Playing YouTube From The Command Line

Generally, one opens a web browser or an app to use YouTube. However, if you’re looking to just listen to the audio, you can actually do that right from the terminal. You just need Shellbeats from [lalo-space].

Shellbeats is primarily intended for playing music from YouTube, and is well equipped for this task. It allows searching YouTube directly from the terminal, as well as streaming tracks or entire playlists from the command line interface. You can also make and edit playlists from within the tool, and even download the whole lot as MP3s if so desired. It’s all keyboard-operated and nicely lightweight. The overall experience isn’t dissimilar from operating a simple LCD-based MP3 player from 20 years ago.

There’s plenty of other fun stuff you can do in the terminal, too, as we’ve explored previously. If you’re working on your own media player hacks, be sure to notify us on the tipsline!

10 thoughts on “Playing YouTube From The Command Line

  1. Additionally, if you only want to listen to a single URL, installing yt-dlp and mpv work very well. I wrote a bash function to make it even easier:

    ytmusic(){ # Stream the audio from a YouTube video
    echo
    echo “Connecting to YouTube and opening audio stream…”
    mpv –no-video “$1”
    echo
    }

    1. Why aren’t you using Firefox with uBlock Origin ad blocker? Kills ads dead. I never see ads on YouTube or most of the internet.

      People are always bitching about ads everywhere and I’m like “What ads? Oh, yeah. All the ones I never see.”

      It seems like people would rather complain than do something about it.

      1. uBlock Origin and a hosts file from Steven Black. On the odd occasion I do see an ad, it suprises me. Those ads are usually hard-coded into a site’s html. I’m one of those people who use an odd browser. Waterfox.

      2. Why are there ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ people who don’t get that if everybody used adblock then they would find a way to disable adblock or block you if you had it. And why do you want every person to be the same?
        Try thinking just a little bit harder, take a few weeks off or something if it is an effort.

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