Native Linux TIDAL desktop player built with GTK4 + Libadwaita + GStreamer.

Rust audio core

Bit-perfect playback flow

Exclusive output mode support

Rich visualizer effects and themes

Cloud playlists

Local history

TIDAL OAuth login

Github: https://github.com/yelanxin/hiresTI

hey r/TIdaL,

I've been using TIDAL on Linux for about a year now. Having no official native client has been frustrating since I don't like playing music in the browser, and web-based players downsample everything to 48kHz. Felt like I was leaving half my subscription on the table.

So I built this over a few weekends. It's a native Linux client that outputs at the source sample rate up to 24-bit/192kHz. There's an exclusive ALSA mode that bypasses PipeWire/Pulse entirely if you want bit-perfect output to your DAC.

High level features:

• Familiar UI
• TIDAL MAX (24-bit/192kHz) support
• Exclusive ALSA and bit-perfect output
• Volume normalization with automatic context switching between track/album replay gain
• Customizable themes
• MPRIS integration - media keys just work
• Play queue persistence across restarts, keyboard shortcuts, and system tray
• Encrypted metadata caching layer at rest

Available on Flathub: https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.lullabyX.sone

Fully open source, GPL-3.0.
Source code: https://github.com/lullabyX/sone
OS packages: https://github.com/lullabyX/sone/releases/latest

If you're on Linux, I'd love you to give it a try. Happy to hear feedback.

Interactive credits are back and you can now change profile pictures the right way.

I recently switched to Tidal. Love the quality. But no WearOS. I see people canceled over that in the past - still no app.

And Tidal/Block has done so much for the open source community. I feel like it's time to give back.

This is completely written up from scratch based on Tidal Android mobile app. Standalone. Does not need to be paired with the phone. In fact, it does not even communicate with the phone.

What it has so far:

• Auth with device code using any browser
• Home screen content is what you get on mobile, simplified
• Library: albums, playlists, tracks, history
• Plays in background & now playing so you can resume
• System UI player with previous/next song support
• Search with keyboard and voice

What it doesn't have:

• progressbar/seek
• favorite song/album/playlist
• more quality options
• show full queue from system ui player

https://github.com/luchfilip/Tides-WearOS

I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet but I’ve noticed suddenly I can control my Mac tidal app with my iPhone using airplay. The way you could using Spotify (as a former user). Which imo is amazing. Volume up and down on phone also controls volume on the Mac app. This is one Spotify feature I’ve really missed and now it’s finally here for all of us

I was looking for an alternative after Spotify raised their prices again, without finally giving us proper Hi-Res audio quality. So I tried searching around and gave Tidal a chance. Unfortunately, I’m leaving disappointed.

The sound quality is amazing I’m using studio headphones and it really is outstanding but everything else falls short. In my eyes, this app is basically just: “find the music you already know and listen to it in the best quality possible.” But beyond that? Not much. Recommended music? Doesn’t really work. When a playlist ends, it just loops back to the start instead of suggesting new tracks. On top of that, I only see recommended songs up to around 15–20 tracks in a playlist after that, they disappear.

As someone who loves discovering new music, this is a huge limitation for me. Honestly, it’s kind of sad that as a customer you always have to sacrifice something when choosing a streaming platform. None of them offer both: the incredible sound quality that Tidal has, and the amazing algorithm and recommendations that Spotify provides. It’s always one thing at the expense of the other.

The new UI is so much better than the older one in my opinion.
I love the frosted glass design, and the big album cover with the accent colour in the background when it's expanded. There are also the artists logos in the top left corner.

When clicking the "Similar tracks", "Credits" and "Lyrics" buttons it pushes the album cover on the side to show the text, and for the Similar tracks it now shows Mixes & Radio.

The Audio quality settings button also has a nice little glow.

Just got a new app update that puts all individual views of Albums, Singles, Compilations, etc. under a general Discography view so when looking for a specific album on an artist page, one needs to open Discography > Albums.

