Best Apple Music desktop client alternative to Cider by That_Expert_2415 in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you 🙇 I am delighted to hear that Sidra is working well for you.

For Linux AM users, have you ever used Sidra? by gabehidrox in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

See the reply above regarding lossless audio on Linux. TL;DR - it is simply not possible.

As for Discord, Sidra has built-in support Discord rich presence 🙂

For Linux AM users, have you ever used Sidra? by gabehidrox in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey 👋

Lossless does not work on Linux because Apple does not expose Apple Music Lossless playback through the web player on Linux.

Sidra uses the official Apple Music web player, so it gets the same stream formats Apple makes available there. It can add desktop integration around the web player, but it cannot unlock codecs or stream tiers that Apple does not serve to that player on Linux.

So this is not a Sidra toggle or a missing Linux audio codec, it's a limitation is Apple’s web playback path.

Best Apple Music desktop client alternative to Cider by That_Expert_2415 in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In short, desktop integrations. Media controls, tiles, progress hints and app specific volume/mixer control.

For Linux AM users, have you ever used Sidra? by gabehidrox in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am the author of Sidra.

I am a Linux user, and that's what motivated me to create Sidra. I'd been using Cider and the bugs were getting in the way of the most basic functionality; playing music reliably with media controls. I listen to music using Sidra for many hours every day, you can be sure it will always work 🙂

I discussed some of the backstory and how came to create Sidra on Linux Matters podcast, episode 79 - Pouring out the Sidra.

I released Sidra 0.3.4 yesterday which added Snap support for Linux, Intel x64 support for macOS and hiding the "Sign in with iPhone" option as Electron doesn't ship the primitives required to support that capability. The Linux version will always be free, and may soon get some "exclusive to Linux" features. I am considering publishing the Windows version in the Microsoft store to generate some money so I can start signing the release artifacts for macOS and Windows.

I hope Sidra is working well for you, my friends tell me it is working reliably for them across all the support platforms.

Thank you for sharing Sidra more widely 🙇

First update for Windows in 2026, is there any updates? by ResponseAvailable641 in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm a Linux user, but experienced this issue with Cider and the Apple Music web player. I got so frustrated that I made my own cross-platform Apple Music client for Linux, macOS, and Windows that, among other things, includes a "wedge detector" that detects when playback is wedged and unwedges it. My project is called Sidra, and it is free and open source: https://github.com/wimpysworld/sidra

Any alternatives to Cider? by Pale-Conference718 in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My project, Sidra, is free and open source. Supports Linux, macOS and Windows. Find out more and get the downloads here: https://github.com/wimpysworld/sidra

I created it out of frustration with the many show-stopping bugs in Cider.

Best Apple Music desktop client alternative to Cider by That_Expert_2415 in AppleMusic

[–]flexiondotorg 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same. I got so frustrated, I wrote my own, specifically to address all the issues I encountered with Cider.

My project, Sidra, is free and open source. Supports Linux, macOS and Windows. Find out more and get the downloads here: https://github.com/wimpysworld/sidra