Why I'm using the (unofficial) Youtube Music desktop app
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Maybe it’s weird I use YouTube Music in the first place? lol
Why I use YT Music
I use YouTube Music because of my family’s shared subscription to Premium, which is pretty nice.
I like this streaming service a lot for how much more fluid the queue here feels compared to Spotify - easier to add and rearrange songs in your own queue without having to make a playlist. Plus, the ability to play song uploads on YouTube means it has a wider selection than other standard music streaming platforms.
Desktop app
No such thing. At least officially. And the web app does the job, but I discovered that there is an open source, 3rd party desktop app which is pretty nice after using it for a while!
It’s just the web app wrapped in an Electron window. But still! Pretty nice for these basic features:
- Use my keyboard’s media player hotkeys (pause, play, forward/back). Firefox just doesn’t really work well with these, or maybe it’s the web app.
- Open on computer startup
- Stay running in the system tray when I close the window
- See track progress from the taskbar icon (it uses the loading bar thing in Windows)
- Discord Rich Presence. This is unnecessary but I think giving my friends the ability to know what I’m listening to is fun :)
So if you might be interested in this, give it a try.
Youtube Music Desktop on GitHub
It would be nice if Google released an official desktop app, but I bet it wouldn’t have Discord integration unless they decide to team up like Spotify did. That would be swag!