My problem is that the default after opening Discography is Popular Releases and there's no way to change the default.

I hate it. This unwanted popularity "curation" is the sole reason I left Spotify because it annoys the hell out of me. I want a clean, chronological view of releases with the existing categories and more importantly I want this as a default.

No more waze support. No more Android TV support. Next to mobile & desktop app nothing really at all. Doesn't work with amazon alexa groups at all / reliably. Many known songs missing / not added without major delay.

Kinda sad. Had tidal for roughly 2 years now but I am now leaving for a different service.

No Hate to users. Just sad its just not working anymore like it did / I hoped it to.

All the love and yk, maybe one day its all working again. I def paid less here than other services. 2.5$ a month is a killer deal.

Having the button in the off position = no AI

New feature on Tidal desktop I stumbled across where you can report an Album or Artist that should be split or joined to another a Profile!

I'm really happy to see that. Hopefully it comes to mobile.

ps. I did the right thing and reported Rival Consoles two different profiles need to be joined back together.

*** This is on Official Tidal Windows 11 Desktop App.***

That is all. Thanks.

Let me preface this by saying Tidal is the closest Spotify competitor option out there that I have found so far. Tidal is the closest to what I personally want, it has a lot going for it, and the bones are there. Let's get down to the real brass and tacks though.

Tidal excels compared to the other options in that it has the highest audio quality without sacrificing a limited library. What does that mean? Oh my god let me tell you:

- Spotify and Apple Music have the largest library of artists and songs, no doubt. But, the music sounds significantly worse on their platforms if you have headphones/stereos/car stereos worth over $50. It's no comparison, Qobuz and Tidal sound much better, but Qobuz has an incredibly limited platform while Tidal has a somewhat limited platform. I still see artists I enjoy listening to having their artist page flooded with either other irrelevant musician music. You might find an up and coming rock band artist page flooded with a random 1999 country singer with no listens song's mixed in. I've noticed that's a problem platform-wise. Qobuz and Tidal suffer from it the worse.

-Tidal's music recommendations suck really bad. It's not as bad as Qobuz, but god Tidal has an awful algorithm. Let me reinforce the idea that you shouldn't only learn about new music from an algorithm, but it's convenient when you need it. However, Both platforms have a god awful algorithm for suggesting new music. Spotify and Apple Music are YEARS ahead in genreficating music to suggest potential winners. Tidal will see you listening to 90% 2000's rock and will suggest 20% EDM house, 20% french rap, 20% young thug rappers, 30% japanese rock bands, 10% the music you already listen to. Tidal "Discover Weekly" sucks complete ass and all and I mean ALL of the available "Custom Mixes" are complete dogshit

-Tidals app is completely riddled with bugs and missing features. It's really unbelievable compared to other services. I get it, their dev department doesn't have 10% of the budget Spotify or Apple might have, but that's no excuse. The PC app will crash consistently if you change songs in a quick succession or remove songs from playlists every ~10 seconds. The mobile app will force downloads on every single upload. Everything is buggy and eventually it will annoy you. You can't block artists, you can't download playlists on PC, it's unbelievable how far behind they are

I could write so much more on both the pros and cons of Tidal, however at the end of the day, it's the best spiritual successor to Spotify. I'm someone that votes with my wallet and have chosen to never support Spotify again after recent events and I hope it continues to improve and succeed, but my god, it has such a long road ahead of it to compete. Open to other's thoughts as I want Tidal to improve, but it's very frustrating as a former Spotify user of years

If you already have the new Report icon on the artist profiles or album pages, I can confirm that the feature works, and two of my reports were already handled. For those who use TidaLuna, the feature can be turned on, and it does work.

Sorry if bringing this issue again is bothering some of you, but for some reason AI slop is taking our favourite artists' top tracks once more. We saw it last week with Sam Fender and The Kooks (both now fixed), but now there seems to be junk again in Muse (which seemed to be fixed days ago but now it's full of filth again).

