The TUI
Plain td opens it. Left to right: artists, albums, songs; ] switches to the playlists,
local and remote, and once more to the length review. Every action asks before it touches
anything.
Keys
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
Tab, [, ], 1, 2, 3 | Switch tabs |
h j k l, arrows | Move between panes and rows; Enter or l drills into the next column |
^D ^U, ^F ^B, g G | Half page, page, ends |
/ | Filter by artist, title or album; ^U wipes it while typing |
i | Track info: tags, what is on disk, ListenBrainz player and MusicBrainz links, source URL |
Enter on a track | Play it and queue the rest of the list |
space, n N, , ., + -, x | Pause, next/previous, seek 10 s, volume, stop |
S | Full sync |
R | Re-download the selected track from a fresh search |
s | Pin a download URL for the selected track |
m | Make the selected track another MusicBrainz recording (fix a wrong match) |
p, u | Push the selected playlist to the targets, or remove it from them |
d | Delete the selected track and its file, or a remote playlist |
r, q | Reload, quit |
Everything that deletes, re-downloads, pushes or syncs asks [y/N] first.
Playback
The TUI plays through mpv: Enter on a track plays it and queues the rest of the list (the
album in the Library tab, the playlist in the Playlists tab), space pauses, n/N skip,
,/. seek 10 s, +/- change the volume, x stops. A line above the help shows what is
playing with a position bar. In remote mode the audio is streamed from the daemon.
[player]
mpv_bin = "mpv" # default; the Home Manager wrapper puts its mpvPackage on PATH
scrobble = true # report plays to ListenBrainz
Plays are reported to ListenBrainz the way it asks: “playing now” when a track starts, a
listen after half the track or four minutes, whichever comes first, with the recording id
attached. The daemon does the submitting with its listenbrainz.token, so a laptop in remote
mode never needs the token; the listen scope covers it. Listens that cannot be delivered
(offline, ListenBrainz down) are queued in the database and sent on the next play or daemon
start. Without a token on the daemon nothing is sent and nothing is queued.
Review
The third tab lists what td lengths found: files that are not as long as their MusicBrainz
recording, worst first, with what tapedeck thinks they are (padded, metadata, release, broken,
longer, shorter) and the reference it found. It is for judging by ear before anything is
replaced:
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
Enter | Play from the selected row on |
e | Jump to 5 s before where the recording should end: music or a skit going on means a video cut |
E | Jump to the last 30 s: cut off, or a proper ending? |
g b r u | Good, bad, relink (to the recording in the note), undecided; each moves on, and plays the next one if something was playing |
F | Fix what is flagged: bad files are downloaded again (old ones kept in .tapedeck-backup/), relink ones retagged |
L | Check every file again; verdicts are kept while a file stays the same |
/ | Filter, e.g. longer, bad, undecided or an artist |
Good files stay out of td lengths from then on. In remote mode flagging needs the review
scope (or the token) and fixing needs the token.
Themes
The TUI takes its colours from a theme. Two are built in, catppuccin-mocha (default) and
catppuccin-latte for light terminals. To make your own, drop a TOML file into themes/ next
to config.toml (so ~/.config/tapedeck/themes/mine.toml by default) and set
theme = "mine". A user file with a built-in’s name replaces it.
Every key is required; colours are "#rrggbb" or terminal names such as "blue",
"lightred", "gray". The built-in files in the repository’s themes/ folder are the
reference; this is Mocha:
name = "Catppuccin Mocha"
text = "#cdd6f4" # normal text
muted = "#6c7086" # help line, secondary text, remote playlists
accent = "#89b4fa" # focused pane border, active tab, key hints
border = "#45475a" # unfocused pane borders
title = "#b4befe" # pane titles
selection_bg = "#313244" # highlighted row
selection_fg = "#f5e0dc"
ready = "#a6e3a1" # status colours
failed = "#f38ba8"
wanted = "#f9e2af"
warning = "#fab387" # confirmations, status messages
stripes = ["#f38ba8", "#fab387", "#f9e2af"] # the cassette stripes, any number of colours
The terminal’s own background is left alone, so a theme only needs to pick colours that read
on it. With Home Manager, xdg.configFile."tapedeck/themes/mine.toml".source = ./mine.toml;
puts a theme next to the generated config.