Show HN: Petrichor – a free, open-source, offline music player for macOS

https://github.com/kushalpandya/Petrichor

100•kushalpandya•10h ago

I have a large collection of music files gathered over the years, so I was sorely missing a decent offline music player that can serve as a frontend for the collection. I tried several Mac apps over the years, but since streaming music is mainstream now, there aren't good offline music players that meet my needs. So I spent the last 3 months building Petrichor! The idea is to solve my problem and learn Swift UI development along the way, while giving back to the community with this open-source project! Here's a list of features it has, with more getting added in future;

- Everything you'd expect from an offline music player!

- Map your music folders and browse your library in an organised view.

- Create playlists and manage the play queue interactively.

- Browse music using folder view when needed.

- Pin anything (almost!) to the sidebar for quick access to your favourite music.

- Navigate easily: right-click a track to go to its album, artist, year, etc.

- Native macOS integration with menubar and dock playback controls, plus dark mode support.

- Search quickly through large libraries containing thousands of songs.

The app is still in alpha, so things may look unpolished, but I've been testing the alpha builds for the past few weeks and fixing issues as I find them for v1 release. I welcome any feedback (and contributions!) on GitHub repo. Please give it a try and let me know what you think!

Comments

keane•8h ago

Congratulations on the release! This looks really cool!

beschizza•8h ago

Without even looking at anything else, I love the name.

gpm•7h ago

Anyone want to let me in on the joke/reference/pun/pronunciation/why it's a clever name?

kushalpandya•7h ago

There you go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrichor

> Petrichor is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil.

johng•5h ago

It's actually my favorite scent in the world. I grew up in New Mexico.

dvdplm•8h ago

Does it have FLAC support (or other high res audio formats)?

leetrout•8h ago

OP should put it up front in their README.

But from the code, seems it does.

  static let supportedExtensions = ["mp3", "m4a", "wav", "aac", "aiff", "flac"]

kushalpandya•7h ago

Thanks for the feedback, I'll add it to Readme, although app lists supported formats (as supported by AVFoundation) on app UI where user can add folders.

dlivingston•6h ago

Beautiful app, well done. Pleaaaaaaaase make this available on iOS. Bonus points if the desktop version could do syncing with my iPhone. I could finally treat my iPhone like an iPod!

kushalpandya•5h ago

Yes, iPhone is target once mac stable release is complete as the core logic can be shared between 2 platforms.

newscracker•3h ago

I haven’t done a detailed comparison, but there’s been a free app called Decoupled [1] on iOS that supports various formats and loading music into it. The app hasn’t been updated in about four years though.

[1]: https://decoupled.app/

toomim•6h ago

How's this compare to the native macos music app formerly known as itunes?

darthcircuit•5h ago

Anything is better than that dumpster fire. They changed the name but the ui is still straight out of the early 2000s. It’s an exercise in frustration to find the music you’re looking for, and if you subscribe to Apple Music, the radio suggestions rarely match what mood you set.

I was listening to some early 2000s alternative rock today and then randomly in the middle of my radio station it started playing a kids freeze dance song.

The best thing it has going for it is the lossless albums and native airplay casting. I got a free trial, but I’m not going to renew. I’d consider staying if they added native last.fm scrobbling, but even then I’m not sure.

I’m really bummed about the scrobbling because I lost several weeks of not a month of plays because my phone offloaded the scrobbler app and I didn’t notice. The official app for it on Mac says to use one or the other (macOS or iOS) because it will count twice.

MangoToupe•5h ago

> Anything is better than that dumpster fire.

Nonsense, you could be using Spotify.

darthcircuit•4h ago

I’m going to try giving up on all of them and just growing my local collection monthly instead.

mrheosuper•2h ago

the best-selling point in Spotify for me is discovering/suggesting new music. Sadly, it's not possible to do that when hosting local music, at least for now.

samplatt•2h ago

>the ui is still straight out of the early 2000s

There was a lot of great UI back then! None of it in iTunes, but still.

eschatology•1h ago

Feels like none of what you wrote is about how the native app compares to the app being discussed, Petrichor, which is an offline music organizer/player.

I have been using itunes/music to do that and it honestly works just fine. I have hundreds of playlists from over 10 years ago that still works. Finding specific playlist or music to play is pretty easy, especially with Alfred.

The longevity is the biggest concern to me when considering the third party apps. If it stops being maintained in the future I would be stuck and need to do the chore of moving them properly to another application. With the native app I am sure it will work for the next 20 years.

bigyabai•1h ago

My big gripe with Music is that big butt-ugly modal ad they prompt you with if you're one of the billions of humans that don't pay for Apple Music: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253368403

It's something I'd have expected out of Microsoft, but from Apple it's a particularly shitty gesture. A big warning sign to the user that "your" device hasn't been fully paid-off yet.

