Everyday Use

Middle-click autoscroll

On Windows, and on Linux once turned on, middle-click anywhere in a scrolling list, then move the pointer away from the starting point. That list follows the pointer, faster as the distance grows, and the pointer shows the direction it is scrolling. Speed and dead zone match Chromium’s autoscroll. Moving across another pane keeps the original list in control. A small dead zone prevents an ordinary middle-click from moving the view. You can also hold the middle button while moving and release it to stop. Otherwise click again, press Esc, turn the wheel, or switch to another window to stop. Text fields keep middle-click paste, and sliders and scroll bars keep their own dragging.

This works automatically on Windows, with no setting to enable. On Linux, turn on Middle-click autoscroll under Settings > Appearance. It is off by default, because Linux desktops usually paste the primary selection on middle click. macOS retains its existing middle-click behavior.

Scrolling shelves

Point at a horizontal shelf, such as a row of mixes or Recently played on Home, and hold Shift while turning the mouse wheel. The shelf moves while the surrounding page stays put. Release Shift to scroll the page normally.

Dragging beyond the visible list

Hold a dragged song near the top or bottom of an editable playlist’s visible area to scroll. Scrolling gets faster closer to the edge and stops when you move away or release the mouse. This lets you move a song from the end to the beginning without dropping it along the way. Clear filters and sorting before reordering playlist songs.

Drag a song from the player bar, the queue, or another list into an open editable playlist. The line between rows marks its insertion position. Dropping below the last row appends; the blank area of an empty playlist accepts its first song. The source song stays in its list or queue, and playback continues unchanged. Dragging a row within the same playlist still moves that row.

Select several songs with Ctrl-click (Cmd-click on macOS) or Shift-click, then drag any selected row. The whole selection travels together in its displayed order, even if you selected the rows in a different order. The preview names the first song and counts the rest. Drop it on a sidebar playlist to append, between rows of another editable playlist to insert, or on Favourites to save every selected song. Selected rows have a translucent neutral highlight. Keyboard focus uses the row highlight without an extra outline.

Dragging an unselected row copies just that song. Reordering within a playlist still moves one song at a time. Several selected songs dropped back between the rows of their own open playlist stay where they are. Dropped on that playlist in the sidebar, they ask before being added again.

Copying and pasting songs

Press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on macOS) in a playlist, album or favourites list to select every song the list shows. A filter narrows the selection to the matching songs.

Ctrl+C (Cmd+C) copies the selected songs’ TIDAL links, one per line, ready to paste into another playlist or a message. Ctrl+V (Cmd+V) in a playlist you can edit adds every song link on the clipboard to its end. Songs already in the playlist ask before being added twice, and links that are not songs, such as albums, are skipped.

Ctrl+X (Cmd+X) in a playlist you can edit copies the selected songs’ links the same way and removes the songs from the playlist, so Ctrl+V in another playlist moves them there.

These keys edit the text instead while a search, filter or other text field has focus.

Album credits and reviews, recommended songs

An album page has a Credits button (also Credits in the album’s menu). It opens a page with the album’s own credits (executive producers, labels and so on) followed by every song with its roles, such as producers, composers and engineers; names that are TIDAL artists open their page.

When TIDAL has a review of the album, it is on the Credits page’s Info tab, in full. Names in it are links.

Under a playlist you can edit, Recommended songs lists ten songs TIDAL suggests for it. Add puts a song into the playlist at once and takes it off the list; Refresh shows the next ten. Right-click a suggestion for its menu, or double-click to play it.

Starting a playlist and resuming

With Shuffle off and the playlist in its original order, its Play button explicitly starts at the first available song. The selected song appears in the player immediately, including while local playback reconnects. The full playlist remains the playback source, even when only its first page is loaded.

Double-click a song to start at that row. Sorting the table plays its chosen order when Shuffle is off. Shuffle chooses a random starting song unless you choose a specific row. To resume the current song at its paused position, use Play in the bottom player bar or press Space.

The Shuffle button beside Play starts a fresh shuffled play of that page’s songs at once and turns shuffle on for that playback, like TIDAL. This works on albums, playlists, artists, mixes, and Favourites. The shuffle icon in the player bar is still a plain on/off toggle.

Scroll an album, playlist, mix, radio or artist page past its header and a bar stays pinned at the top with the cover, the title, who made it and the page’s buttons (Play, Shuffle, Add or Added, Edit and Private on your own playlist, Share, More), so they are always in reach. A multi-disc album lists each volume under its own Volume heading, with the songs numbered from 1 again; sorting the table lists the songs flat, as on a single disc.

When you start a song from a sorted playlist or Favourites, it appears in the player bar straight away while playback connects. Sorting changes the order you hear without rearranging the playlist saved on TIDAL.

