Accounts

Sign in to YouTube Music, Spotify and Last.fm in MixMusic, all optional: the sign-in window, a browser's session, brand channels, scrobbling and signing out.

MixMusic needs no account: YouTube Music's search, artists, albums, playlists and radios work signed out, as soon as you open it. Sign in for your own library and recommendations. All three accounts are in Settings › Accounts, and MixMusic keeps each sign-in in your system's credential store (the keyring on Linux): on Windows, one the Credential Manager can't keep goes in a file encrypted for your Windows account.

YouTube Music

Settings › Accounts › YouTube Music offers three ways to sign in. The first is the simplest; the other two are for when it can't open, or Google refuses it.

The sign-in window

Choose sign in to youtube music. A window of MixMusic opens on Google's own sign-in page: sign in there as you would in a browser. What you type goes to Google only, so MixMusic never sees your password, and it keeps the session encrypted on your computer. The window closes once you're in.

The window needs the system's web view: WebView2 on Windows, which Windows 11 includes, and WebKitGTK 4.1 on Linux. Google sometimes refuses it with "This browser or app may not be secure". That's Google's decision: try again later or from another network, or use one of the two ways below.

Import from a browser

If you're signed in to music.youtube.com in a browser, MixMusic can take that session:

1. Sign in to music.youtube.com in the browser, if you aren't.
2. Close the browser. While it runs, it may hold its cookies, or not have saved a new sign-in yet.
3. In Settings › Accounts › YouTube Music, choose the browser under Import from a browser. For a profile other than the browser's own, type its name or its folder under Profile.
4. Choose import.

MixMusic reads the browser's cookies with its yt-dlp, keeps YouTube's alone, encrypted on your computer, and deletes the rest at once.

• Chrome on Windows. Recent versions of Chrome on Windows seal their cookies against other programs, so MixMusic can't read them. Import from Firefox there, or paste a cookie header.
• Safari on macOS needs Full Disk Access for MixMusic, in System Settings › Privacy & Security, for its cookies to be read.
• Zen and Helium are read from their profile folders. When MixMusic doesn't find them, give the folder of a profile under Profile.
• Flatpak browsers on Linux. A browser installed from Flathub keeps its profiles in ~/.var/app, so it shows in the list apart from the same browser installed otherwise, as "Chrome (Flatpak)", once its folder is there. MixMusic's own Flatpak may read those folders, read-only, and imports only from them, as its sandbox sees no other folder of yours.

Paste a cookie header

Where neither of the ways above works, paste the session yourself:

1. In a browser tab signed in to music.youtube.com, open the developer tools and their Network panel.
2. Reload the page, choose a request to music.youtube.com, and copy its Cookie request header. The text of a cookies.txt file works too.
3. Paste it under Paste a cookie header in Settings › Accounts › YouTube Music, and choose sign in with it.

A cookie header is as good as your password: paste it there and nowhere else. YouTube may end a session that goes on being used in the browser; one copied from a private window that you then close lasts longest.

Several Google accounts and brand channels

A session can reach more than one Google account, when you signed in to several in the browser or the window, and an account can have brand channels, each with its own home feed, library and likes. When yours does, Settings › Accounts shows an Account and channel row (or Channel, for one account with brand channels), which lists each by name, with its handle and, for several accounts, its email. MixMusic uses the first account until you choose another there.

• A brand channel that YouTube lists without the ID MixMusic needs shows in the list, but can't be chosen, and says so.
• If YouTube Music still answers as the account itself after you choose a brand channel, MixMusic goes back to the one it used before, and tells you.

What signing in adds

Tracks play the same signed in or out: your session never goes to yt-dlp, which finds some tracks' audio. So tracks YouTube keeps for signed-in adults, or for a channel's members, don't play either way.

Your YouTube Music history

Add what you play to your history, in Settings › Accounts › YouTube Music and on by default, adds the tracks you play to your history on YouTube Music, which its home and its radios are made from. A track joins it once it played a while, as it does on Last.fm, not as soon as it starts. The switch also lets MixMusic tell YouTube Music how far you got in an episode, as its own player does, so that YouTube Music on your phone goes on from there. Turn it off to keep what you play in MixMusic.

When YouTube ends the session

YouTube ends a session when you sign out of Google everywhere or change your password. Settings › Accounts then says that YouTube Music refused the sign-in: sign out there, then sign in again.

Spotify

Spotify lets an app in development mode serve up to five accounts, and only while the app's owner has Spotify Premium, so you sign in with a Spotify app of your own. It takes a few minutes, once:

1. Create an app in the Spotify developer dashboard, with the Web API, signed in with a Spotify account that has Premium.
2. Add the redirect URI that Settings › Accounts › Spotify shows (its copy link copies it).
3. In the app's settings, under Users Management, add your name and the email of the Spotify account you sign in with.
4. Paste the app's Client ID in Settings › Accounts › Spotify, choose sign in to spotify, and finish in your browser.

Spotify walks through each step, says what to do when Spotify refuses the sign-in, and explains the three ways Spotify tracks play: in MixMusic itself (Premium, on Windows), on Spotify Connect, or from their recording on YouTube Music, which needs no Premium.

Signed in, MixMusic searches Spotify beside YouTube Music, and shows your Spotify library in Library › Spotify; likes, saved albums and playlists, followed artists and followed shows reach Spotify. Dislikes stay in MixMusic, as Spotify takes none.

Last.fm

MixMusic scrobbles what you listen to to your Last.fm profile, with a Last.fm API account of your own:

1. Create an API account at last.fm/api/account/create. Any name and description will do, and the callback URL can stay empty.
2. Paste its API key and shared secret in Settings › Accounts › Last.fm, and choose connect to last.fm.
3. Approve MixMusic on the page that opens in your browser.

Settings › Accounts then says Scrobbling as your name, with a switch that pauses scrobbling and starts it again. A track counts once half of it played, or four minutes, and scrobbles made offline are sent once you're back online. Last.fm hears that a live stream plays, but it isn't scrobbled, and podcasts' episodes aren't either.

When Last.fm no longer accepts the connection, Settings › Accounts says so: disconnect, then connect again.

Signing out

Each account has its button in Settings › Accounts, which asks first:

• YouTube Music: sign out. MixMusic forgets your session; your library stays on YouTube Music.
• Spotify: sign out. MixMusic forgets your Spotify sign-in.
• Last.fm: disconnect. MixMusic forgets the connection; your scrobbles stay on Last.fm.

Signing out deletes the sign-in from your computer. What MixMusic keeps itself, your liked songs, mixes and history, stays. The YouTube Music session is a browser session, which can do with your account what YouTube Music can: treat it like a password, and sign out to delete it.