Malus

An Apple Music terminal client for Linux, built with Rust, ratatui, and ratcn.

Malus opens Apple's web player in an isolated Chromium profile and controls its existing MusicKit instance over local CDP. Sign-in happens in Apple's browser window. No Apple developer account or private key is needed for this integration.

Run

Install Rust and a Chromium browser with working Widevine (Google Chrome is the browser tested here). A graphical desktop is needed for sign-in; normal playback runs headless. Audio uses your system's default output.

cargo run -- --login
cargo run

Other options:

cargo run -- --status
cargo run -- --detect-browsers
cargo run -- --browser-path /path/to/chrome
cargo run -- --demo
cargo run -- --logout

The session lives in $XDG_DATA_HOME/malus/browser-profile (normally ~/.local/share/malus/browser-profile). Close the running client before login, status inspection, or logout; Chromium profiles cannot be shared by two processes.

Controls

Action	Keyboard	Mouse
Navigate	1 Home, 2 Browse, 3 Radio, 4 Library, 5 Playing	Header tabs
Move through songs	Arrows or j / k, Page Up/Down, Home/End	Wheel
Play selection	Enter	Click song
Play/pause	Space	Player button
Next/previous	n / p	Player buttons
Seek	Focus timeline, then Left/Right	Click or drag timeline
Volume	+ / -	Click, drag, or wheel over volume slider
Shuffle/repeat	s / r	Player buttons
Song actions	m on selected song	Right-click or ···
Queue	q	Queue button
Remove queued song	Delete	Its ··· button
Reorder queue	Alt+Up/Down	Drag a queued song
Search	/; type or paste; Up/Down and Enter	Search button
Command palette	Ctrl+K	Available through Help
Refresh/reconnect	Ctrl+R	Refresh button
Help/settings	? / ,	Header buttons
Dismiss/back	Esc	Close/Back; click outside a popup
Quit	Ctrl+C or Shift+Q	Quit action in Help

Tab and Shift+Tab traverse controls. Search captures text without triggering player shortcuts. Set MALUS_REDUCED_MOTION=1 to disable motion.

What is connected

• Paginated library songs and playlists; album/artist relationships come from Apple.
• Catalog song search and storefront charts; real radio station discovery.
• Track, album, playlist, and station playback through MusicKit.
• Native playback queue: play next/later, jump, remove, reorder, clear, shuffle and repeat.
• Playback state, elapsed time, real cover images, and MPRIS metadata/property notifications.
• Browser crash detection and reconnect attempts, bounded CDP requests, cancellation cleanup, and explicit error reporting.

--demo is explicitly simulated and never starts a browser. Live mode starts empty and never substitutes sample songs. Synchronized lyrics are not supplied by this bridge yet. Artwork uses terminal half-block pixels; no Kitty/Sixel protocol is claimed. Apple can change its web player, and an authorized session alone does not prove subscription playback or a working CDM.

Verify

cargo fmt --all -- --check
cargo clippy --lib --bin malus -- -D warnings
cargo test

Tests requiring Chromium or an authorized Apple session are opt-in. Close Malus first, then run them serially:

cargo test -- --include-ignored --test-threads=1

The suite covers keyboard/mouse routing and small terminals, real-vs-demo state, search debounce/stale responses, album grouping, queue mutations, rejected JS promises, CDP cancellation/timeouts/disconnects, profile permissions, and browser lifetime. Live verification must also check MusicKit playback time and desktop MPRIS state; a successful build alone is insufficient.