Show HN: Decoupled – A lightweight music player for iOS | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Decoupled – A lightweight music player for iOS

decoupled.app

23 pointstzahola27 comments

Hey there,

Would you be interested in collaborating on a music project. I'm working on a selfhosted music streaming server called mStream that allows you to stream music from a home computer to any device. I began writing it several years ago when I couldn't find a good solution for FLAC streaming.

The main thing I'm missing is an iOS app. Let me know if you're interested.

The project: https://github.com/IrosTheBeggar/mStream

Interesting. I’m looking to set something like this up soon. What are the advantages compared to more established protocols with servers and clients, like Subsonic/Airsonic, or Ampache?

Subsonic/Ampache wins when it comes to client support. mStream's biggest downside is the lack of good mobile clients.

mStream has an advantage in the areas of DB and installation. mStream makes use of LokiJS, an in-memory DB that is VERY fast. mStream also comes packaged as a single click installer for Win/OSX (see the release pages for this). These installers have no dependencies and are configurable via a GUI, making very easy for non-technical people to setup their own home servers.

mStream is also taking a turn to support a different market in the future. I'm working on adding eCommerce tools to the server, so bands and musicians can use it as a way to sell music/merch without having a 3rd party take a cut of the revenue.

Also mStream will always be FOSS, if that matters to you

I have been looking for something like this for a long time on iOS. I am not into streaming at all, but I have a large collection of physical media converted into electronic form. (I also very much appreciate your no tracking and analytics policy.)

One feature that I still do miss is to organize or browse my collection on the app by a self-defined folder structure. Most apps offer to sort by artist, album titles, genres etc., but I do not find this sufficient or convenient, especially if your collection is very heterogenous.

For example, I have my pop albums sorted by artist, but my classical music by composer (rather than artists/performer). I also have a large collection of singles which I prefer to have in a separate folder (to not clutter the pop artist directory too much), sorted chronologically. Similarly, I keep compilations in a separate folder, and do not want every artist of a single song in a compilation appear in my overall list, or have all compilations lumped under "Various Artists".

As far as I can see, Decoupled already maintains the files in the user-given folder structure, and technically I can just click on "Files" and then browse through it. Would it be possible however to place this option more prominently on the main screen that is visible when the app opens up? Or even make the options on the main screen user-configurable, similar to how the iOS music player allows enabling and disabling the "Artist", "Genre" etc. entries in the media library?

Hmm, how about putting “Files” in another tab at the bottom like “Library” and “Playback”?

That would be an option, too. Can I then set the app to open with the "Files" view by default?

Sure, that's how I would implement it.

> An app for those who take music seriously.

> Do you like music streaming services?

> Do you enjoy companies telling you what you should listen to each week?

> Did you stop buying music years ago?

> If you answer with "yes" to any of these questions, Decoupled wasn't made for you. Sorry.

Why bother alienating people who enjoy streaming services? Plenty of people, myself included, use Spotify but also have music that isn't on Spotify and want a good player for it.

I would also argue that anyone who takes music seriously should love music streaming services, because they offer an incredible value for the price.

Sorry for making you feel alienated. It’s just a snarky tagline, that’s all. You can have Spotify and Decoupled installed side by side.

This is very nice at first glance.

I liked the multitude of transfer options in VLC, but felt like the UI was too busy. Decoupled has most of the same transfer options, but looks a lot more like an iOS app.

One odd thing I noticed; I uploaded several directories of music using AirDrop, and every single file I uploaded shows up on the device with a corresponding 212 byte file with the prefix ._ mixed in. Does Decoupled add that? It makes reading the file list a bit harder.

That's called a resource fork: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork

Those files contain out-of-band metadata for the given file. Now, for file systems that don't natively support resource forks (read: anything but Apple's own filesystem(s)), Finder insists on storing them as dot-underscore files. E.g. Mac clients are notorious for littering SMB shares with these dot-underscore files.

As for why it's created when sharing stuff through AirDrop, from one Apple device to another, that's beyond me...

I think it might make sense to hide these dot-underscore files from the file browser, along with .DS_Store and maybe thumbs.db (I'm not even sure whether modern Windows still creates thumbs.db). Will do it in the next version.

Thanks for the feedback! I wanted exactly this iOS-native look & feel you're talking about. I personally don't like other apps forcing their designers' UX vision on me... A curated music library with quality artworks speaks for itself. I don't want my app to stand between users and their libraries :)

>I'm not even sure whether modern Windows still creates thumbs.db

Just chiming in here to let you know it does. Quite at random it seems (at least that's what it feels like) - but it does! Also thanks for shedding some light on the mysterious ._ folder/files that get created for me when I use Beets (http://beets.io/)

FYI, I've just released 1.0.1 in the AppStore, which won't show the resource forks in the file browser anymore!

Cool. As someone with a giant library of ripped cds organized in a nice file structure, this is definitely interesting. I hate going through the iTunes library.

Any chance you could let it access audio files stored in Dropbox?

Hmm, I guess accessing files from Dropbox is not too hard in itself. You can already do that in a somewhat roundabout way by choosing “Open in...” in the Dropbox app and then selecting “Copy to Decoupled”.

Indexing and keeping track of all items in Dropbox, without actually storing them locally is a bit harder. But then I guess you would need streaming for those files too, which is another can of worms.

Long story short: possible in theory, but unlikely in near term.

Sent you an email. I would love to be able to add "weight" to songs in my "shuffled" playlist so I can identify songs to play less often and other to play on "heavy rotation".

Got it! Check your inbox ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Nice work grabbing a .app domain!

Actually Decoupled wasn’t the original name of the app, but when the .app TLD was opened, that original name was already taken. So I had to come up with a new name for the release.

Around a year ago I've became tired of not being able to play FLAC or Opus on my iPhone, so I've checked third-party apps in the AppStore which supported these formats. Sadly, all of them looked very unpolished, so I've decided to write my own.

You should totally make this a few bucks

Thanks, but I'm not planning to monetize it. If it gains adoption in its niche, that's enough for me.

You should add the application/project name to the post title.

Hmmm, is it possible to edit post titles? :/

For an hour or two, usually. Then it goes away. When it is possible to edit the title, you will see an |edit| link under your submission.

Meh. I'm way past that unfortunately. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We'll add it.

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