pear-desktop: Use YouTube Music as a Desktop App

Overview

Pear Desktop is an unofficial Electron-based desktop application for using YouTube Music outside a browser tab. It gives listeners a dedicated music player experience on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with options to adjust the app’s appearance and behavior.

It also provides a plugin system for extending the application, including access to Electron window behavior and renderer-side styling. The project is not affiliated with Google or YouTube, and it is provided as-is.

Key Features

• Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
• Provides a desktop interface for YouTube Music with a native look and feel.
• Supports CSS themes to customize the application’s appearance.
• Includes a plugin system with backend, renderer, and preload hooks.
• Plugins can add menus, store configuration, and communicate between app components through IPC.
• Offers installation options through platform package managers as well as GitHub releases.
• Supports community translations through Hosted Weblate.

Use Cases

• YouTube Music listeners who want a dedicated desktop window instead of keeping the service in a browser tab.
• Users who want to customize the player’s appearance with CSS themes.
• Developers who want to build plugins that modify the interface or interact with Electron features.
• Users on Linux, macOS, or Windows looking for a desktop music-player extension with platform-specific installation options.

Project Facts

• Language: TypeScript
• License: MIT
• Stars: 33.6k
• Forks: 2k
• Topics: desktop-app, electron, linux, mac, macosx, music, music-player, music-player-application, music-player-extension, node, windows
• Archived: No

Getting Started

On macOS, install with Homebrew:

brew install pear-devs/pear/pear-desktop

For other platforms and installation methods, see the latest releases and the repository README.

Alternatives

• Tauon: Tauon focuses on managing a personal music library and supports Plex/Jellyfin streaming and Spotify integration, rather than wrapping YouTube Music.
• nuclear: Nuclear streams music from multiple online sources such as YouTube, Jamendo, and SoundCloud, rather than centering on YouTube Music.

Considerations

• This is an unofficial, volunteer-developed project and is not affiliated with Google or YouTube.
• The application is provided as-is, and the project places responsibility for use on the user.
• On Windows, SmartScreen may block the installer because it is from an unknown publisher.
• A manual macOS installation may require removing the downloaded app’s quarantine attribute if macOS reports it as damaged.
• Building from source requires pnpm; the project uses Playwright for tests.