Browsing

Search finds a song. From that one song you can reach the record it came from, everything else its artist has made, and a queue that keeps going after you stop choosing.

Two keys do all of it: a for the album, A for the artist. Lowercase is the record, uppercase is the person.

From a song to its album

Put the cursor on any track — a search result, a queue entry, a recommendation, a favourite — and press a.

╭─ ALBUM  [a] queue all songs  [x] download  [esc] releases ──────╮
│ ▇▇▇▇  Random Access Memories                                    │
│ ▇▇▇▇  Daft Punk · 2013                                          │
│ ▇▇▇▇  13 tracks · 1:14:46  ·  [a] queue all songs · [esc] back  │
│                                                                 │
│ 01. Give Life Back to Music          54M plays            4:34  │
│ 02. The Game of Love                 28M plays            5:22  │

The album opens with its cover, its year, its running time and every track in order, each with the number of plays it has. From here:

Key	Action
Enter	Add one track to the queue
a	Queue the whole album
x	Download the whole album into its own numbered folder
esc	Step back

Inside an album, a has switched from open to queue all — the one album thing there is left to do. The panel title says so, so you never have to remember which meaning applies.

Local files have no album page

Tracks played from your Library, and rows saved by very old versions, may not carry the id an album page needs. a says so rather than guessing.

From a song to its artist

Press A on any track and you land on whoever made it.

╭─ DAFT PUNK · TOP SONGS  [A] switch  [a] album  [esc] back ──────╮
│ ▇▇▇▇  Daft Punk                                                 │
│ ▇▇▇▇  7.17M subscribers · 20 releases                           │
│ ▇▇▇▇  100 top tracks  ·  [A] releases · [esc] back              │
│                                                                 │
│ 001. Instant Crush (feat. Julian Casablancas)  1.2B plays  5:37 │
│ 002. Get Lucky (Radio Edit)                    1.8B plays  4:09 │

An artist page opens on their hundred most-played tracks, ordered by plays, because this is a music player and the first thing wanted is something to play. Press A again to switch to their releases — albums, singles and EPs, newest first.

Key	On the songs	On the releases
A	Switch to releases	Switch back to the songs
Enter	Queue that song	Open that release
a	Open that song's album	—
esc	Leave the artist	Leave the artist

The two views share the same header, so the artist's name and photo stay on screen whichever one you are looking at.

Everything nests

An album opened from a song is not a dead end. The artist page is fetched behind it, so esc walks back out the way you would expect rather than dumping you at your search results:

search result ──a──▶ album ──esc──▶ releases ──A──▶ top songs ──esc──▶ back

This holds no matter how you got in. Press a on a track in your queue and you land in that album inside its artist's page, exactly as if you had walked in through the front door.

It works on tracks that never stored an artist

Queue and history rows saved before ytmgo recorded artist ids carry only the album. The album page names its own artist, so A finds the way there anyway.

Filtering what is on screen

While an artist page is open, typing in the search box filters the list in front of you instead of starting a new search. It filters the top songs or the releases, whichever you are on, and updates as you type. Enter does nothing special — there is nothing to submit.

esc leaves the artist and clears the filter with it, so you never return to a results list with a query in the box that matches nothing on it.

The cursor decides, not the page

a and A act on whatever the cursor is on. With the focus in the queue — Tab moves it there — A opens the artist of the highlighted queue track, even with an artist page open beside it. The page on screen only flips between songs and releases when the cursor is in it.

Recommendations

Press R for a queue of tracks YouTube Music would play next, seeded from what you have actually listened to. No account, no login — it reads your local play history.

Autoplay does the same thing automatically: turn it on with c (or the ∞ AUTO control on the player bar) and ytmgo keeps the queue fed once you stop adding to it.

Both need something to go on. On a fresh install, play a few things first.

Importing a playlist

Paste a playlist link into the search box and press Enter. Its tracks fill the results list like any search.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=...
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/...

A YouTube playlist comes across as it is. Spotify has no audio anyone else can play, so every track is looked up on YouTube Music by name and matched on length: a couple of seconds apart is the same recording, an hour apart is somebody's loop of it. Tracks with no match are skipped, and the status line says how many.

Nothing is queued until you ask. e adds every track on screen.

With the mouse

Everything above works by clicking, too.

• Click a track or a release to select it, double-click to open or play
• Click a page tab in the header
• Scroll any list, or the lyrics pane, with the wheel

Taking a song elsewhere

Key	Action
u	Copy the track's link to the clipboard
f	Favourite it
x	Download it

u copies a youtube.com link, which opens for anyone. If you would rather hand out music.youtube.com links, change Copy Link As on the Settings page — both point at the same recording.