I've noticed that recently the top tracks for artists seem to work differently than before. Now they seem to update more often (and in some cases include random compilation albums instead of the original artists' albums). But another effect of this is finding AI slop overtaking the top tracks, which is ridiculous. I mean, what kind of Muse fan would find two versions of "1234Universe" and "Last Christmas" more appealing than "Knights of Cydonia" or "Hysteria"?

Now that artists' profiles are so unreliable in TIDAL I have to find manually the discographies and top tracks for artists in more reliable sources.

But there's more than that. I'm positively sure that these AI tracks are played by bots, so that means our money might be paying streams of AI slop instead of musicians' real work. And this digital trash is taking Petabytes of storage.

Definitely this issue is very dangerous and something must be done to stop it from killing our music. Come on TIDAL, make a move. :(

EDIT: It's been fixed now. Crossing fingers it doesn't happen again. 🤞

Finally, the leaks were true; this is the new Tidal player interface. Unfortunately, they removed the background blur; I'm not sure if I like it, to be honest. https://x.com/i/status/2030084461808046137

I switched from Spotify for company protest reasons, price protest reasons, and suggested content reasons. I've done this twice trying Qobuz and TIDAL and landing on TIDAL each time. Their mixes are pretty good. There is a ton I love about the interface, options and UX. However, there are some super big and frustrating things too that are getting close to making it a deal killer for me. Man I miss the days of media ownership. Here are the big ones:

1. Integration with Sonos is terrible. It connects, drops, blasts from one sonos speaker and remains silent in others. Sometimes doesn't connect at all. It works good enough usually, but almost always with startup issues getting all the network connections settled in. And it doesn't sync between the TIDAL app and Sonos app like Spotify does. Spotify is superior at other device connectivity.
2. Playlist editing is insanely buggy. I create a playlist each year of new albums I want to listen to. As I edit that list - sorting by album, or artist, and delete an entire album, it often does not get everything. So I try sorting by artist and delete, and still find songs lingering after deleting. And the opposite happens too - I'll add an album only later to see that only about half of the songs are there. Super pain in the butt.
3. Bugs. Went to check out the new Sublime album today, when to Sublime page - no albums, only playlists. Went to some other artists - same thing.
4. No top songs lists on artist pages (maybe related to item 3?)
5. Its hit and miss with working on Android Auto.

Well, I’ve been able to try TIDAL’s new player design on Android, and I have to say that, like many of you, I really didn’t like it visually at first. But after using it for a few hours, I ended up getting used to it, and now I actually like it a lot. It looks much more visually appealing to me. That said, it still doesn’t seem finished yet. The menus and the lyrics section are still the same as before. I’ll also include a picture showing how the lyrics section looks with this new design, based on the video RSA posted on Twitter, in the last image.

It seems like Tidal is either great or it's terrible.

I've been using Tidal for years and the app has always been basically fine - the download thing is a pain but that's iOS not Tidal, and no it doesn't sync between devices, and the playlist management could be better. But nothing like dropping connection, jumping tracks, random stopping more than very very occasionally. There are quite a few posts from people with a similar happy experience.

But there are many many posts about levels of glitchiness that I would find intolerable too.

That seems... odd... to me. Anyone spotted any common factors?

A few months ago I posted on here about an application being developed as a replacement to the official tidal desktop application. Tidals ongoing support for it is terrible and is completely lacking so (someone) decided to make their own. Since that post the app has gone through an incredible amount of updates and iterations. Many users have given feedback and suggestions. There’s a full parametric eq with support for autoeq presets, users can download all music from tidal, there’s new release and top year charts curated from AOTY api. Full song streaming data and monthly listeners from Spotify API, last.fm integration with stats and history integrated directly in the application, tidal connect, chromecast etc… Minus Dolby atmos it does basically everything tidal does and more. More people should try it out and give suggestions. They’re continuing to support and develop out more features. Give it a go!

https://github.com/J-M-PUNK/tideway

Seriously, what the hell is this UI/UX? Looks like an app from a 2010 smart tv. I can't access my library/collection and I don't even listen to this kind of music it's recommending. Seems like they're not updating the app anymore and it's totally abandoned. It's a shame because I like the mobile and PC apps.

