Is there a YouTube Music desktop app for Windows?

YouTube does not ship an official desktop app. Lyrenne is a free, open source native player for Windows 10 and 11 that signs in to your own YouTube Music account and plays your real library.

Yes. It is free and open source under GPL-3.0. There is no paid tier, no account of its own and no telemetry.

Does it need an installer?

No. It ships as a portable ZIP. Extract it anywhere and run Lyrenne.exe. Everything it writes stays in its own folder, so deleting that folder removes it completely.

Do I need VLC or Java installed?

No. The download bundles the VLC playback engine, ffmpeg and its own Java runtime.

Does Lyrenne play music without ads?

Lyrenne streams through the same API the mobile apps use and shows no advertising of its own.

LyrenneYouTube Music for Windows

A free, open source YouTube Music client for Windows 10 and 11. Your real library, your real playlists, synced lyrics and offline downloads. No ads, no installer, no telemetry.

Download

Portable ZIP · 64-bit · GPL-3.0

What It Is

YouTube ships no desktop app for YouTube Music, and a browser tab is not a music player. Lyrenne is a native Windows application that signs in to your own account and talks to the same API the mobile app uses.

It is not a wrapper around the website and not a repackaged Android build. It has its own player, database and sync layer, written for the desktop.

Lyrenne running on Windows 11, showing the YouTube Music home feed with quick picks and the player bar

Features

Library

Two-way sync

Liked songs, albums, artists and playlists sync in both directions. Edits made on the desktop reach your YouTube Music account instead of stopping at a local copy.

InnerTube / SQLDelight

Playback

A real player

Bundled VLC engine with crossfade, a 10-band equalizer, playback speed, sleep timer, skip silence and volume normalization.

VLC / vlcj

Lyrics

Five providers

BetterLyrics, LrcLib, KuGou, YouTube lyrics and YouTube transcripts, chained. A track one source misses is usually covered by the next.

Synced / Plain

Offline

Downloads and export

Keep tracks offline, or export a playlist as loudness-normalized MP3s numbered for a car head unit or a USB stick.

ffmpeg / EBU R128

Discovery

The whole feed

Home, Explore, charts, moods and genres, radio, auto-queue, podcasts, and search with filters and suggestions.

Continuations

Desktop

Native extras

Media keys, tray mini player, Discord Rich Presence, Last.fm scrobbling, Listen Together rooms and Shazam recognition.

Windows 10 / 11

Install

Download Lyrenne-X.Y.Z-portable.zip from the latest release.

Extract it anywhere. C:\Lyrenne works.

Run Lyrenne.exe and sign in with your browser. VLC, ffmpeg and the Java runtime are already inside the archive, so there is nothing else to install.

Prefer a package manager? Scoop works:

scoop bucket add lyrenne https://github.com/Doctordefector/scoop-lyrenne
scoop install lyrenne

Do not install into OneDrive Lyrenne keeps its database, your login and your downloads next to the exe by design. A sync client that reopens those files mid-write will lock or corrupt them, which is the most common cause of the app failing to start. Keep it out of OneDrive, Dropbox and a synced Desktop folder.

Questions

Is there an official YouTube Music desktop app for Windows?

No. YouTube ships mobile apps and the web player, nothing native for Windows. Lyrenne is an independent open source client.

Is Lyrenne free?

Yes, free and open source under GPL-3.0. No paid tier, no account of its own, no telemetry.

Do I need a YouTube Music Premium subscription?

No, but it signs in to whichever account you give it, so a Premium account keeps its benefits.

Does it need VLC or Java installed?

No. Both are bundled in the download, along with ffmpeg for exporting.

Does it work on macOS or Linux?

The code is Compose Desktop on the JVM, so it is portable in principle, but only Windows builds are published today.

How do I uninstall it?

Delete the folder. Everything it wrote lives inside it.