YTFastWhat is YTFast?
YTFast (YouTube Music Fast) is a desktop app for YouTube Music. It does what the YouTube Music app does, except video, with its own screens instead of a web page.
Before you start
YTFast needs a YouTube Music Premium account and is an independent app, not made by YouTube. Read what to know before you use it.
The numbers
| Measure | YTFast |
|---|---|
| Time to open | Under a second is the aim |
| Time for a song to start | About a second |
| CPU when idle or paused | 0% |
| Memory | Less than 200 MB |
These are our own figures. Yours will vary with your computer and your connection.
What you get
- The layout you know. A bar across the top with search and your account, a menu on the left with Home, Explore, Library and your playlists, and the player bar along the bottom.
- Pages for everything. Albums, artists, playlists and moods, with search that suggests as you type.
- A player page. The cover on the left over its own colours, with Up next, Lyrics and Related on the right.
- Lyrics that follow the song. Click a line to jump to it.
- Your library. Like and dislike songs, save albums and playlists, subscribe to artists, and make, rename, edit and delete playlists.
- A real queue. Play next, add to queue, reorder Up next, start a radio, shuffle and repeat.
- Autoplay. When the queue runs out, songs like the last one follow. You can turn this off.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Space | Pause or play |
| ← / → | Back or forward 10 seconds |
| ↑ / ↓ | Volume up or down |
| Shift+N / Shift+P | Next or previous song |
| M | Mute |
| L | Like the song playing |
| / or Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) | Search |
| Esc | Close the player page |
| Media keys | Play, pause, next, previous |
How it works
Your browser
Holds your YouTube Music sign-in
sign-in
YTFast
Draws its own screens and plays the audio
music and plays
YouTube Music
Your library, songs and history
- Your sign-in comes from your web browser. Only YouTube's part is read. It stays on your computer and is only sent to YouTube.
- Your music comes from the same internal service that music.youtube.com uses. YouTube Music has no official API.
- The audio of each song is found the way the website finds it, with help from yt-dlp, and plays while it downloads.
- Lyrics come from YouTube Music, or from LRCLIB, a free lyrics database, when YouTube Music has none that follow the song.
- Playback happens in YTFast itself, through the same audio code as Spotifast. That is why it uses no CPU while paused.
- Your plays are reported to YouTube, so History, Home and your mixes keep learning.
Left out on purpose
Videos, offline downloads, casting and the Samples feed.
Before you use it
- You need YouTube Music Premium. YTFast does not work with free accounts.
- It is independent. YTFast is not made by Google or YouTube.
- YouTube changes. When YouTube changes how the website works, playback can break until YTFast or yt-dlp catches up.
Credits
YTFast builds on fastframe and learns from Spotifast, ytmusicapi, Kaset and yt-dlp. Its look is inspired by a theme from Better Lyrics, recreated without its code. Icons are from Lucide.