Frequently asked
questions

Yes, completely free. No subscription, no one-time purchase, no hidden costs. Viora is supported by ads on the website, not by charging users. You keep your money.

No. Viora works by reading your existing browser session. As long as you have a free Google account and are logged into YouTube Music in Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Firefox, Viora will pick that up and use it. A paid YouTube Music Premium account just removes ads from the streams, but you don't need one.

Right now Viora is available for Windows (Windows 10 and 11). Linux and Android versions are in development. We'll announce them when they're ready.

Yes. Viora is an open-source Electron app. Your browser cookies are read locally on your machine and are never sent to any server. The app has no telemetry, no tracking, and makes no outbound connections except directly to YouTube Music to stream audio. If your antivirus flags it, that's a false positive common with unsigned Electron apps — you can safely allow it.

No. Your cookies and browser session data stay entirely on your local machine. Viora reads them to authenticate with YouTube Music, the same way your browser would. Nothing is ever sent to any external server other than YouTube Music's own servers for playback.

• Download the .exe installer from the download page.
• Run the installer. It takes about 30 seconds.
• Launch Viora. It will automatically detect your browser session and start working immediately.

That's it. No account creation, no API keys, nothing else required.

Yes. Viora needs an active session in one of the supported browsers. Make sure you're logged into music.youtube.com in Chrome, Edge, Brave, or Firefox before launching Viora. You don't need to keep the browser open, just make sure you've logged in recently and haven't cleared cookies.

Most users don't need it. Viora automatically reads your browser session when it launches. The cookies.txt file is an optional manual alternative for power users, or as a fallback if auto-detection doesn't work on your specific setup.

• Install the Get cookies.txt LOCALLY extension (Chrome/Edge) or the cookies.txt add-on for Firefox.
• Go to music.youtube.com and make sure you're logged in.
• Click the extension icon and choose Export.
• Save the file and name it exactly cookies.txt.
• Place the file in the same folder as viora.exe.

Viora will detect it automatically on the next launch.

Use the search bar at the top of the app. You can search by song title, artist, album, or playlist name. Results come directly from YouTube Music's library so you have access to everything on the platform.

Viora automatically caches songs as you play them. Once a song has been played at least once while online, it gets stored locally and shows up in your Offline library. To access it, go to Library and filter by Offline. You don't need to manually download anything.

Right-click any song and choose Add to Playlist. From there you can add it to an existing playlist or create a new one. Playlists are stored locally in Viora and are separate from your YouTube Music account playlists.

Click the Lyrics button on the player controls (the text bubble icon). Viora fetches lyrics from YouTube Music's lyrics database and syncs them to the track's timestamp in real time. Not every song has lyrics available — it depends on what YouTube Music provides for that track.

Yes. Go to Settings and look for Audio Output. You'll see a list of all output devices on your system — speakers, headphones, Bluetooth devices, HDMI — and can switch between them without restarting the app.

When your queue runs out, AI Radio kicks in automatically. It looks at what you've been listening to and queues up songs it thinks you'll enjoy. It uses YouTube Music's recommendation engine under the hood. You can enable or disable it in Settings.

This is almost always a session/cookie issue. Try these steps in order:

• Open your browser and go to music.youtube.com. Make sure you're logged in and can play songs there.
• Close Viora completely and relaunch it. It re-reads your browser session on startup.
• If it still doesn't work, export a fresh cookies.txt file and place it in the Viora folder (see the setup guide on the download page).
• Make sure your cookies haven't expired. Try logging out and back into YouTube Music in your browser, then export fresh cookies.

Viora auto-detects sessions from Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Firefox. If you're using a different browser (like Opera or Vivaldi), it won't be able to pick up your session automatically. In that case, manually export a cookies.txt from any supported browser where you're logged into YouTube Music, and place it in the Viora folder. Viora will use it as a fallback.

No, it's a false positive. Electron apps (apps built with web tech wrapped in a desktop shell) commonly get flagged by antivirus software because they're not code-signed. Code signing certificates cost money and Viora is a free indie project. The source code is available to review. You can safely add an exception for Viora in your antivirus settings.

• Check that the volume slider in Viora isn't at zero.
• Go to Settings and check the Audio Output device. Make sure the right output is selected (e.g. your headphones or speakers).
• Check Windows Volume Mixer — make sure Viora isn't muted there.
• Try switching the output device to Default and then back to your preferred device.

Viora is built on Electron which does use more memory than a native app would. It typically uses around 200-400MB RAM while playing. If it's sluggish, try closing other apps or restarting Viora. Also make sure you're running the latest version. If it's consistently very slow, let us know and we'll investigate.

Viora checks for updates automatically. When a new version is available you'll see a notification inside the app. You can also manually download the latest installer from the download page at any time and install it over the existing version — your settings and library will be preserved.

When Viora launches, it looks for browser profile directories on your system (Chrome's %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data, Edge's equivalent, etc.). It reads the cookies database files stored there, specifically looking for .youtube.com cookies that are required for authentication. This is the same data your browser uses when you're logged in — Viora just reads it directly from disk rather than through the browser itself.

Google's session cookies typically last a long time as long as you use your browser regularly. If you use Chrome or Edge daily and stay logged into Google, your session will almost never expire on its own. Cookies expire faster if you clear your browser data, log out, or haven't opened the browser in a long time. If Viora stops playing after a while, just open your browser, visit music.youtube.com to refresh the session, then relaunch Viora.

No. Viora is a single-instance app. If you try to open it when it's already running, it will bring the existing window to focus instead of opening a second window. This is intentional to prevent audio conflicts.

Viora stores everything in your AppData folder:

• App data and settings: %APPDATA%\Viora
• Cached songs (offline mode): %APPDATA%\Viora\cache
• Library (playlists, liked songs): %APPDATA%\Viora\library.db

You can clear the cache folder manually if you want to free up disk space.

Yes and it works even better. With a Premium account your streams will be ad-free and you'll get higher quality audio. Viora inherits whatever entitlements your account has. A free account still works fine though, the audio just includes YouTube's ad breaks in some streams.

• Go to Windows Settings > Apps > Installed Apps.
• Search for Viora and click Uninstall.
• To remove all leftover data (cache, playlists, settings), also delete the folder at %APPDATA%\Viora.