refrytFAQ and troubleshooting
The questions that come up most, and what to do when something doesn't work.
Questions
Do I need YouTube Premium?
refryt is meant for use with YouTube Premium or YouTube Music Premium. Searching, browsing and playing work without it, signed in or not. Downloads need Premium, and are for personal offline listening.
Is this a piracy tool?
No. refryt hosts, shares and unlocks no content. Every song is streamed from YouTube under the account that is signed in, and likes, playlist edits and history are saved to that account.
Does it play podcasts?
Not yet. Podcasts are not supported.
How stable is it?
The project is before 1.0 and changes quickly. The Linux builds see daily use; the Windows builds are cross-compiled with limited testing on real hardware, and the macOS build has been tested by hand. The Windows ARM64 builds have not been tested on ARM hardware.
Why is it lighter than the website?
There is no browser engine. The interface is drawn natively with egui and playback goes through mpv, so memory use is typically between 100 and 300 MB, and an idle refryt does nothing in the background.
First launch
Windows warns that the app is unrecognised
The installer and MSI are not code-signed, so SmartScreen warns on the first run. Choose More info → Run anyway. The zip must be extracted as a whole folder before running refryt.exe; the exe needs the DLLs beside it.
macOS says the app can't be opened
The app is signed ad hoc and not notarised. Clear the quarantine flag once:
xattr -cr /Applications/Refryt.appOr allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security.
The Flatpak never updates
Flatpak files downloaded up to 0.1.14 were not linked to the repository. Move over once; your settings and sign-in stay:
flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists refryt https://gridoe.github.io/refryt/refryt.flatpakrepo
flatpak install --user --reinstall refryt io.github.gridoe.refrytWindow and look
The corners are black, or the window has no frame
X11 without a compositor paints the rounded corners black, and some tiling window managers ignore client-side decorations. Start refryt with --decorated to use the system's own window frame.
Blur doesn't work, or crashes the session
Blur needs transparency turned up, and works on KDE Plasma under Wayland, compositors with ext-background-effect (niri, GNOME 51 and newer), Windows 11 22H2 and later, and macOS. Settings says when your compositor doesn't support it. If turning blur on breaks your session, start once with --no-blur and turn it off in Settings.
My theme shows in red
The file couldn't be read as a theme. The line and reason are shown under the Theme row; see Themes.
Playback and sign-in
Songs stopped playing, or a page is empty
A change to YouTube's internal API can break playback or a page until a fix is released. Update to the latest release first; if it's still broken, check the issue tracker or open an issue.
Import from browser finds nothing
Sign in to music.youtube.com in your browser first; refryt takes the session of the browser you used last. On Windows, browsers with app-bound cookie encryption can't be imported, and the Flatpak can't see browser profiles at all. Use the sign-in window or paste cookies instead.
Lyrics aren't synced
Timed lyrics come from LRCLIB. If Synced lyrics from LRCLIB is off, or LRCLIB doesn't have the song, refryt shows YouTube's plain lyrics instead.
If it crashes
A crash report is written to the config folder and stays there. Next time refryt starts you can copy it, or press Open issue to open a prefilled GitHub issue in your browser to review before posting. Nothing is sent on its own.
For other bugs, open an issue; CONTRIBUTING.md says what to include.