Tidal Wave is not affiliated with TIDAL Music AS.
Tidal Wave is a native, lightweight desktop client for the Tidal music streaming service. It is built using C++20, CMake, and Qt 6/QML, delivering a fast, system-integrated music listening experience.
- Native Performance: Built with C++20 and Qt 6, bypassing heavy web wrappers for a minimal CPU and memory footprint.
- Media Keys and MPRIS2: Full Linux media player integration via D-Bus MPRIS2, supporting lockscreen controls, system volume widgets, and media keys.
- Secure Authentication: Implements Tidal OAuth device login flow with secure local session caching using SQLite.
- Custom Audio Player: Native streaming audio engine utilizing QMediaPlayer and QAudioOutput with selectable stream qualities.
- Chromecast Output (Linux): Cast audio to Chromecast / Google Home devices — native mDNS discovery (Avahi) and CASTV2 control, with a built-in HTTP server that streams the current track (FLAC up to 96 kHz, or AAC) directly to the device. Downloads/downsamples on the fly so every quality tier casts.
- Persistent Navigation State: Separate loaders retain individual page states when jumping between Home, Search, and My Collection views.
- Queue Panel: Full queue management including track ordering, shuffle, and cycle repeat modes.
- System Tray Integration: Background playback support with system tray control options to show, hide, and quit the application.
- Rich Detail Pages: Dedicated views for albums, artists, playlists, and mixes. Biographies are parsed as rich text with clickable navigation links.
- Robust Sleep Timer: Persistent background sleep timer in the Now Playing page with presets, a custom slider, a toggleable fade-out fader (with pop-prevention delay), and an end-of-track stopping mode.
I used Claude Code over the course of 3 days to generate most of the code for this project, since I recently won some Anthropic API credits and wanted to put them to use. I also don't currently have the time to do this any other way, even if I wanted to. It's a shame, since I'm generally really not a supporter of AI, but I wanted the performance increase and the money was already spent.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| Space | Play / Pause |
| Ctrl + Right | Next track |
| Ctrl + Left | Previous track |
| Right | Seek forward 10 seconds |
| Left | Seek backward 10 seconds |
| Up | Volume up (5% increment) |
| Down | Volume down (5% increment) |
| Ctrl + M | Mute / Unmute |
| Ctrl + S | Toggle Shuffle |
| Ctrl + R | Cycle Repeat Mode (Off / All / One) |
| Ctrl + 1 | Go to Home |
| Ctrl + 2 | Go to Search |
| Ctrl + 3 | Go to Collection |
| Ctrl + N | Fullscreen Now Playing view |
| Ctrl + Q | Toggle Queue panel |
| Escape | Go back |
| Alt + Left | Go back |
| Ctrl + , | Open Settings |
Prebuilt downloads for every platform are on the latest release.
Pick your system below. (ffmpeg is optional but needed for the download and Chromecast features.)
🐧 Linux — Debian / Ubuntu / Mint (recommended)
Download tidal-wave-linux-x86_64.deb, then:
sudo apt install ./tidal-wave-linux-x86_64.debThat's it — apt pulls in the Qt 6 runtime, QML modules, and everything else automatically
(no chasing missing packages). Launch it from your app menu or run tidal-wave.
🐧 Linux — other distros (Fedora, Arch, …)
Download tidal-wave-linux-x86_64.tar.gz, extract it, and run the binary:
tar -xzf tidal-wave-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
./tidal-waveInstall the runtime yourself via your package manager: the Qt 6 libraries (Core, Gui, Widgets,
Quick, Qml, Network, DBus, Multimedia, Sql, Svg) and their QML modules, plus ffmpeg and
avahi (for Chromecast). If it complains about a missing library, install the matching Qt 6
runtime package. Building from source (below) is often easier on these distros.
🍎 macOS (Apple Silicon & Intel)
Download tidal-wave-macos-x64.tar.gz and unpack it (double-click, or tar -xzf …).
The app is unsigned, so macOS quarantines it — clear that once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine tidal-wave.appThen double-click tidal-wave.app. (Alternatively: right-click the app → Open →
Open on the first launch.) For downloads, brew install ffmpeg.
🪟 Windows 10 / 11
Download tidal-wave-windows-x64.zip, extract the folder anywhere, and run tidal-wave.exe.
It's unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen will warn you the first time — click More info → Run anyway.
Everything (Qt runtime, QML) is bundled in the folder. For downloads, install
ffmpeg and add it to your PATH.
You need a C++20 compiler (GCC 11+ / Clang 13+ / MSVC 2022+), CMake 3.20+, and Qt 6.5+.
Install the toolchain:
| OS | Command |
|---|---|
| Debian/Ubuntu | sudo apt install build-essential cmake qt6-base-dev qt6-declarative-dev qt6-multimedia-dev libqt6svg6-dev qml6-module-qtquick-controls libsqlite3-dev libasound2-dev libavahi-client-dev ffmpeg |
| Fedora | sudo dnf install gcc-c++ cmake qt6-qtbase-devel qt6-qtdeclarative-devel qt6-qtmultimedia-devel qt6-qtsvg-devel sqlite-devel alsa-lib-devel avahi-devel ffmpeg |
| Arch | sudo pacman -S base-devel cmake qt6-base qt6-declarative qt6-multimedia qt6-svg sqlite avahi ffmpeg |
| macOS | brew install cmake qt ffmpeg |
| Windows | Install Qt 6 (MSVC 2022) + CMake + Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools |
Build & run:
cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release # macOS: add -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=$(brew --prefix qt)
cmake --build build --config Release --parallel
./build/tidal-wave # Windows: build\Release\tidal-wave.exe ; macOS: open build/tidal-wave.appMake a Debian package (produces a .deb with all dependencies declared):
cd build && cpack -G DEB && sudo apt install ./tidal-wave-*-Linux.debLinker error about
lame_*/mp3lame? A few distros ship a statically linked FFmpeg inside Qt Multimedia, which leaks an undeclaredlibmp3lamedependency at final link time. If the build fails with undefined references tolame_*, install your distro'slibmp3lame/lamedev package and configure with:cmake -B build -S . -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS="-lmp3lame -lm"
Chromecast output is Linux-only (it uses Avahi/mDNS); it's automatically excluded on macOS and Windows.
ffmpeg is a Recommends (only needed for the download feature); everything else is a
hard Depends, including the easy-to-miss qml6-module-* runtime modules.
This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 License. See the LICENSE file for details.