Sorted and filtered views omit unavailable songs and local files from playback. The rows stay visible, and selecting a repeated song starts that occurrence. Filtering a playlist or Favourites plays only the matching songs, including repeated entries. Play is disabled when the view has no playable songs; it never falls back to the unfiltered playlist in that case. Clearing the filter restores the original view. Existing Shuffle behavior is unchanged.

Right-clicking a song in an editable playlist offers Remove from this playlist even when the list is sorted or filtered, since removal does not depend on position. Move up, Move down, and drag-reorder stay on the default order, where the rows on screen match the order saved on TIDAL. Right-clicking the playing song in the player bar offers the same removal while it plays from a playlist you can edit.

Card menus

Right-clicking a card on Home, Explore, search, the artist pages or My Collection opens its menu, anywhere on the card, including over the Play button that appears on hover. An artist’s menu offers Bio, Go to artist radio, Block (or Unblock), Credits, Follow (or Unfollow) and Share. Blocking an artist makes TIDAL leave them out of your mixes and radios, and the artist page’s … menu has the same item. A playlist’s menu opens with its cover, title and size (“19 Items (46:59)”), then Play now, Shuffle, Play next, Add to playlist, Follow and Share. TIDAL’s Report is not offered: Tidalfast has no working way to do it yet.

Album, song, mix and video menus follow TIDAL’s items in TIDAL’s order. An album’s: Play now, Play next, Add to queue, Add to playlist, Add to (or Remove from) My Collection, Save for Later, Go to artist, Share. A song’s: Play next, Add to queue, Add to playlist, Remove from playlist (on a playlist you can edit), My Collection, Save for Later, Go to track radio, Go to album, Credits (for the song that is playing), Go to artist, Share. A mix’s: Play next, Add to playlist, My Collection, Share. A video’s: Play next, Add to queue, Save for Later, Go to artist, Share; TIDAL’s Add to playlist and Add to My Collection for videos are not offered yet. Tidalfast’s own items come after TIDAL’s: Download, an album’s Credits, a video’s Play now and Open on TIDAL, then anything a plugin adds.

Refreshing a playlist

Choose Refresh in a playlist’s … menu to reload its details and songs, including changes made elsewhere. The menu item reads Refreshing… and is disabled while loading. Current songs, filtering and sorting stay visible. Tidalfast finishes saving your edits before loading changes from TIDAL. If loading fails, your songs stay visible and you can choose Retry.

Playing from the sidebar

Double-click a playlist, Favourites, album, or artist row in the Library sidebar to start playing it. A single click still opens the row’s page. Pointing at a row’s cover art also shows a play button.

Finding a setting

The Settings page has its own search field under the title. Type to narrow the page to matching rows; sections without matches disappear. Clear the field to see everything again.

Keyboard and screen readers

Right-click a search, filter, settings or playlist-editing text field for Cut, Copy, Paste and Select all. Cut and Copy require a text selection. The usual keyboard shortcuts, including Undo, still work. Ctrl, Cmd and Alt arrow keys move the caret while a text field has focus. Playback and navigation shortcuts on those keys remain available from song rows and other controls.

The main window provides screen-reader names for playback controls, library and song rows, menus, sliders, and settings switches. Tab and Shift+Tab move keyboard focus, shown by an outline. Enter activates the focused control; on a song row, it plays that song. The row’s More button opens its menu from the keyboard too.

In a playlist, album or Favourites, focus a song row and use the up and down arrows to move between whole rows in the displayed order. Rows scroll into view as you move; Enter plays the focused song. Tab still reaches artist links and each row’s Like and More controls. Arrow navigation selects only the destination song. Hold Shift with up or down to extend or shrink the selection from its anchor. Press Delete to remove selected songs from a playlist you can edit, just like Remove from this playlist. On macOS, both Delete and Fn+Delete work. Text fields, dialogs and open menus keep Delete from acting on the list.

Press and hold the player bar’s volume slider to update volume without moving the pointer. The seek slider previews on press and seeks on release.

The default local output smooths volume and mute changes over 30 ms. Explicit track changes and play/pause/stop use nominal 50 ms fades. Stopping can shorten the fade to the queued audio. Natural track transitions remain gapless.

Left and right arrows adjust a focused volume slider by five percentage points, or the seek slider by one percent of the song. Screen readers can also read and set these sliders’ values. Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on macOS) focuses search. Space plays or pauses the current song even when a song row or control has focus. Text fields keep Space for typing. Unmodified letter shortcuts still yield to the focused control.

This is the first part of screen-reader support; testing with NVDA on Windows is still to do.

Keyboard shortcuts

On macOS, Cmd replaces Ctrl. A focused text field keeps its usual keys for its own text.

