A web extension to elevate your YouTube Music, Tidal & Apple Music Experience with ultra-performant, word-by-word lyrics.
Streaming services offer great music libraries, but their web interfaces are buggy, outdated and often only have line-by-line lyrics. YouLy+ replaces these broken implementations with a word-by-word, lightweight, precise (idts), and visually faithful rendering engine.
Other open-source projects that provide Apple Music-like lyrics often require dedicated GPUs for full performance. YouLy+ smartly utilises CSS animations to hit 60FPS on almost any machine with graphics acceleration. See Performance Reference.
- YouTube Music: Transforms the default static or plain text lyrics into a rich, timed, karaoke-style experience.
- Tidal Web (Experimental): While Tidal Web offers synced lyrics, they are limited to line-by-line synchronization. YouLy+ makes them word-by-word.
- Apple Music Web (Experimental): The native web player attempts word-by-word sync, but the implementation is flawed and inaccurate. YouLy+ replaces their laggy implementation with a CSS-animation driven smooth experience.
For the safest and easiest experience, install YouLy+ directly from your browser's web store. This ensures you get automatic updates and a verified version of the extension.
For Developers & Advanced Users: Install from Source
- Clone or Download the Repository:
git clone [https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git](https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git)
- Alternatively, you can download the latest release from Github Releases and extract them.
- Open Chrome Extensions Page:
Navigate to
chrome://extensions/. - Enable Developer Mode: Toggle the "Developer mode" switch in the top right corner.
- Load Unpacked Extension: Click on "Load unpacked" and select the cloned repository folder.
- Clone or Download the Repository:
git clone [https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git](https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git)
- Alternatively, you can download the latest release from Github Releases.
- Open Firefox Debugging Page:
Navigate to
about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox. - Load Temporary Add-on:
Click on "Load Temporary Add-on" and choose the
manifest.jsonfile from the repository folder.
Once installed, simply open one of the supported players:
- YouTube Music
- Tidal Web Player (Experimental)
- Apple Music Web (Experimental)
Play any song, and the lyrics panel will automatically be enhanced by YouLy+.
- Quick Settings: Access quick toggles by clicking the YouLy+ icon in your browser's toolbar.
- Full Settings: For comprehensive customization, click "More Settings" from the popup.
- Word-by-word, syllable-synced lyrics: YouLy+ features real-time, accurately synced lyrics with word-by-word highlighting.
- Apple Music engine overhaul: Replaces the resource-heavy native UI. YouLy+ solves the
setTimeoutdrift issues and layout bugs while significantly lowering CPU usage. It also expands the lyric sources—if AM lacks synced lyrics, YouLy+ finds them elsewhere! - Multi-platform fallback: Automatically searches multiple platforms to find lyrics for almost every song.
- Fits seamlessly: Replaces default lyrics panels out of the box with designs that fit in to whichever platform you use.
- Instant Translation: YouLy+ utilises label-provided translations but also supports Google Translate and Gemini/OpenRouter (BYO API key) translations.
- Romanization: For different writing systems, YouLy+ can provide romanisations from the label or via Google Translate.
- Full Gemini AI Control: For advanced users, connect your own Gemini AI account to customize translation instructions and AI settings.
- Dynamic Theming: Lyrics and backgrounds automatically adapt to the song's color palette.
- Custom CSS: Full control for advanced users to inject custom CSS and style the lyrics exactly how you want.
- Optimized Renderer: YouLy+ is designed and tested to run smoothly on older hardware without noticeable lag.
- Lightweight Mode: The renderer hits 60FPS out of the box on a M1 MBA. Lightweight Mode can be used to hit 60FPS even worse machines without much change in the experience - beating all competitors.
- SponsorBlock Integration: Automatically adapts lyrics timeline to follow non-music segments like intros, outros, and sponsors on music videos (YouTube Music).
The benchmark machine used to develop this project is older hardware (AMD FX-6300 + GT 620 from ~2012). YouLy+ is optimized to run where native web players fail.
-
768p (1366x768): Stable 60 FPS on NVIDIA GT 620 (1GB) or equivalent integrated graphics.
-
1080p (1920x1080): GTX 650 / GT 1030 or above recommended for a locked 60 FPS.
-
Tested on a M1 MacBook Air (base specs, 1680x1050 Retina display), YouLy+ stays stable at 60FPS with little decrease in battery life.
YouLy+ is proudly open-source.
Backend API (Lyrics+): YouLy+ mainly utilises Lyrics+ for lyrics. This API is also fully open-source. If you could host your instance, YouLy+ would benefit lots from it! See instructions at the repo: ibratabian17/lyricsplus
YouLy+ integrates with several third-party lyrics providers. By using this extension, you agree to the respective Terms of Service of these platforms:
- Unison: As our alternate word-sync API lyrics using data from the Better-Lyrics community.
- LRCLIB: A massive, crowdsourced database API that used as a primary fallback for synchronized lyrics.
- Lyrics+ Backend: Our internal engine that prioritizes official metadata from Apple Music, QQ Music, and Musixmatch to ensure professional-grade accuracy. while it has our own community-driven source too!
If you're interested in contributing to or modifying YouLy+:
- Clone the Repository:
git clone [https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git](https://github.com/ibratabian17/YouLyPlus.git)
- Load the Extension: Use your browser’s "Load unpacked" feature (as described in the Installation section) to test your changes in real-time.
To create distributable .zip files for various browsers:
- Prerequisites: Ensure you have
jqand a zip utility (zipor7z) installed on your system. - Run the Script:
- On Linux/macOS:
./bundle.sh - On Windows (PowerShell):
./bundle.ps1
- On Linux/macOS:
These scripts will generate optimized packages for different browsers within the dist/ folder.
Contributions are very appreciated! Please feel free to fork this repository and submit a pull request. For significant changes or new features, it's recommended to open an issue first to discuss your ideas.
This project is a dedicated effort covering both the client extension and the server backend. If YouLy+ enhances your music experience, please consider supporting its continued development:
- Support on Ko-fi
- Support on Patreon
- GitHub Sponsors (see
FUNDING.yml)
