Tide Music

Tide Music is a free, open-source Windows music player built around low RAM use. Its native Rust interface and native audio playback let you listen without keeping a browser window open.

Connect your existing YouTube Music account to access playlists, Liked Songs and personalized recommendations. Search for songs, shuffle a playlist, start song radio, and reorder upcoming tracks in the queue. A mini player keeps the controls close without taking over the screen.

Tide supports Windows media controls, local audio files, light and dark themes, and in-app updates. It has no Electron runtime or embedded browser. Saved account sessions are encrypted locally for your Windows user.

In a matched-track playback test on one Windows 11 PC, Tide and its playback helpers used about 96 MiB, compared with about 1,402 MiB for Chrome YouTube Music: 93% less RAM in that test. Measured with Tide 0.4.2 on 26 October 2026, using two Tide runs and one Chrome run. The website includes the method and raw samples.

YouTube Music integration is unofficial. Account connection uses a manually loaded browser companion extension.