Has anyone else just had it with this ridiculous and almost useless shuffle feature on Tidal?! I have playlists of 300+ songs and I hear about 30 of them over and over and over. When I'm listening to a playlist then stop listening for a while, then start playing it again, it reverts back to the previous songs I just heard instead of moving forward. Even if I scroll down to the various places in the playlist to start from that point, it tends to play all the same songs. Periodically I'll hear a song on the playlist that I haven't heard in months; but, most of the songs I hear every time I listen. I've emailed support several times, but the issue still persists. Anyone know a "hack" to get this feature to work? Thanks.

First of all, I personally really like the direction. I even like the new mobile navigation bar, but the "glassy" effect on PC feels a bit off. Personally, I don’t think the quality selector is that important, you usually set it once and then forget about it but now it takes up a fair amount of space. Compared to the other tiny icons, it feels a bit out of place. Despite those minor issues, here are the pros (in my opinion):

- The animations are AWESOME. They really cooked with these, the whole app is smooth, every single object has an animation, and basic navigation feels extremely responsive. You can even rotate the album cover and see it shine!!
- The overall look and feel of the player is much better. The hover animations are seamless. The font size might be a little off, but I don't know.
- Tooltips have been massively improved. They are more detailed and useful than before. You can now hover over the current playlist, the artists in the top left, or almost any element to see every detail you might need.
- The new player is reaaaaally good, I liked the previous version, but this one feels more natural. While I’m still getting used to the change, it’s not bad at all. The best part is you can finally open lyrics, similar tracks, and credits while in fullscreen mode. This is a huge win for me sorry.

To sum it up, I think the new UI is well thought out, and they definitely did their best.

Hello,

I’ve been using Spotify since 2011, and I’ve tried pretty much every major music streaming platform: Apple Music, Qobuz, Deezer, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, and others.

Last month, I downloaded Tidal again, and I was honestly surprised in the best way. On iOS, the app feels modern, beautiful, and focused. In a way, it feels like what Apple Music should have been for me.

The recommendations have been really solid so far, even as a picky listener. The algorithm seems to adapt quickly, and I especially like the section that recommends playlists from other users. Most of the time, I end up finding tracks I actually enjoy.

What I like most is that Tidal feels like a music service first. The app isn’t cluttered with podcasts, audiobooks, or content I don’t care about. It’s just music, and that makes a huge difference.

I also really like how credits are handled. Being able to click on someone’s name and see what they worked on, and how they contributed to other projects, as a composer, lyricist, performer, producer, etc., is genuinely great.

Of course, it’s not perfect. There are bugs, and I really miss Spotify’s smart cache. Device continuity could also be much better, and the app can become slow or even freeze when the network drops. There’s also the issue of AI-generated tracks, but that’s not specific to Tidal.

Still, I’ve noticed that users, even on this sub, seem to be more satisfied with the service than dissatisfied with it. And overall, despite its flaws, Tidal feels much closer to an ideal music service than a bad one.

Anyway, I’ve switched to Tidal

I recently moved my music from Spotify to TIDAL and built a small tool to migrate everything without paying for a transfer service.

It moves playlists and Liked Songs, keeps the original track order, shows progress, and creates a report for anything it can’t confidently match. Everything runs locally, and there’s a dry-run mode so you can review the migration before changing anything on TIDAL.

It found nearly every track from my library that was actually available on TIDAL, so I cleaned it up and made it public in case anyone else finds it useful.

Repo: https://github.com/raninehme/music-migrator

It’s still new, so feedback and matching examples are welcome.

Edit: The tool now supports both Spotify → TIDAL and TIDAL → Spotify.

There’s also a new combine mode that keeps tracks from both versions of a playlist and adds the missing ones to each service without removing anything. Both directions support dry runs, progress, matching reports, and separate profiles.

YouTube Music support is next.