Independent open-source project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Google, YouTube or Discord. YouTube Music is a trademark of Google LLC. Encore shows the official music.youtube.com website; it doesn't download music or block ads.
Written in Go with Wails v3 on Windows' built-in WebView2 (Edge) runtime: the installer is about 4 MB and the installed app about 13 MB, where Chrome-based apps are about 100 MB.
Features
- Listen along: friends with Encore hear what you play, in sync (song, position, pauses, seeks and skips); they join with a code, a link, or the button on your Discord status. End-to-end encrypted.
- Discord status: song, artist, artwork and a live timer, with "Listen along" and "Get Encore" buttons for friends.
- Mini player: a small always-on-top window with artwork and controls.
- Playback controls everywhere: the tray menu (with the current song), the taskbar thumbnail (⏮ ⏯ ⏭), keyboard media keys and the Windows media flyout.
- Numeric
0–100 volume that remembers its level across launches; scroll over it to change it (Shift: steps of 5).
- One window with a custom dark title bar that reopens where you left it; start with Windows and minimize/close to tray if you want.
- Your official YouTube Music sign-in, library and Premium, inside the app. Links that leave YouTube Music open in your default browser.
- In-app updates from GitHub releases, verified against the published SHA-512 before installing.
Install
Download the installer from the download page and run it. It installs for your Windows account only (no administrator rights) and replaces earlier "YouTube Music" versions of this app, keeping your settings and sign-in.
The installer isn't code-signed yet (free signing for open-source projects has been requested), so Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": select More info → Run anyway. Releases are built by GitHub Actions from this repository; see the code signing policy and privacy details.
Requirements
- Windows 10 or 11 with the WebView2 runtime (built into Windows 11)
- Go 1.25+ to build
- Discord desktop client, only if Rich Presence is enabled
Run locally
go run .
Build an installer
Needs go-winres (go install github.com/tc-hib/go-winres@latest) and NSIS (winget install NSIS.NSIS).
.\build.ps1 -Version 0.2.0
This runs the tests, then writes dist\Encore.exe, dist\Encore-Setup-0.2.0.exe and dist\latest.yml. The installer is per-user, installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Encore and replaces an earlier install named "YouTube Music" (Go 0.2.x or Electron 0.1.x), whose settings in %USERPROFILE%\.youtube-music carry over. Pushing a v* tag builds and publishes a release from GitHub Actions.
Where things live
| Path | Contents |
|---|
%USERPROFILE%\.youtube-music\settings.json | App settings (shared with the Electron releases) |
%USERPROFILE%\.youtube-music\webview2\ | YouTube sign-in and site data |
%USERPROFILE%\.youtube-music\app.log | Log for troubleshooting (capped at 1 MB; the previous one is kept as app.log.1) |
main.go, windowstate.go | Windows, layout, window position |
messages.go, state.go, playback.go | Page messages, settings state, playback hub, tray and taskbar controls |
presence.go, internal/discord | Discord Rich Presence (local IPC, no secret) |
listenalong.go, internal/listen | Listen along (encrypted relay protocol) |
internal/taskbar | Taskbar thumbnail buttons |
internal/audiosession | Name and remembered volume in the Windows volume mixer |
frontend/player.js | Script injected into music.youtube.com |
frontend/shell.html, frontend/settings.html, frontend/mini.html | Title bar, settings and mini player pages |
site/ | Download page, code signing policy and the listen-along join page, published with GitHub Pages |
The title bar is its own window. The YouTube Music and settings webviews are attached below it as Win32 child windows, so the site's own layout is never modified. Window moving and edge resizing are handled by the title-bar page itself (Wails' own drag/resize script only loads into pages served by its asset server, and these pages are built from strings): it asks the app to start the native move or resize. While the window is not maximised a 6 px frame of that page stays visible around the YouTube view, which is what makes the window resizable from its sides and bottom.
Volume
The app stores the player engine level (#movie_player.getVolume(), what you actually hear) and applies it with #movie_player.setVolume, which exists in both of YouTube Music's current player UIs. Before playback starts it seeds YouTube's own PREF cookie (volume=N, on the old slider curve) and reloads once, so the player starts at the saved level from its first frame. If YouTube changes the level on its own it is put back; a change you make in the page (slider, keyboard) is followed and saved. The app never mutes, pauses or plays media and never writes the <video> element's volume.
In the Windows volume mixer the sound appears as Encore. It is played by a WebView2 helper process (msedgewebview2.exe), which Windows would otherwise list as "Microsoft Edge WebView2" and whose volume it remembers per WebView2 install: shared with other WebView2 apps and forgotten when the runtime updates or the helper restarts. internal/audiosession names the app's sessions and keeps the level set for Encore in the mixer (mixerVolume in settings.json), restoring it whenever a new session starts.
Tests
go test ./...
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
