pulsedeck 0.2.1

A focused terminal internet radio player with fast search, saved stations, themes, visualizers, and resilient playback
pulsedeck-0.2.1 is not a library.

✦ PulseDeck ✦

A focused terminal internet radio player with fast search, saved stations, themes, visualizers, and resilient playback.

Search, preview, save, and stream public radio stations without leaving the command line.

Crates.io License: MIT Built with Rust Platform: Windows | Linux | macOS CI

PulseDeck - Cyber-Deck TUI Interface

What is PulseDeck?

PulseDeck is a focused terminal internet radio player with a retrowave soul, built in Rust. It helps you discover, preview, save, and stream public radio stations from your terminal with fast search, polished playback controls, themes, visualizers, and resilient audio handling.

It ships pre-loaded with handpicked synthwave, chiptune, and cyberpunk stations so it sounds great from the first keypress. But you can search, save, and play any public internet radio station in the world.

Think of it as: a neon radio console for the terminal: quick to launch, easy to tune, and built for listening.

PulseDeck was formerly named DriftFM. The project was renamed to avoid confusion with existing and historical radio-related uses of the old name. Existing DriftFM config is copied into the new PulseDeck config directory on first launch.

What makes it different?

Most TUI radio players just wrap ffplay. PulseDeck is purpose-built from scratch in Rust with features you'd otherwise only find in native desktop apps:

  • 📡 Search 30,000+ stations from the global radio-browser.info catalog by name, tag, city, or country, with mirror failover for upstream outages
  • 🔊 Smooth tuning transitions: switching stations fades out the current stream and fades in the new one, like turning an analog dial
  • 🎧 Preview before saving: in search, Space auditions a station without saving, while Enter saves it to your Library and plays it
  • 🎨 6 built-in themes: Retrowave, all 4 Catppuccin flavors (Mocha, Macchiato, Frappé, Latte), and a Terminal theme that follows your emulator's ANSI palette
  • 🎛️ Three-way dashboard layout: press b to cycle Split View, Library Focus, and Signal Focus
  • 📊 Deck visualizers: press v to cycle RTA Spectrum, Real Oscilloscope, and Simulated Oscilloscope
  • 💾 Library management: saved stations persist between sessions, rows show compact country/bitrate metadata, and removals are undoable with u
  • 🪪 Station details: press i in normal mode to inspect the highlighted station's metadata and stream URL
  • 🧾 Recent Tracks: press g to see stream-provided track titles heard during the current session; nothing is recorded or archived
  • 🔔 Desktop notifications: a quiet system notification can show the current track when a new song starts
  • 🎛️ Resilient streaming: a circular buffer absorbs network hiccups, and manual retry with r helps recover after playback errors
  • 🖥️ Compact-screen protection: terminal windows below 80x24 show a clean diagnostic instead of letting deck art and borders collapse into visual static
  • 🔁 Audio output recovery: default-device playback retries once after hardware-style sink failures, helping PulseDeck recover from transient headset or Bluetooth dropouts

Installation

Prerequisites: Rust & Cargo (1.75+)

On Linux, also install ALSA dev headers first:

sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev   # Debian/Ubuntu
sudo dnf install alsa-lib-devel       # Fedora

From crates.io (recommended)

cargo install pulsedeck

From source

git clone https://github.com/milgaj84/pulsedeck.git
cd pulsedeck
cargo run --release

That's it. No config files to write. No API keys. Stations are pre-loaded and the player starts immediately.

How to use it

PulseDeck is keyboard-driven. Press h at any time to see the full control reference.

Core shortcuts

Key Where What it does
↑ / ↓ or j / k Library or search Move through the visible list
Enter Library Play the highlighted saved station
Enter Search Save the highlighted result to your Library, then play it
Space Search Audition the highlighted result without saving it
Ctrl+Enter Search Audition too, when your terminal reports the key combo
/ / Ctrl+f / F3 Anywhere in normal mode Open worldwide station search
Esc Search or overlay Leave search / close overlay
f Library only Remove the highlighted station from your Library
u Library only Undo the most recent station removal
Tab / Shift+Tab Library Switch genre categories
i Library Show details for the highlighted station
g Library Show recent stream-provided track titles for this session
Space Playback Pause / resume
s Playback Stop playback
r Playback error Retry the current stream
+ / - Playback Volume up / down with fine low-volume and faster high-volume steps
m Playback Mute / unmute
Ctrl+- / Alt+- Search Volume down without leaving search
Ctrl+= / Ctrl++ / Alt+= / Alt++ Search Volume up without leaving search
Ctrl+m / Alt+m Search Mute / unmute without leaving search
b View Cycle Split View / Library Focus / Signal Focus
v View Cycle RTA Spectrum / Real Osc / Sim Osc
, App Open settings
h / ? App Show / hide help
q App Quit, or close an open overlay first

Enter is the search commit action: it adds the highlighted search result to your saved Library and starts playback. Space auditions the highlighted result without saving it, so you can sample stations before committing them to library.json.

While in search, plain printable characters continue to edit the query. Use the Ctrl/Alt audio shortcuts for volume and mute if the current stream needs adjustment without abandoning the active search.