Controlling it from the command line

The tidalfast command controls the copy already running, on every platform. Each verb prints nothing on success:

tidalfast play-pause          tidalfast volume 40
tidalfast play                tidalfast volume-up [percent]
tidalfast pause               tidalfast volume-down [percent]
tidalfast next                tidalfast mute
tidalfast previous            tidalfast shuffle [on|off]
tidalfast seek 15             tidalfast repeat [off|context|track]
tidalfast seek -- -15         tidalfast like
tidalfast seek-to 90          tidalfast play-uri tidal:playlist:<id>
tidalfast show                tidalfast now-playing [--raw]
tidalfast play-search <words> tidalfast play-search --kind artist <name>

shuffle and repeat toggle when used without an argument. Pass a state to set it directly. like adds or removes the playing track from your favourites.

play-search searches TIDAL and plays the best match: a song, or with --kind album, artist, or playlist, one of those from the start.

now-playing prints one readable line. --raw prints tab-separated fields.

A verb exits non-zero when Tidalfast is not running.

tidalfast <link> opens a TIDAL link, a tidal: URI, in the running app, or starts the app on it. This is what the desktop runs when a link is clicked. On Linux, Tidalfast is also an MPRIS player, so playerctl --player=tidalfast play-pause and media keys work too.

Launchers such as Raycast or Alfred can use these commands. They reach Tidalfast through a private channel only your user can open (on Windows, a loopback port that answers only requests carrying a random token). Use the command rather than the channel itself.

Updates

The Windows installer and the portable Windows and Linux downloads update from inside Tidalfast. Click the green update button to download a release, then choose when to restart and install it. Settings can enable automatic background downloads; restarting always waits for your click. Closing the update window keeps a download running. You can also check for a new release from Settings, or on macOS from the application menu.

Tidalfast checks each download before installing it. An interrupted or damaged download leaves the running app alone, and a failed startup restores the previous installation. Updates keep your settings and sign-ins. On macOS, move Tidalfast to Applications before updating it.

Package-managed installations update through their package manager, including Flatpak, apt, dnf, pacman, Nix, and Cargo. Other installations, the AppImage among them, use the Download page. Portable archives identify themselves with tidalfast-portable.txt.

Library order

The menu below the Library filters selects an order for each section. Name and Recently played are available throughout; albums also offer Recently added. Items you pin in Tidalfast remain at the top. Sorting or dragging Library items changes their order only in Tidalfast; it does not rearrange your TIDAL library.

Drag playlists to choose Local custom order. Selecting another sort keeps the saved arrangement, so selecting Local custom order restores it.

Favourites start pinned at the top. Drag the row between pins to choose its position, or below the pin block to unpin it. Its right-click menu also offers Unpin and Pin to top. Dragging a song onto it still saves that song.

Tidalfast follows the system when it asks for less motion: Animation effects turned off in Windows, Reduce motion on macOS, or GNOME’s Animations turned off. Its animations then show where they end at once: the player bar’s colour changes without fading, lyrics jump to the sung line, and a new theme replaces the old one without the reveal. Spinners still turn.

Windows taskbar controls

Hovering Tidalfast’s taskbar button offers Previous, Play/Pause, and Next beneath its window preview. They control the same playing device as the player bar, update immediately, and are disabled when there is no song or the device refuses controls. The icons follow the system appearance and display scaling.

Clicking or double-clicking the Windows tray icon shows and raises Tidalfast. Use Show or hide Tidalfast in the tray menu to hide it again.

Closing to the tray removes the window and its preview. Reopening the main window creates its controls again. Media keys and the system’s now-playing controls continue working while the window is closed.

A window saved on a display that is no longer connected opens on the primary display instead: on Windows and X11 it moves to the middle of the primary monitor as it opens, and on macOS a position whose title bar would be on no screen is not used. Positions on connected secondary displays still restore. Reinstalling preserves settings; it is not needed to recover a position left on an unplugged display.

macOS Dock menu

Right-click or Control-click Tidalfast’s Dock icon for Play (or Pause while music plays), Next, and Previous, above the standard Dock items. They control the same playing device as the player bar and keep working while the window is closed to the menu bar.

The now-playing view

Click the player bar’s empty area or the track info (not its buttons or sliders) and the now-playing view slides up, like TIDAL. It shows the big cover with Similar tracks, Credits, and Lyrics tabs. Click the player bar again, use the collapse chevron, or press Esc to close it.

The top bar

The top bar reserves room for the update badge beside Search. The bar stays above the page. Library, Queue and Lyrics keep their full height. When the window narrows, Library, Queue and Lyrics give up width before the top bar runs out of room, and return to the widths you chose once it widens. With Queue or Lyrics open, the window cannot be made narrower than the room they need beside the page. Hover to read the available version; click to open the update window.

MacBook notch widget

On macOS machines equipped with a display notch, Tidalfast displays an interactive Now Playing floating island under the notch when the main window is minimized, in the background, or closed to the tray.

