Headset, turn YouTube into your Spotify without ads

As is well known throughout the world, today YouTube is home to the largest collection of music in the world. Many of us spend hours listening to the music that is stored there, but using the web browser to listen to the songs is not always a good idea.

Headset is a free desktop application that gives us the possibility to use YouTube as a music source. This will allow you to stream YouTube audio directly to your desktop. We can think of this application as a Spotify Ad-free, with the world's largest music catalog accessible from outside the web browser.

Headset's user interface is simple and easy to use. You just have to write a word, the title of a song or the name of the album and select one of the options that will show you the result to start playing it. As well you can play lists. With each video that you add this one will be added as a new track called the tail.

The program has a panel that provides us with different buttons to add the songs you like to favorites while listening to them, skip to the previous / next tracks and go to the playlist / track.

Those listed above are the options that you can enjoy as long as you don't log in. If you sign up for a free account you can unlock other features. Some of them are the ability to create your own playlists, tune in to ad hoc radio stations, etc.

This is an extremely fast and simple application with an integrated search option. It has a home screen with a list of popularity by genres and times. The best of your options is perhaps a radio powered by Reddit. On the popular network there are multiple subreddits dedicated to discovering and sharing new music or rediscovering jewels from the past. The radio feature will allow you to treat music subreddits like personal radio stations.

Headseat takes the songs that are shared on these subreddits and automatically plays them when you hit play. It's a great way to find new music around the world. Its advantage is that it is chosen by other humans who emit and reproduce, and not by algorithms.

While this application makes it possible turn YouTube into a music streaming service, this one has some annoying features. The main annoyance is that the Headset has to display the video in an external window in order to comply with YouTube standards. This is something that at first you can not even see, since it is a larger window that is minimized by default. In case you maximize it, you can minimize it again, but not close it completely. If you do, the program will close and stop playing the music.

The Headset developers indicate that they cannot separate the audio from the video due to the legal issues that I have discussed. To avoid consuming an excess of width, the video is reproduced with the lowest possible quality. With this, it is achieved that it does not affect the reproduction or the equipment excessively.

It must be said that if you are happy with playing YouTube in a tab of your usual browser, this application is obviously not for you. As an advantage to be noted about Headset, it should be said that it channels YouTube towards a more familiar desktop application experience. Without the distraction / temptation of the upcoming colorful recommendation thumbnails or the overhead of browser tabs. Headset is a different music player worth trying.

Download Headset

Headset is a open source project whose code is available at GitHub or in their website. Headset is built using Electron, so don't expect it to consume little RAM. Only the Electron wrapper is open source (the core of the application is not). You can download the application on different platforms such as: Windows, Ubuntu and macOS.