YouTube Music on a PC: there is no desktop app to download

There is no YouTube Music desktop app to download for Windows or macOS. Google publishes YouTube Music as mobile apps for phones and tablets, and as a website at music.youtube.com for computers. Every "PC app" for YouTube Music is one of two things: the official website installed as a web app from a browser, or an unofficial desktop client built by volunteers. Both are usable. They differ in who maintains them, how they handle sign in, and what happens when something breaks. This guide lays out the four routes on a computer, with the exact menu names, so the choice can be made in a few minutes rather than by trial and error.

What Google actually provides for computers

The website is the product. Search results that promise an installer usually lead either to the browser install method described below or to third party software. Nothing on music.youtube.com offers a .exe or .dmg file.

What the site does provide is a web app manifest, the small file that tells a browser a site can be installed as an app. The manifest served at music.youtube.com on October 18, 2026 names the app "YouTube Music", with the short name "YT Music", a start URL of /?source=pwa, and a display mode of minimal-ui. In practice this means Google has prepared the site to run in its own window, with a small set of navigation controls instead of a full browser toolbar. The browser install option is therefore not a hack. It is the route the site itself was built to support.

Two things follow from this. First, the "app" is still the website, so features appear and disappear on the same day for everyone, with nothing to update. Second, anything the website cannot do on a computer, an installed version cannot do either. The most important example is offline downloads, covered further down.

The website works in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. On a Mac, all four can play YouTube Music in a tab. The difference between routes is not whether music plays. It is whether the player gets its own window, its own Dock or taskbar icon, and its own place in the app switcher, so it stops getting lost among thirty other tabs.

Route one: install it from Chrome

Chrome's own help page, Use web apps, gives the steps. On a computer:

1. Open music.youtube.com in Chrome and sign in.
2. At the top right, open the More menu (the three dots).
3. Choose Cast, save, and share, then Install page as app.
4. Confirm the name and click Install.

On some sites an Install icon also appears at the right end of the address bar, which does the same thing. After installation YouTube Music opens in its own window with its own icon. On Windows it can be pinned to the taskbar. On a Mac it lands in the Chrome Apps folder and can be kept in the Dock.

The same help page explains removal: open the installed app, open the More menu, and choose Uninstall. There is an option to also delete the app's data from Chrome. The installed app shares Chrome's sign in and cookies, so the Google account already signed in to Chrome is the one YouTube Music uses. For a single account that is convenient. For someone who keeps a personal account for music and a work account for everything else, it can mean signing out and back in more often than expected.

This is the route to try first on Windows. It costs nothing, it uses Google's own site, and it updates itself because there is nothing local to update.

Route two: add it to the Dock from Safari on a Mac

On a Mac running macOS Sonoma 14 or later, Safari can turn any page into a web app. Apple's support article on Safari web apps describes it: open the page, choose File, then Add to Dock, or use the Share button and Add to Dock, type a name, and click Add. The app is saved in the Applications folder inside the home folder and appears in the Dock and Spotlight.

The detail that matters for YouTube Music is separation. Apple states that a Safari web app shares no browsing history, cookies, website data or settings with Safari. YouTube Music in its own Safari web app can be signed in to one Google account while Safari itself stays signed in to another. For a household Mac, or for keeping a personal music account away from work browsing, that separation is often the whole reason to set it up.

The settings for a Safari web app are under the app's name in the menu bar, then Settings. From there the name, the start URL and the icon can be changed, and the navigation controls can be shown or hidden. For a music player, hiding the navigation controls gives the cleanest window.

The trade off is the engine. Safari web apps run on WebKit, and Chrome Web Store extensions cannot be used in them. Most listeners will not notice. Those who rely on a Chrome extension with YouTube Music, for lyrics, an equalizer or ad filtering, will notice immediately.

Route three: an unofficial desktop client

Two open source projects are the ones most often recommended in forums. Both wrap the YouTube Music website in a desktop shell and add features the website does not have, such as plugins, media key handling or a mini player.

