Hi, hope I can ask here. I’ve been using vlc for android as my music player but it really struggles after 5k local songs surprisingly so I’m looking for an alternative. The main problem I have is that after switching to the user account that has my local media, vlc refreshes and clears my playlist and I’m at the point where it’s becoming a bit frustrating. I already tried the majority of music player apps on fdroid but they all have issues with the metadata (no album art, unknown genre, etc…). Any help?
Edit: If it matters for troubleshooting, I’m running grapheneos and use vlc on a seperate user profile where my local media is located.
Edit #2: Phonograph plus seems like my best option rn but feel free to give more options to help others
Auxio is kind of a beast. It does an initial cache on load and periodically, but then handles everything blazing fast after that. And it is the only app of recent times that’s both open source and has the layout I want (old Google Play Music/Zune/iTunes Mobile layout).
I personally use Phonograph Plus although it has it’s own share of issues. The best one in my opinion was Vinyl Music Player but it had some issues with SD cards.
Alrighty just tried phonograph plus and it checked every box thanks again. Storage scope was messing with the genre metadata for some reason but since its on another profile I’ll just grant it permission
Yeah vinyl music player looked promising but it did suffer reading my metadata sadly. I’ll look into phonograph plus, appreciate it
Have you tried Retro Music?
I like it and got it in an attempt to move on to something more aesthetically pleasing than VLC, but I just ended up going back to VLC.
UPDATE: Sorry, this app is not open source. I completely didn’t notice the community. 100% my mistake. I have removed the comment but for reference the recommendation was for Musicolet.
I love this app so much. Ran into issues with Poweramp draining my battery and overheating the device. Went back and forth with the dev, we couldn’t figure it out so I moved on. And my god, there is a lot of shite out there. But this app is magic. I use it every day and have never had an issue with it. Everything just makes sense and it is a joy to use.
I completely agree and can’t recommend this app enough. There’s so many things going for it compared to everything else out there. I use it every day also after churning through all the other ones out there and never feeling satisfied. The total app size is like 25MB and doesn’t even request the internet permission. With not having the internet permission you don’t even have to worry about what data is being sent back to the developer - the answer is none. Despite being incredibly lightweight it’s somehow got more features than many other apps, and implemented extremely well.
It’s free but you do get a couple extra advanced features for a small IAP such as a ChromeCast plugin and auto playlists (Most Played etc). Despite not even needing any of the features I paid for the lifetime access simply because I find that much value in this app and when you come across a diamond like this app it makes you want to give back.
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@stifle867 Do you know of any plans of publishing the app on f-droid.org as well? Though you don’t say it, your ad is distributed by @opensource so I guess it’s an open source app and probably qualifies for F-Droid. Many open source lovers deny to use any Google accounts and services, and if the dev cares for them …
Oh, I’m sorry. I completely missed that! Yes you are completely correct and I will correct the post. Thank you.
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No worries, if you ever do have the opportunity to try it out though you won’t regret it :)
Mpv
My vote goes to Auxio for music and Just Player for video.
Not open source. However, PowerAmp is a great music player.
Yeah was gonna use the non google service version but since the licensing is kinda strict it would be my last resort
Focusing on just the player, it’s a great option.
- One time payment for advanced features, no subscription.
- Extremely customizable; visually, the audio output, how shuffle works (totally random, or favor less recently songs)
- Sync - I just directly sync my PC media and playlist folders to my phone, told poweramp where the folder is, and it just works.
- EQ settings, per device. Bluetooth headphones have a different curve than the bluetooth car. You could do per song if you’re ever so inclined.
- support for high fidelity audio if your device supports it.
- Android Auto Support
- “driving mode” support (when using maps on phone)
- support for internet radio stations.
Oh yeah im not clowning on it. I actually paid and used it back when I was on vanilla android honestly great app.
Well, I can say that it’s worth it. Once you tweak the settings a little for your device, the only thing that sounds as good is neutron, and neutron is a hot mess ui wise. If you use a device that has its own on board “hi res” hardware, there isn’t anything that’s going to sound as good, even usbplayer pro (which is better if you want bit-perfect playback only, but it doesn’t seem that’s your priority) or neutron.
Mind you, this all assumes that you’re chasing “better” sound in the first place. See, android’s native sound processing is what most players will use. There’s only a handful that do anything else at all. And it’s that sound processing that’s going to be your main limiter in chasing an ideal.
If you aren’t going to care about any of that, then literally any player on fdroid is going to sound the same in general (the last I went through them anyway). So you’re picking by ui/ux, which is a different thing entirely. Now, I prefer poweramp’s ui as well, it really is laid out almost perfectly for my wants.
The licensing for non-google usage isn’t onerous imo. Nor is it particularly expensive.
When choosing a music player I went with an favorite from my dial-up days, Foobar2000. It’s pretty no frills… and I couldn’t find Winamp.
I’ll be honest, I did not expect to ever hear another person mention Foobar2000 ever again. And now to learn they have an android app!!! Hmm, may have to use that for a bit just for nostalgia sake.
I use Vinyl Music Player. F-Droid link.
AntiiQ music player
I use AIMP. It’s available for PC also. It’s like what Winamp would be had development continued, and it’s pretty great
Edit: I’m pretty sure it’s not open source, but that’s very low on my personal list of priorities, tbh
I don’t know how well it scales, but I find Metro to be rather good. Find it of f-droid. I like that it randomizes the playlist rather than gets the list of songs and applies randomization to the play order. It also shows lyrics at a touch, if they’re in the metadata, and apparently recognizes lyric synchronization if it is there.
I use Pulsar which is pretty good for my needs.
Auxio is cool, aviable on f-droid
Try MPV for android
