Make it your own.

01

Start listening.

Install the native app with Homebrew, then open it in a terminal.

brew install anthonymaley/musictui/musictui
music

Use a real terminal for the interactive interface. You can run individual music commands from a shell or script.

Already listening? Keep your Mac’s media keys for play, pause, and skipping tracks.

02

What it does.

Playback

Choose an album or playlist, control the queue, and see what’s playing.

Library & playlists

Browse artists, albums, and songs. Filter your library and organize the tracks you already own.

AirPlay

Choose speakers, adjust each room’s volume, and verify active routes. If a route fails, MusicTUI names the next step.

Radio

Keep local station favorites and play an Apple Music station from its share URL.

Discovery

Explore personalized recommendations and recent listening with the appropriate account setup.

EQ & visuals

Select a venue preset or switch on Music’s visualizer. Live EQ and visualizer controls require Accessibility permission.

Album artwork renders as pixels in supported terminals, including Kitty, WezTerm, Ghostty, and iTerm2 3.5+. Optional chafa provides a fallback elsewhere.

03

Find your rhythm.

The basics travel with you. Individual tabs add controls for their own tasks.

For an album or track to stop at its end, turn off Autoplay (∞) in Music’s Up Next panel.

04

At your command.

A few useful starting points. Replace track, playlist, and speaker names with your own.

music now

See the current track and output.

music play --album "Kid A" --artist "Radiohead"

Play a specific album from your library.

music search "Radiohead" --library

Search your existing library without a developer token.

music speaker kitchen 40

Add a speaker and set its volume. Use a name from your own speaker list.

music speaker verify

Check the selected AirPlay routes while music is playing.

music radio list

List your favorite stations.

music eq "Late Night"

Apply a venue preset; requires Accessibility permission.

music search "deep house"

Search the catalog through MusicKit after developer-token setup.

Make it scriptable.

Add --json when you want structured output.

music now --json

05

Or just ask Claude.

Install the optional Claude Code plugin to turn a listening request into a sequence of commands. Install the CLI first, then run these inside Claude Code.

/plugin marketplace add anthonymaley/musictui
/plugin install music@musictui

Use /music as the entry point, followed by what you want to do.

The plugin uses the same CLI. Requests involving catalog or personal API features still need the relevant setup below.

06

A little setup.

Start with what’s already on your Mac. Add account setup when a feature needs it.

Your Mac

macOS 14+ with the Music app. Apple Silicon on macOS 26 can use a prebuilt Homebrew binary; other Macs need Swift 5.9+ to build it.

Local listening

Playback, AirPlay, your existing library, library search, and local playlist operations do not need an Apple Developer account.

Automation

Allow your terminal to control Music when macOS asks. You can review this in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation.

EQ & visualizer

Give your terminal Accessibility permission to control Music’s live equalizer and on-screen visualizer.

Optional MusicKit setup.

For the Music.app/MusicKit API path, catalog search needs a developer token. Personalized discovery and other account API operations also need an Apple Music user token. Creating the MusicKit key requires a paid Apple Developer membership ↗.

music auth setup
music auth
music auth status

The setup command walks you through the key. The sign-in command opens a browser; the final command checks your status.

Using SpanDAC as a data source or output? Its capabilities and authentication requirements differ. See the SpanDAC reference ↗.

Keep the full reference nearby.

For every command, platform notes, and updates, use the project documentation ↗.