wtf is amdl?

AMDL is a Windows desktop application for downloading music, playlists, albums, and music videos from Apple Music, built as a graphical wrapper around an existing open-source download engine called gamdl. It gives that underlying tool a dark-themed web-style interface with a real-time progress bar, a multi-task download queue, download history, and persistent settings that survive restarts. The interface itself uses a small local web server and WebSocket connection to update progress live as each track finishes. To use it, a person exports their Apple Music cookies from their web browser using a browser extension, then loads that cookie file into AMDL so it can verify an active Apple Music subscription. From there they paste a link to a song, album, playlist, music video, or artist page, choose a save location, and start the download. The tool checks whether the requested content is available in the region tied to the user's account, since Apple Music catalogs differ by country. By default it downloads audio at a standard AAC 256kbps quality. Higher-quality lossless ALAC and Dolby Atmos formats require a separate decryption key file that the user must obtain on their own, the README states plainly that the project does not include, provide, or distribute any such keys or cracking tools itself. After downloading, files can optionally be converted into other common audio formats such as MP3, FLAC, WAV, or OGG. The application is built with a Python and FastAPI backend, a Next.js and TypeScript frontend, and pywebview to wrap it all as a desktop window, then packaged into a Windows installer with PyInstaller and NSIS. Only Windows builds are currently distributed, though the underlying components are cross-platform and the author invites contributions for macOS support. The README describes the project as intended for learning and research purposes only, requiring users to supply their own legitimate Apple Music subscription, and states that the project itself does not host or store any copyrighted content. It credits the gamdl and yt-dlp projects as its download engine and another existing Apple Music downloader as its design inspiration. The project is released under the Unlicense.