When our gaming community moved to TeamSpeak 6, we hit a problem right away: there was no good TeamSpeak 6 music bot. The old TS3 bots either didn’t work with the new server, needed a full TeamSpeak client running on a machine with a fake sound card, or wanted the server’s query interface opened up. So we built our own. It’s called TS6 Roadie, it’s free and open source, and it runs 24/7 on our own server at tgscgo.net.
What TS6 Roadie Does
The idea is simple: the music goes to whoever asks for it. Message the bot from any channel and it joins you and starts playing. If it’s already playing for another group, it tells you so instead of pulling the music out from under them. When everyone leaves, it heads back to its home channel on its own.
- Plays almost anything. YouTube links or search words, SoundCloud and Bandcamp, Spotify song links (it finds the matching track), and internet radio stations with the current song title.
- Playlists. Save what’s queued under a name, edit it, and bring it back later with one command.
- Vote skip and permissions. Let the channel vote to skip, or limit commands to certain server groups like a DJ group.
- Auto-DJ and 24/7 mode. Keep a channel playing music whenever someone is in it.
- Troll control. Temporarily block someone from the music commands, cap how many tracks one person can queue, and block words.
- Community tools. An AFK mover, a welcome message for people joining, and a public “now playing and who’s online” widget you can embed on a website.
- Stream and game alerts. Post in the channel when a tracked Twitch streamer goes live or a tracked Steam player starts a game.
A Web Dashboard With No Passwords
Typing commands in chat works, but a control panel is nicer. TS6 Roadie has an optional web dashboard with the current track, a progress bar, the queue, search, radio stations and saved playlists. There are no passwords to manage: you type !weblogin in TeamSpeak, the bot privately sends you a one-time code, and you enter it on the page. Every button just runs the same chat command as you, so the dashboard can never do anything your TeamSpeak permissions wouldn’t allow.
Bot admins get an extra Admin tab with bot health, the list of who’s online (with a button to bring the bot to any channel), a radio station editor, a log viewer, and tools to test and update the YouTube downloader. On our server the dashboard lives behind a Caddy reverse proxy with a free HTTPS certificate, while the bot itself only ever listens on its own machine.
How This TeamSpeak 6 Music Bot Is Built
TS6 Roadie is written in TypeScript on Node.js. It talks to the TeamSpeak server directly as a normal voice client and sends Opus audio itself, so there’s no TeamSpeak client, no virtual sound card, and no need to turn on the server’s query interface. Audio comes through yt-dlp and ffmpeg.
The design borrows from Red-DiscordBot, which we already use on our Discord server: a small core plus “cogs” you can load, unload and reload from chat without restarting. Anyone can write their own cog and drop it in a folder, and it survives updates.
We also put real effort into the boring parts, because those are what break at 2 a.m.:
- It runs as a Windows service that restarts on failure and starts after a reboot.
- Updates are scripted. The new version is built next to the old one and tested against the real server first. If it doesn’t come up within 90 seconds, the previous version is put back automatically.
- The config is checked on start-up, and old config files are upgraded and backed up automatically.
- An automated test suite and GitHub Actions check every change before it’s released.
Free and Open Source
TS6 Roadie is MIT licensed and free for anyone to use. The code, full setup guide and every release are on GitHub at github.com/knkwebservices/ts6-roadie, and we post release notes in our thread on the official TeamSpeak community forum. It’s been through fifteen releases so far, and each one is tested on our own live server before it goes out. You can see the public widget running for our community at ts6.tgscgaming.com/widget.
TS6 Roadie is an independent project and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by TeamSpeak Systems GmbH. TeamSpeak is their registered trademark.
Need Something Custom Built?
Most of our day-to-day work is web hosting and websites, but projects like this one, and the Fallout 76 resource tool we built for the same community, are where we get to stretch. The same approach goes into the WHMCS modules and custom tools we build for clients: work out what’s actually needed, build it properly, and make it easy to keep running. If you’ve got a bot, tool or integration in mind that nothing off the shelf covers, get in touch.
TS6 Roadie FAQs
Is TS6 Roadie free?
Yes. It’s open source under the MIT license, and you run it on your own machine.
Does it work with TeamSpeak 3?
It was built and tested for TeamSpeak 6 servers. It hasn’t been tested against TeamSpeak 3.
What do I need to run it?
Node.js, ffmpeg and yt-dlp. The included scripts set it up as a Windows service; the GitHub page has the full guide.
Does the bot need admin rights on my server?
No. It needs a server group that lets it join channels, talk, and see users in other channels. Moving people (for the AFK mover) needs move permission.