	Pear Desktop	YTMDesktop
Repository	pear-devs/pear-desktop	ytmdesktop/ytmdesktop
Former name	th-ch/youtube-music, which now redirects here	Same name
License	MIT	GPL-3.0
Latest release on October 18, 2026	v3.12.0, June 28, 2026	v2.0.12, September 8, 2026
Mac downloads in that release	.dmg for Intel and Apple silicon	.zip for Intel and Apple silicon
Also for	Windows, Linux	Windows, Linux

Figures are taken from each project's GitHub repository on the date shown. The Pear Desktop repository had about 33,790 stars, and the YTMDesktop repository about 6,630.

Two points from the Pear Desktop README are worth reading before installing. It states that the project is not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by Google or YouTube, and describes itself as an independent, unofficial project run by volunteers. It also says that if macOS reports the app "is damaged and can't be opened", the fix is a Terminal command that removes the quarantine attribute. That instruction tells a Mac user that the download is not passing Apple's usual checks on its own, and that clearing the warning is a deliberate decision to trust the project.

Neither project is a Google product, so sign in happens inside a third party window. Both are popular and their code is public, which is a meaningful level of transparency. Whether that is enough is a judgement each listener makes for their own Google account.

What no PC route can change

Whatever window YouTube Music runs in, the account rules are the same, because they are enforced by YouTube's servers, not by the app.

Offline downloads are a mobile feature. YouTube Music's help page on downloading music to listen offline says Premium members can download songs, videos and podcasts to a mobile device, and that the device must reconnect to the internet at least once every 30 days to keep the downloads. A computer route, official or not, does not add offline playback of the official kind. Third party tools that claim to save tracks as files are a different category, and they sit outside YouTube's terms.

Ad free listening comes from the subscription. The Music Premium page lists ad free listening, offline downloads and background play as the paid features. Prices are set per country. When the page was loaded from Japan on October 18, 2026, the individual plan was shown at 1,080 yen per month, with family and student plans at 1,680 yen and 580 yen. Readers elsewhere will see their own local price.

Background play is not an issue on a computer. On a phone, playing with the screen off is a Premium feature. In a desktop browser or an installed web app, music keeps playing when the window is behind other windows or minimized. Someone buying Premium only to keep music going while working on a laptop is paying for something the website already does.

A fourth route: a separate app on the browser already installed

Between the Chrome install and the unofficial clients sits one more option. A site to app tool builds a small launcher for any website, running on a Chromium browser that is already installed, such as Chrome, Edge or Brave. The result behaves like route one, but each app gets its own browser profile, so YouTube Music can be signed in to a different Google account than the main Chrome window, much as a Safari web app is separate from Safari.

Because the app runs on Chrome rather than Safari, Chrome Web Store extensions can be enabled for it. And because it uses the installed browser instead of bundling its own copy, browser updates apply to it automatically. YouTube Music is one of the built in presets on the supported services page, so the URL and icon do not need to be entered by hand. The setup guide shows the steps from download to the first app.

The cost is that this is an extra tool to install. For a single YouTube Music window with no extensions and one account, routes one and two already cover it.

Choosing between the four

Need	Best fit
A YouTube Music window on Windows, nothing else	Chrome, Install page as app
A separate window on a Mac with a separate Google account	Safari, Add to Dock
Plugins, a mini player or custom media key behaviour	An unofficial client, after reading its README
A separate account plus Chrome extensions on a Mac	A site to app tool on the installed Chrome
Listening offline on a commute	The mobile app with Premium, not a PC route

Most listeners land on the first or second row. The question that sorts the rest is whether anything beyond a dedicated window is actually required.

It also helps to count accounts before choosing. A single Google account used everywhere points to the Chrome install, because it simply reuses the existing sign in. Two accounts, such as a family Premium membership on one and work mail on another, point to a route with its own cookies: a Safari web app, or a separate profile app on Chrome. Getting this right at the start avoids the most common complaint, which is music playing under the wrong account or recommendations mixing with someone else's.

What to change first

Install YouTube Music from the browser already in use, keep it in the Dock or taskbar for a week, and see whether a separate account or an extension is missed. If it is, a separate profile app on Chrome is the next step, and Kagemusha is one way to build it.