Workflow

Finding and adding a new station:

  1. Press /, Ctrl+f, or F3 to open search, then type a genre, city, country, or station name. Search starts after 2+ characters and waits briefly while you type, so quick typing does not send a request for every letter.
  2. Use ↑ / ↓ to highlight a result.
  3. Press Space to audition the highlighted station without saving it. You stay in search mode and can keep browsing.
  4. Press Enter to save that result to your Library and start playing it immediately. It will be available next time you launch PulseDeck.
  5. Press Esc instead to leave search without adding anything.

Search results show saved stations with a star and include compact genre/country/bitrate metadata. Long station names are truncated around the active search term when possible, so matching text stays visible even in narrow result rows. Search titles and the footer both reinforce the Space preview versus Enter save-and-play split.

Managing your library:

  • Your Library is the saved station list shown on launch.
  • If the Library is empty, PulseDeck shows a starter card with the most useful first actions.
  • Rows show the selected station, currently playing station, country, and bitrate without overflowing long names.
  • To inspect the highlighted station, press i for Station Details.
  • To remove a saved station, highlight it in the Library and press f.
  • After removal, press u to restore removed stations in reverse order. PulseDeck keeps a bounded history of the 10 most recent removals.
  • Switch between genre categories with Tab / Shift+Tab; PulseDeck remembers your last cursor position per category, falling back to the playing station when there is no saved position.

Using the signal deck:

  • Press b to cycle between Split View, Library Focus, and Signal Focus.
  • Press v to cycle the signal display between RTA Spectrum, Real Oscilloscope, and Simulated Oscilloscope.
  • In RTA Spectrum mode, the signal screen shows a subtle tuning pulse during connection handshakes, so slow streams look active instead of blank.
  • During stop or station changes, the deck stays visually active while the audio fade-out completes.
  • Critical stream errors are mirrored inside help and settings overlays, so connection failures remain visible even when a modal is open.
  • Watch the footer chips for playback state, volume, layout, and visualizer mode.

Recovering from playback errors:

  • Press r to retry the current stream when an error leaves PulseDeck with a stream URL to retry.
  • Press s to stop playback if the stream or output device is no longer useful.
  • Press , and check Audio Output if a headset, Bluetooth sink, PulseAudio, or PipeWire route changed.
  • Press / to search for another station if the current stream itself is offline.

Coming back tomorrow:

  • PulseDeck remembers your library between sessions.
  • PulseDeck also remembers your volume, mute state, layout mode, visualizer mode, and selected theme in config files.
  • Settings such as auto-resume, audio output, notifications, and theme are saved automatically.
  • Enable Auto-resume last station in settings (,) and it starts playing where you left off automatically.

Settings

Press , to open the settings panel. Current options:

  • Desktop notifications: show current track changes while you listen. On WSL, PulseDeck falls back to a Windows notification balloon if the normal Linux notification path is unavailable.
  • Auto-resume last station on startup: start the previous station automatically on launch.
  • Audio Output: choose Default or a detected output device such as pulse, pipewire, speakers, or Bluetooth headphones exposed by the audio backend. In Default mode, PulseDeck retries once after hardware-style sink failures so transient output changes can recover without a restart. If only pulse or pipewire appears, select that in PulseDeck and route it to your headphones in PipeWire/PulseAudio with wpctl, pavucontrol, or your desktop sound settings.
  • Theme: cycle between Retrowave, Catppuccin Mocha, Catppuccin Macchiato, Catppuccin Frappé, Catppuccin Latte, and Terminal. The Terminal theme uses reset backgrounds and ANSI colors so PulseDeck follows your terminal emulator palette.

Use ↑ / ↓ or j / k to move between settings. Use Space, Right, l, or d to step values forward; use Left, h, or a to step values backward. Native ALSA/JACK probe diagnostics are suppressed during audio device discovery so backend chatter does not overwrite the TUI. Settings are saved automatically to a JSON file in your config directory.

Migration from DriftFM

PulseDeck automatically copies existing DriftFM config files into the new config directory on first launch:

Old path New path
~/.config/driftfm/library.json ~/.config/pulsedeck/library.json
~/.config/driftfm/ui-state.json ~/.config/pulsedeck/ui-state.json

The old ~/.config/driftfm directory is left untouched as a backup. Future saves go to ~/.config/pulsedeck.

Platform Support

Platform Status
Windows ✅ Full support (native WASAPI audio)
Linux ✅ Full support (ALSA/PulseAudio/PipeWire via CPAL/Rodio, with selectable outputs)
macOS ✅ Full support (CoreAudio)
WSL ✅ Supported with Windows notification fallback

Code Quality

PulseDeck's CI checks:

  • Rust formatting with cargo fmt --check
  • Clippy across all targets and features with warnings treated as errors
  • Tests across all targets and features
  • Release build verification
  • RustSec dependency audit with cargo audit

The codebase keeps UI colors routed through the semantic palette in theme.rs, isolates blocking audio work from the TUI event loop, and keeps app/audio architecture notes in docs/.

Built with

All native Rust: no ffmpeg, no Python, no Electron. A single self-contained binary.

  • Ratatui - Terminal UI framework
  • Rodio + CPAL + Symphonia - Audio output selection, decoding, and playback (native, no ffmpeg dependency)
  • Tokio - Async runtime for API search
  • reqwest - HTTP streaming with ICY metadata support

License

MIT - see LICENSE for details.