A terminal program for Twitch. Watch and browse Twitch without proprietary JavaScript and without being tracked.
Table of contents:
- How to use
- Install
- More information
- Bugs and feature requests
- Contributions
- FAQ
- Privacy
- Technical information
Wtwitch has the following commands:
=> [w]atch [name] - Watch [name] streamer.
=> [s]ub [name(s)] - Subscribe to [name] streamer.
You can subscribe to multiple streamers in one command.
=> [u]nsub [name(s)] - Unsubscribe from [name] streamer.
You can unsubscribe from multiple streamers in one command.
=> [c]heck - View your settings and the status of streamers you are
subscribed to.
=> [e] [search-term] - Search games/categories for [search-term].
=> [n] [search-term] - Search streamers/channels for [search-term].
=> [g]ame [name] - View the top streamers for [name] game/category.
=> [t]op - View the top games and streamers on Twitch.
=> [v]od [name] [#] - List or watch [name]'s VODs.
=> [f] - Toggle the printing of offline subscriptions with [c]heck.
=> [l] - Toggle the usage of colors in wtwitch output.
=> [p]layer [program] - Change the player program that gets passed to streamlink.
=> [q]uality [quality] - Change the video quality that gets passed to streamlink.
=> [b]lock [name(s)] - Block [name] streamer(s), preventing them from appearing in
any output. You can block multiple streamers in one command.
You can also use this command to unblock streamer(s).
=> [version] - Print the current version of wtwitch.
=> [h]elp - Print this help.
See more information for help viewing the man page.
Install the official AUR package, maintained by the author of wtwitch (me): https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/wtwitch/
AUR releases are signed so you'll need to import my GPG key:
<dev@krathalan.net> / 0C6B 73F3 91FA 26F0 EBCD 1F75 C0F9 AEE5 6E47 D174
If you're having keyserver issues, grab it from my website: https://krathalan.net/keys/dev.asc
You need to install additional dependencies through e.g. homebrew:
brew install bash coreutils jq
Afterwards, clone the repo.
Please note that Ubuntu ships an older version of Streamlink that does not have bug fixes in it for the Twitch plugin.
You have a few options:
-
Contact the maintainer of Streamlink for Ubuntu
-
Use a different distribution which provides a more up-to-date Streamlink
-
Use the Streamlink installation instructions for Ubuntu from Streamlink's website:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install streamlink
Afterwards, clone the repo like any distro other than Arch.
Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/krathalan/wtwitch
Then add the cloned wtwitch directory to your $PATH.
See man wtwitch if you have the AUR package installed.
If not, you may view the man page online: https://krathalan.net/wtwitch.html
For an offline copy, without the AUR package, you can build the man page from source.
To build the man page, cd into the cloned wtwitch directory. Then generate the man page with scdoc:
$ scdoc < wtwitch.1.scd > wtwitch.1
Then view the man page:
$ man -l wtwitch.1
If you are reporting a bug, please attach a debug log.
To start wtwitch in debug mode, set the environment variable WTWITCH_DEBUG=on. You should also redirect all output to a log file. You can run wtwitch in debug mode in a one-off command like so:
$ WTWITCH_DEBUG=on wtwitch [command] &> debug.log
Then paste/upload the contents of the debug.log file to your favorite paste service (e.g. https://gist.github.com/) and provide a link in your report.
Please file feature requests and report any bugs at: https://github.com/krathalan/wtwitch/issues
All contributions are welcome. Please try to adhere to the Google Shell Style Guide. Make sure your new code passes Shellcheck with no "shellcheck disable=SCXXXX" lines. Try looking at Dylan's Pure Bash Bible before using an external program.
Most needed are translations for languages other than English. No coding knowledge is necessary to submit translations. Anyone can contribute translations in any format they wish, and I will incorporate them into the program.
If you provide a better method of installation for a distro other than Arch, such as an Ubuntu PPA or Fedora Copr repo, please let me know and I will add it to this README.
No. Check out Chatty, a featureful Twitch chat client written in Java. It's available in the AUR: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/chatty/
Why not use Streamlink Twitch GUI?
Streamlink Twitch GUI is great for people uncomfortable with the command line. However, I personally was unsatisfied with it because of its weight and reliance on Xorg.
Since wtwitch is a terminal program, it can be run in any terminal emulator that supports Wayland for a nice Wayland-native experience. Streamlink Twitch GUI requires Xorg/Xwayland as it uses Electron (Chromium) to render and Electron does not yet officially support Wayland -- though this is set to change in the (hopefully) near future.
When uncompressed, Streamlink Twitch GUI's files (for Linux x64) take up 225.4 MB of disk space. You can download and uncompress the files from Streamlink Twitch GUI's GitHub releases page. Though, we have to remember that Streamlink Twitch GUI also requires Streamlink to be installed, so Streamlink Twitch GUI actually takes up ~230 MB. Wtwitch and its dependencies -- Streamlink and jq -- when installed, take up ~12 MB. You also need a player with both -- mpv takes up ~70 MB -- so the total disk usage for wtwitch is ~82 MB, compared to ~300 MB for Streamlink Twitch GUI.
Using cloc (https://github.com/AlDanial/cloc) to count lines of code:
$ git clone https://github.com/streamlink/streamlink-twitch-gui.git \
&& cloc streamlink-twitch-gui/src/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JavaScript 547 8025 3123 36390
YAML 72 7 110 6207
LESS 54 782 103 3450
Handlebars 75 52 0 2581
JSON 34 8 0 2035
HTML 3 2 0 71
CSS 1 3 3 20
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM: 786 8879 3339 50754
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ git clone https://github.com/krathalan/wtwitch && cloc wtwitch/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language files blank comment code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bourne Again Shell 2 270 607 1218
Markdown 1 59 0 136
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM: 3 329 607 1354
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For releases before 2.0.0:
<krathalan@disroot.org> 02AA A23A BDF1 D538 BD88 9D25 1AAD E5E7 28FF C667
Wtwitch never collects any usage data or data about the user. Wtwitch only connects to remote servers for the following reasons:
- Directly to Twitch's API endpoint to get data about various streamers that you request
- Through
streamlinkto Twitch's video servers to get video data for a streamer you request to watch
Wtwitch is written entirely in Bash, utilizing programs written mostly in C. It doesn't make any connections to any server other than Twitch's servers. As soon as a wtwitch command executes (e.g. wtwitch -c), wtwitch stops running -- it doesn't stay open. (Wtwitch does stay open when you're watching a stream, but it uses no CPU and less than 5 MB of RAM.)
Here's a list of the CLI programs Wtwitch utilizes to process data and the language they're written in:
- cURL, written mostly in C
- GNU coreutils, written nearly entirely in C and shell
- jq, written nearly entirely in C
Wtwitch utilizes Streamlink, which is written in Python, but it's only used when the user actually opens a stream to watch. Streamlink isn't used when doing anything else in wtwitch.