Hovering over the notch expands the widget with album artwork, title, artist, elapsed and remaining time, a seek bar matching the player bar, and playback controls (shuffle, previous, play/pause disc, next, repeat, and save to library). Scrubbing the seek bar seeks within the playing track.

When music is paused, hovering still reveals the controls so you can resume playback directly from the notch.

To turn on the notch overlay, check MacBook notch widget in Settings.

Recent

The queue panel’s second tab lists tracks you played through Tidalfast. A song is added after about 30 seconds, or halfway through a shorter song. Paused time and seeking do not count. Choosing a row starts that song.

The list is stored in history.json and is never uploaded. Settings > Storage shows its location and has a Clear history button.

On Windows, the main window’s minimize, maximize, and close buttons share the top bar with Tidalfast’s controls. Drag an empty part of that bar to move or snap the window, and drag a window edge or corner to resize it.

Radio

Go to song radio in a song’s menu opens a page of similar songs picked by TIDAL, without starting playback. Playlist, album, and artist menus have matching radio entries. Play, Shuffle, and a double-clicked row play the songs the page shows. The mixes and radios in your collection are under Mixes & Radio in the Library.

Bit-perfect playback

Settings → Audio quality → Bit-perfect (exclusive mode) sends each track to the audio device in its own sample rate and bit depth, untouched. The equalizer, normalisation and crossfade are off while it is on, and the quality badge says bit-perfect once the device plays the music as it is. When the device cannot be held, Tidalfast plays through the usual output and the badge says why.

Under the switch a status line says what reaches the device, such as Bit-perfect · 24-bit / 96 kHz → USB DAC (exclusive), or why it is not bit-perfect (shared mode, resampled to another rate, the equalizer, the volume). On Windows it also lists the rates and bit depths the chosen device takes in exclusive mode. When the device has a volume control in hardware, the volume slider moves that control and leaves the samples alone, turning the device down from the level the system had it at (never louder); otherwise the volume stays at 100 %. Release the device when paused (on by default) lets other apps use the device during a pause; off, it stays held for an instant resume. Each output device remembers whether bit-perfect was on for it. Tracks in the same format play gaplessly; a track in another format reopens the device at that format.

• Windows holds the device in WASAPI exclusive mode. Exclusive mode must be allowed in the device’s Sound properties.
• Linux opens the sound card’s own ALSA hardware device (hw:), past PipeWire or PulseAudio. It asks the sound server to release the card first, the way JACK does, and the server takes it back when playback stops or bit-perfect is turned off. Other apps cannot play on that card meanwhile. Pick the card under Output device, such as a USB DAC; with the default output, ALSA’s default card is used. If the card stays busy, another program is holding it directly: close it, or stop it from using the card. If it is refused for permission, add your user to the audio group. The Flatpak includes the device access this needs. The volume slider moves the card’s own hardware volume (its Master, PCM or Digital control) when it has one, down from the level the sound server left it at, and puts the level back when the card is let go; a card without one stays at 100 %.
• macOS plays through the shared output for now.

Equalizer

Settings → Playback → Equalizer shapes playback on this computer. The Graphic view has ten sliders; the Parametric view has up to twenty bands, each a peak, a low or high shelf, a low, high or band pass, an all pass, or a notch, with its own frequency, gain and Q. Drag a band’s handle on the graph to move it, use the mouse wheel over it to change its width, and double-click the graph to add a band. Changes glide in and switching the equalizer on or off crossfades, so nothing clicks.

The Automatic preamp turns everything down by the highest boost, so the equalizer does not clip; a limiter still catches what gets past. Save your own presets by name, rename or delete them, paste an Equalizer APO or AutoEQ profile (ParametricEQ.txt, or a GraphicEQ: line) to import it, and copy the equalizer back out as an Equalizer APO profile. Find your headphones downloads the AutoEQ project’s list on request and loads the correction for the headphone you pick. Headphone crossfeed (off by default, three strengths after Bauer’s BS2B) mixes a little of each side’s low pitches into the other, as speakers would, and is bypassed with the equalizer switch. Remember for each output device switches the equalizer, crossfeed included, with the output device. The equalizer is bypassed while bit-perfect is on.

Lyrics

Choose the microphone button in the player bar, or press L, to open lyrics. Synced lyrics follow the playing line automatically. Scroll to pause following, choose Follow to resume it, or choose a line to jump to that part of the song.

The expand button opens lyrics in full screen. Press Esc or choose the shrink button to return to your previous window size. Full-screen lyrics scroll smoothly and highlight the playing line automatically. Scrolling by hand pauses following; choose Follow to resume. A wide window shows the song’s cover beside the lyrics, the two centred together, and a song without words, such as an instrumental, shows just its cover in the middle of the screen. Quitting while lyrics are full screen no longer leaves the next launch stuck in full screen: the window returns to its previous size.

Dark theme	Light theme