> The longevity is the biggest concern to me when considering the third party apps.

And that's why I had to stop using MacOS entirely. It's absurd for a culture of paid software to have such horrible runtime compatibility. Meanwhile on Windows, you don't ever buy software that stops working. Even Linux has largely circumvented it's own ABI woes with sandboxed packaging. MacOS's statically linked app framework has every advantage in pushing out support timelines as far as Apple wants - they just don't want to push it very far, sadly.

eviks•6h ago

> Everything you'd expect from an offline music player!

I'd expect winamp-level UI customization, cross-platform support, iTunes library smart playlist support...

syspec•3h ago

Ah, I guess he was talking to the person behind you

programmarchy•5h ago

This sounds like a breath of fresh air as a disenchanted Spotify user. My only hesitation is that I’ve lost touch with collecting music. I used to rip CDs and download music and curate a library etc, but I’ve lost my collection and collecting habits since adopting streaming. How do people collect music nowadays? Is there a legit way (fairly compensating artists) to do it?

Cockbrand•3h ago

Bandcamp comes to mind. Not sure about artists who aren't on Bandcamp, though.

thek3nger•3h ago

I buy from Bandcamp and Qobuz (especially for classical and artists that are not on Bandcamp).

dewey•4h ago

If you are looking for a “old school iTunes” kind of player there’s also https://swinsian.com/

gpm•4h ago

The Readme mentions that app under "Motivation"

> Motivation

> I have a large collection of music files that I’ve gathered over the years, and I missed having a good offline music player on macOS. I used Swinsian (great app, by the way!), but it hasn't been updated in years. I also missed features commonly found in streaming apps; so I built Petrichor to scratch that itch and learn Swift and macOS app development along the way!

thek3nger•3h ago

For the people interested, Swinsian has a beta version that is actively developed. I got an update a couple of weeks ago. So it is not abandoned.

bigyabai•1h ago

quodlibet comes highly recommended for Windows/Linux users that want a more retro media player: https://github.com/quodlibet/quodlibet

zdw•3h ago

Any thoughts on syncing against an external music library that uses the Subsonic API (like Navidrome or similar) so an offline/"away from home" laptop could still listen to music?

8mobile•3h ago

Congrats for Petrichor, really impressive work! I love the clean, modern UI. I’m currently using Swinsian (still solid in many ways), but Petrichor feels like a breath of fresh air, especially for those of us who still care about local libraries. I truly hope you’ll bring this to iOS. Thanks

newscracker•3h ago

Two suggestions, if you have the time to look at the effort and difficulty to implement them:

> P.S. I plan publish it on Homebrew soon.

1. Please consider publishing on MacPorts too.

2. Please consider supporting m4b audiobooks (it’s a different file extension from the common m4a, but also supports chapters).

integricho•3h ago

For me, the ideal music player UI started and ended with Winamp, and I never liked any of the higher level ones, no need for music libraries etc. Recursive directory scan, delete what is not needed, flat playlist, can save any, the end. Also, the minimalistic window of Winamp is just perfect.

bcraven•2h ago

The 'Win' in Winamp was referring to Windows. This is a Mac application.

eviks•1h ago

There is a mac clone https://re-amp.ru/

yborg•3h ago

Get a malware warning when trying to open disk image, Sequoia refuses to open it :(

HnUser12•3h ago

If it's just a signing thing that Apple checks, you open run it by doing `xattr -d com.apple.quarantine filename` first.

rock_artist•3h ago

> macOS 14 or later

That’s a pretty high bar for a Mac app assuming some hardcore offline music lovers might use older OS versions.

meta-level•2h ago

Imagine the title being "... a free, open-source, offline music player for <any other OS>"

reader9274•2h ago

Will it support playing lossless files in FLAC or ALAC format? Will it be able to change the audio sampling rate per song to match the song's sampling rate?

haunter•1h ago

foobar for Mac

https://www.foobar2000.org/mac

leshokunin•57m ago

Looks clean. Good work

uldos•55m ago

I can suggest Cog (https://cog.losno.co/) as simple but powerfull music player that plays flac

Cenk•41m ago

If you’re looking for a “iTunes before it went to shit” vibe I can also recommend Doppler: https://brushedtype.co/doppler/

dwiehoff•10m ago

Airplay is kind of a must

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Comments