foobar2000

For me this is a far superior app. to iTunes (which in recent years seems obsessed with prioritizing a slick/minimalist aesthetic over functionality). It is possible to eg. read song information in full, list/sort stuff as you would expect from a file browser and easily play/control music from the file system/outside Apple’s closed/proprietary ecosystem etc... The more esoteric options for eg. experimenting with tempo/crossfeed are wonderful to have if you are a musician/dj/are generally interested in audio & there’s likely much more besides in the app. that I haven’t had a chance to use yet… I initially downloaded it because I wanted to play a folder of files of various types that I had either made myself/bought from other sources (with a sane interface/no data collected)! Sincere thanks to Foobar2000 ‘s developers & testers for treating users with respect and not patronising/exploiting them! :-)

My go-to player since Windows to Mac. Very good！Two bugs: if I go to Title section, I can see different cover for every single track. If I play songs there, I can see different covers in the player. 1) But under the album section, every song in the album shares the same cover in the player. 2)In my playlist, every song’s cover again is the same as their album cover. Please fix this!

When I switched fully to Linux in 2020, I was up the creek without a paddle, as iTunes isn't available on Linux and hasn't worked in WineHQ since 2018. This little app was exactly what I needed. It's easy to customise, synchronisable using FTP, supports internet radio, and I was especially pleased to see that it's totally free without any ads or tracking. Not only that, I have complete control over the app's appearance using skins, which are available at no cost from the Hydrogen Audio forums. I would seriously recommend this app to everybody. Great work!

Worked OK for a few months, then stopped. Time to move on.

Much better than iTunes, which seems obsessed with a slick/minimalist aesthetic but lacks/has stripped basic functionality - you can actually read song information, list/sort stuff as you would expect from a file browser and easily play/control music from the file system/outside Apple’s closed/proprietary ecosystem... The options for eg. experimenting with tempo/crossfeed are wonderful to have if you are a musician/dj/actually know a little/are interested in sound & there’s likely much more besides that I haven’t had a chance to use yet… I really just initially downloaded it because I wanted to play a folder of files of various types that I had either made myself/bought from other sources (with a sane interface/no data collected)! Deepest thanks to the developers/testers for treating users with respect/not patronising/exploiting them! :-)

Lost OGG files playback after last update

The search function is absolutely useless!

When you install the app it asks to “find and connect to devices on your local network” and “access Apple Music…”. I suspect these are fine, but I’ve always been paranoid about apps asking for permissions. You can say no to both and still use the ftp feature to add music from your computer. You simply turn it on with write access (an internal app permission, not system wide) then visit the ftp address in a file system eg windows explorer to copy and paste files. This maintains the security of the Apple app sandbox. Turn off the ftp server and you’ve turned off write access even to foobar2000s disk space.

The FTP server, although seemingly offering an option to allow writing, cannot receive files. If you try to upload, you only get error 503. I notice that on the official forum a lot of users have been reporting this problem since 2021 (or earlier) but no effective reply from the developer yet.

Superb, simple and just works. It syncs with ftp and TuneFUSION and removes the need for the torturous imposition that is the playlist. Foobar2000 makes Apple Music look like what it is; an anachronism from the tech Stone Age. As an aside, the Foobar2000 app works great on M1 Macs as well.