Ticli

An unofficial terminal music player for TIDAL. Search, browse, queue, and play music — all from your terminal. Not affiliated with TIDAL.

Ticli connects directly to TIDAL's API using your premium account. No desktop app needed. Just authenticate, search, and play.

Works on macOS and Linux.

╭──────────────────────── Ticli ────────────────────────╮
│                                                        │
│  ▶ ♥ Arlo Parks - Sophie                               │
│     Super Sad Generation                               │
│     1:47 ━━━━━━━━●━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 3:28    │
│     Queue: 3/12  LOSSLESS                              │
│     Next: Cola • Arlo Parks                            │
│                                                        │
│  [space] play/pause  [n/→] next  [←] prev             │
│  [s] search  [q] queue  [p] playlists                  │
│  [l] like  [r] radio  [t] mini  [m] more               │
│                                                        │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Features

• Search — Find tracks, albums, artists, and playlists
• Browse — Navigate album and playlist tracklists
• Queue — Manage your playback queue, reorder, remove tracks
• Playlists — Browse and play your saved playlists
• Likes — Toggle favorites on any track
• Radio — Generate a station from any track
• Mini mode — Condensed single-line display
• Session restore — Picks up where you left off
• Lossless & Hi-Res — Stream up to 24-bit/192kHz FLAC
• Secure auth — OAuth tokens stored in your OS keychain

Install

Requires Python 3.10+ and ffmpeg.

# macOS
brew install ffmpeg python3
pip install tidal-cli

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install ffmpeg python3-pip
pip install tidal-cli

For secure token storage in your OS keychain (recommended):

pip install "tidal-cli[keyring]"

Usage

ticli

On first run you'll get a URL to authorize with your TIDAL account. After that, your session is cached and you go straight to the player.

Quality

ticli --quality HIRES      # 24-bit hi-res FLAC
ticli --quality LOSSLESS   # 16-bit FLAC
ticli --quality HIGH       # lossless FLAC (default)
ticli --quality LOW        # 320kbps

Keybindings

Player

Key	Action
space	Play / pause
n →	Next track
←	Previous track
s	Search
q	Queue
p	Playlists
l	Like / unlike track
r	Start radio from track
t	Toggle mini player
m	Show more controls
esc	Quit

Search

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Navigate results
enter →	Play track / open album or artist
backspace	Delete character
esc ←	Back

Queue

Key	Action
↑ ↓	Navigate
enter	Jump to track
x	Remove track
esc ←	Back

How it works

Ticli uses tidalapi to authenticate and fetch audio stream URLs. Audio is played through ffplay. The TUI is built with Rich.

┌─────────┐     OAuth      ┌───────────┐    stream URL    ┌───────────┐
│  Ticli  │ ──────────────► │  TIDAL    │ ──────────────►  │  ffplay   │
│  (TUI)  │ ◄────────────── │  API      │                  │           │
└─────────┘    metadata     └───────────┘                  └───────────┘

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• Python 3.10+
• TIDAL Premium subscription
• ffmpeg

Support

If you enjoy Ticli, consider buying me a coffee.

License

MIT