tidalt is a Tidal music player for Linux that delivers bit-perfect, lossless audio directly to your DAC — no PipeWire, no PulseAudio, no resampling.

It is built on top of the Tidal API and can run in three ways:

• Interactive TUI — browse, search, and control playback from the terminal
• Daemon — headless background process, controlled via the TUI or any MPRIS2 client
• Client — lightweight TUI that forwards commands to a running daemon over D-Bus

All three modes share the same playback engine. The daemon holds exclusive access to the audio device only while a track is actually playing — releasing it on pause so other applications can use it freely.

100% vibe coded with Claude and Gemini.

Linux only. Requires a Tidal HiFi or HiFi Plus subscription.

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Install

Pre-built packages are available on the releases page. The official Docker image is available at benehiko/tidalt — see docs/docker.md for usage.

Arch Linux

sudo pacman -U tidalt-*.pkg.tar.zst

Debian / Ubuntu

sudo dpkg -i tidalt_*.deb
sudo apt-get install -f

Fedora

sudo dnf install tidalt-*.rpm

Build packages locally with Docker

All packages (Arch, Debian, Fedora — amd64 and arm64) can be built locally with a single command using Docker Buildx bake:

# One-time: create a multi-platform builder
docker buildx create --use

# Build all packages (replace VERSION as needed)
docker buildx bake \
  --file docker-bake.hcl \
  --set "*.args.VERSION=3.0.0" \
  --set "*.output=type=local,dest=dist"

Artifacts land in dist/:

dist/
  tidalt-3.0.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst   # Arch
  tidalt_3.0.0-1_amd64.deb            # Debian / Ubuntu (amd64)
  tidalt_3.0.0-1_arm64.deb            # Debian / Ubuntu (arm64)
  tidalt-3.0.0-1.fc43.x86_64.rpm      # Fedora (amd64)
  tidalt-3.0.0-1.fc43.aarch64.rpm     # Fedora (arm64)

To build a single target: append debian, arch, or fedora to the command.

See docs/installation.md for building packages locally without Docker or installing from source.

Post-install

Register the tidal:// URL handler so clicking "Open in desktop app" on tidal.com opens the track directly in tidalt:

tidalt setup

Optionally install tidalt as a systemd user service (starts at login, no terminal window):

tidalt setup --daemon

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On first launch you will be prompted to log in via the Tidal OAuth2 device flow. Your session is saved to the system keychain (or an age-encrypted file at ~/.config/tidalt/secrets) and reused on subsequent runs.

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Features

• Browse favorites and Daily Mixes
• Search tracks by name or paste a Tidal track URL
• Song radio — load a playlist of similar tracks for any song
• Shuffle (Fisher-Yates pre-shuffle or random pick)
• Favorite / unfavorite tracks
• Bit-perfect FLAC playback via direct ALSA hw: — bypasses PipeWire/PulseAudio entirely
• Auto-negotiates the best PCM format your DAC supports
• Auto-advances through the queue; respects shuffle mode
• Seek forward/back 10 seconds with ←/→
• Volume control and output device selection, both persisted between sessions
• Session and playback position restored on next launch
• MPRIS2 registration — media keys and playerctl work without TUI focus
• Daemon mode — run headless in the background, control via TUI client or playerctl

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Keybindings

In-TUI

Key	Action
Tab	Cycle tabs (My Music → Daily Mixes → Search)
↑ / k	Move cursor up
↓ / j	Move cursor down
Enter	Play selected track / load mix / confirm
Space	Pause / resume
←	Seek back 10 seconds
→	Seek forward 10 seconds
s	Cycle shuffle mode (Off → Shuffle → Random)
r	Load radio playlist for selected track
f	Toggle favorite on selected track
9	Volume down 5%
0	Volume up 5%
d	Open output device selector
Esc	Close device selector
q / Ctrl+C	Quit

Global shortcuts (MPRIS2)

Daemon mode required. These shortcuts only work when tidalt is running as a background daemon (via tidalt setup --daemon / systemd). A plain tidalt TUI session does not register a persistent MPRIS2 service, so media keys and playerctl will have no effect when the TUI is closed.

When the daemon is running, tidalt registers as an MPRIS2 media player so playback can be controlled from any MPRIS2 client — playerctl, KDE Connect, your desktop environment's media key handler — without a TUI open.

Standard media keys

Many keyboards and desktop environments map dedicated media keys directly to MPRIS2:

Key	Action
fn + .	Play / pause
fn + ,	Previous track
fn + /	Next track

These are handled by your desktop environment via MPRIS2 — tidalt does not implement any special key capture itself.

Custom bindings (65% keyboards)

On keyboards without dedicated media keys, bind playerctl to custom shortcuts via your desktop environment:

Shortcut	Action
Alt+0	Previous track
Alt+-	Play / pause
Alt+=	Next track

See docs/media-keys.md for full setup instructions.

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Supported DACs

Auto-detection scans /proc/asound/cards. Any ALSA-visible device can be selected manually with the d key.

DAC	Auto-detected
Hidizs S9 Pro	Yes
Hidizs S9 Pro Plus ("Martha")	Yes
Focusrite Scarlett Solo	Yes
Any ALSA-visible device	Manual (d key)

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Data & Storage

What	Where
OAuth2 session	System keychain or ~/.config/tidalt/secrets (age-encrypted)
Volume & device preference	~/.local/share/tidalt/tidal-cache.db
Track metadata cache	Same database

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Further reading

• Installation (packages, source, post-install setup)
• Running in Docker
• Architecture & audio pipeline
• Client-server architecture & daemon mode
• MPRIS2 support
• DAC compatibility
• Media keys & MPRIS2 setup
• Browser URL handler troubleshooting
• Debugging