones with more than 100 tracks.

Does Riff support synced lyrics? Yes: plain text, LRC files, manual timing and automatic online timing.

Does Riff work with Discord? Yes. Rich Presence shows the track, artist and progress.

Is there a Riff app for Android or iOS? Not an official one. See Mobile versions for community forks.

Pull requests are welcome. Please run the app and test your changes first, and look for bugs before you open the PR. A PR with untested code, crashes or critical issues just costs everyone time, so please don't post one in that state.

If Riff is useful to you, you can support development on Ko-fi. Starring the repo helps too.

Riff is made for educational and personal media management. It's meant for music you're allowed to download and store. When you download from third-party services, you're responsible for following their terms of service and the laws that apply to you.

MIT

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