hiresTI Music Player

hiresTI is a native Linux TIDAL client built for audiophiles, combining high-fidelity playback, rock-solid stability, and a modern GTK4/Libadwaita user experience.

Important

Re-login required for FLAC / Hi-Res quality. The legacy OAuth (device-code) login that previous versions used is now capped by TIDAL at 320 kbps AAC. A new PKCE login flow (added in v1.9.5) restores access to full FLAC CD-quality and Hi-Res Lossless streams.

If you're still on the old OAuth session, open Account, sign out, and sign back in — the login dialog will use PKCE automatically and your library will resume at the higher tiers.

Highlights

• A high performance Rust audio engine core
• Bit-perfect playback flow with optional exclusive output controls
• Built-in USB rawlink driver enables direct USB passthrough, bypassing OS drivers and mixing for purer sound.
• High-flexibility DSP workspace with reorderable processing, PEQ, convolution, tube/tape color, stereo widening, limiter, and resampler
• TIDAL PKCE login (recommended for FLAC / Hi-Res) with legacy OAuth fallback, account-scoped library access
• TIDAL Max Hi-Res Lossless streaming up to 24-bit / 192kHz
• Built-in queue drawer, lyrics support, and visualizer modules
• MPRIS support (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.hiresti) for desktop media controls
• Built-in remote control with HTTP JSON-RPC, MCP endpoint.

Audio Optimization Guide: audio-optimization-guide.md

Screenshots

Main Window

Mini Mode

Tech Stack

• Python 3.10+
• GTK4 + Libadwaita (PyGObject)
• Rust audio engine core (rust_audio_core) — symphonia decode + native ALSA mmap / USB rawlink output
• Rust visualizer core (rust_viz_core) — FFT + spectrum draw helpers
• tidalapi (TIDAL integration)

Audio Engine Note

Starting from v1.2.0, playback is driven by the Rust audio engine core by default. Python remains the UI/application layer, while transport/output routing and core playback runtime run through Rust.

Runtime Requirements

Install these system packages first:

• Python 3.10+
• GTK4
• Libadwaita
• PyGObject bindings
• WebKitGTK 6.0 (for the embedded PKCE login flow; optional — paste-URL fallback works without it)

Bundled Python dependencies used by packaging:

• tidalapi
• requests
• urllib3
• PyOpenGL
• pystray
• pillow

Quick Start (Source)

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
cargo build --manifest-path src_rust/rust_audio_core/Cargo.toml --release
cargo build --manifest-path src_rust/rust_viz_core/Cargo.toml --release
python3 src/main.py

hiresTI loads the Rust audio and visualizer cores from src_rust/*/target/release, so the --release build step is required before running from source.

Install Prebuilt Packages

Please download prebuilt package from release page.

Debian / Ubuntu (DEB)

sudo apt install ./hiresti_<version>_amd64.deb

Fedora (RPM)

sudo dnf install ./hiresti-<version>-1.fedora.<arch>.rpm

EL9 (Rocky / Alma / RHEL 9)

sudo dnf install ./hiresti-<version>-1.el9.<arch>.rpm

Arch Linux

AUR (builds from source; recommended for rolling updates):

# yay
yay -S hiresti

# paru
paru -S hiresti

Package page: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/hiresti

Prebuilt (from the GitHub release page):

sudo pacman -U ./hiresti-<version>-1-<arch>.pkg.tar.zst

Nix / NixOS

hiresTI ships a flake that exposes packages.default, so users on Nix or NixOS can run / install directly from the GitHub repo with no manual dependency setup:

# One-shot run (no install)
nix run github:yelanxin/hiresTI

# Install into your user profile
nix profile install github:yelanxin/hiresTI

The flake builds the Rust audio + visualizer cores via rustPlatform.buildRustPackage and wraps the Python tree with wrapGAppsHook4, pulling all GTK4 / WebKit / GStreamer / PipeWire / ALSA dependencies from nixpkgs — no system packages need to be pre-installed.

Flatpak

flatpak install ./hiresti-<version>.flatpak

Run:

flatpak run com.hiresti.player

Note: Requires GNOME Platform runtime 48. If not already installed:

flatpak install flathub org.gnome.Platform//48 org.gnome.Sdk//48

User data is stored under ~/.var/app/com.hiresti.player/.

⚠️ Flatpak limitations: Due to sandbox restrictions, some audio features (such as automatic Pro-Audio profile switching, exclusive mode) may have reduced functionality compared to native packages. For the best experience, it is recommended to use the native package for your distribution (RPM, DEB, or Arch).

Upgrade Guide

Playlist migration note

Starting from v1.1.0, local playlists are removed. Only cloud playlists are supported.

Fedora / EL9 RPM upgrades

Use upgrade mode when moving to a newer version:

sudo dnf upgrade ./hiresti-<version>-1.fedora.<arch>.rpm

or:

sudo rpm -Uvh ./hiresti-<version>-1.fedora.<arch>.rpm

For EL9 packages, replace fedora with el9.

Do not use rpm -i for upgrades, because it installs side-by-side and can cause file conflict errors.

Support

If you run into issues, have feature requests, or want to report bugs, please open a GitHub issue:

• https://github.com/yelanxin/hiresTI/issues

Troubleshooting With Logs

If you hit a problem, please start the app from terminal and attach logs in your issue:

hiresti 2>&1 | tee /tmp/hiresti.log

For GTK debug output:

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all hiresti 2>&1 | tee /tmp/hiresti-gtk.log

When reporting, include:

• your distro and desktop environment
• app version
• steps to reproduce
• relevant log snippets (or the full log file path above)

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to everyone who shares feedback. In particular, ilijagosp has provided feedback and suggestions with every new release.

Sponsors

Thanks to those supporting hiresTI ❤

If you'd like to support development, you can sponsor via GitHub Sponsors.

License

GPL-3.0