Tidal Integration

Use cliamp to stream your Tidal library through its audio pipeline. EQ, the visualizer, and other effects apply. You need a paid Tidal subscription. Every paid plan includes lossless FLAC.

Tidal delivers lossless FLAC. cliamp uses the same buffer-while-playing and ffmpeg pipeline as other lossless providers. Put ffmpeg on PATH.

Setup

Run cliamp setup for the fastest setup. Select Tidal, select a stream quality, and let the wizard write the [tidal] block.

Or configure Tidal in ~/.config/cliamp/config.toml:

[tidal]
enabled = true
quality = "lossless"

You do not need developer credentials. cliamp includes OAuth client credentials.

Run cliamp, select Tidal, and press Enter to sign in. cliamp shows a link.tidal.com URL and a short device code. It also opens the URL in a browser. Approve the device there. cliamp waits for up to 5 minutes. After authorization, cliamp stores credentials in ~/.config/cliamp/tidal_credentials.json. Later launches refresh them without a message.

Quality

quality selects the Tidal stream tier. If you omit it, cliamp uses "lossless". Supported values:

FLAC availability note: Tidal serves FLAC to third-party clients of this type only for tracks with a hi-res ("Max") master. It delivers these tracks as unencrypted MPEG-DASH. cliamp plays them natively at full hi-res quality. For a track without a hi-res master, Tidal downgrades this client to AAC 320 on the server. The python-tidal ecosystem reports the same limit. cliamp shows a one-time footer notice. Sign-in through the Tidal Android-type (PKCE) client, which unlocks FLAC for the full catalog, is planned.

Any other value uses "lossless".

For hi-res playback settings, see audio-quality.md. Use bit_depth = 32 with a matching sample_rate for lossless playback.

Custom client credentials

The cliamp OAuth client credentials are shared with other open-source Tidal clients. Tidal sometimes revokes these client IDs. If sign-in fails with a client error, set a new pair without waiting for a cliamp release:

[tidal]
client_id = "your-client-id"
client_secret = "your-client-secret"

After you change credentials, run cliamp tidal reset and sign in again.

Usage

Start cliamp with Tidal selected:

cliamp --provider tidal

After authentication, Tidal appears in the provider list. Press T to select Tidal. Press Esc/b to open the provider browser and select it.

The provider shows your Tidal library:

• Favorite Tracks: your liked songs (up to 500).
• Your playlists: playlists you created or subscribed to.
• Favorite albums: browsable in the album view.
• Favorite artists: browse an artist to see their albums.

Press Ctrl+F while Tidal is active to search the Tidal catalog for tracks and albums. Album results appear first. When you select an album, it expands to its track list. Enter plays, a appends, and q queues the next track.

Controls

When focused on the provider panel:

After you load a playlist or album, cliamp returns to the standard playlist view. Use the usual controls for seek, volume, EQ, shuffle, repeat, queue, search, and lyrics.

Troubleshooting

• Sign-in fails immediately / "client_id may be revoked": Tidal sometimes revokes the shared cliamp client credentials. Set client_id and client_secret in [tidal], run cliamp tidal reset, and sign in again.
• Device code expired: The link.tidal.com code is valid for about 5 minutes. Press Enter on the Tidal provider again to get a new code.
• Re-authenticate: Run cliamp tidal reset to clear stored credentials. Then restart cliamp, select Tidal, and sign in again. This is the same as deleting ~/.config/cliamp/tidal_credentials.json.
• Track is unplayable / skipped: The track might not stream in the region, or its stream might be encrypted for this client type. cliamp marks the track unplayable and continues.
• "delivered as HIGH (AAC)" notice: The track has no hi-res master, so Tidal does not send FLAC to this client type. See the FLAC availability note. Playback continues at AAC 320.
• Long-idle sessions: cliamp resolves stream URLs when each track starts. Queued tracks continue after an idle period without manual refresh. Ctrl+R gets the playlist lists again.

Requirements

• A paid Tidal subscription
• ffmpeg on PATH for FLAC/AAC decoding
• No developer/API registration: cliamp uses built-in credentials automatically

A note on the API

cliamp uses the Tidal private client API, like open-source python-tidal-based clients. The official Tidal developer API allows only 30-second previews for third-party apps. cliamp only streams. It does not write decoded audio to disk.