ytac - YouTube Audio in Console

A terminal-based YouTube audio player with keyboard controls for searching and playing YouTube audio.

Features

• 🔍 Search YouTube directly from terminal
• 🎵 Play audio from YouTube URLs or search results
• ⌨️ Full keyboard controls for navigation and playback
• 📦 Auto-install missing dependencies (mpv, yt-dlp, fzf)
• ⬆️ Auto-check yt-dlp against the latest GitHub release and update when needed
• 🎨 Beautiful interactive search interface with fzf
• ⚡ Live search results display as they arrive
• 🎛️ Complete MPV player controls (volume, seek, speed, loop)
• 🔄 Playlist navigation (next/previous through search results)
• ↩️ Return to menu after playback ends
• 🔁 Loop controls (entire track or A-B section)
• 🎯 Clean, clutter-free output interface
• 📱 User-friendly notifications for track changes

Requirements

• mpv - Media player
• yt-dlp - YouTube downloader
• fzf - Fuzzy finder

The tool will offer to install missing dependencies automatically on first run. For yt-dlp, it checks the latest stable release from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp and installs or updates the appropriate binary according to the OS when possible.

Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/nahidhasan98/ytac.git
cd ytac

# Build
./build.sh

# Run
bin/ytac <search terms>

Usage

Search and play

bin/ytac nasheed
bin/ytac tafseer

Play from URL

bin/ytac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

Verbose playback logs

bin/ytac --verbose nasheed
bin/ytac -v https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

Control search result count

bin/ytac --search-count 3 nasheed
bin/ytac -c 10 tafseer

Show help

bin/ytac --help

Keyboard Controls

Search Navigation (FZF)

Key	Action
↑/↓ or j/k	Navigate up/down
Enter	Select and play
Ctrl+c / Esc	Cancel
/	Toggle search mode

Playback Controls (MPV)

Key	Action
Space	Pause/Resume
→/←	Seek forward/backward 5s
↑/↓	Volume up/down 5%
>/<	Next/Previous track in playlist
9/0	Volume down/up 2%
[/]	Speed down/up
Backspace	Reset speed to 1.0x
r	Restart from beginning
l	Loop entire track (toggle on/off)
a	A-B loop (set start, end, clear)
m	Mute/Unmute
q	Stop and return to menu

How It Works

1. Search: Enter your search terms to find YouTube videos
2. Select: Browse results with arrow keys and press Enter
3. Play: Audio starts playing with all search results as a playlist
4. Navigate: Use > and < to move between tracks
5. Return: Press q to stop and return to the selection menu
6. Repeat: Select another video or exit

Build from Source

# Standard build
./build.sh

# Manual build
CGO_ENABLED=0 go build -ldflags "-s -w" -o bin/ytac ./cmd/ytac

Development

go test ./...
go vet ./...

OS Notes

• yt-dlp installation is OS-aware and selects a release asset based on the platform
• The overall app is best supported on Linux and macOS right now because dependency installation still assumes apt, dnf, pacman, or brew, and playback uses /dev/stdin for mpv bindings

Tips

• All search results become a playlist - navigate with > and <
• Press q to return to menu anytime during playback
• Use l to loop your favorite track continuously
• Use a key to loop specific sections (A-B loop)
• Use --search-count or -c to choose how many results to fetch, from 1 to 10
• Add --verbose when you want full mpv logs for troubleshooting playback issues

License

MIT