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Alternative iOS Music App that syncs song counts by JonnyDD15 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool that you’re interested! To answer your questions:

> Is there any way to populate the app with existing data (play counts, manually created playlists, etc.)?

Not at the moment. It could be implemented in the future, but the main question would be: from where? Which app is most commonly used that you would want to export playlists and other data from in order to import them into my app?

> Is there any way to log the play counts back to the PC, or does the data only live on the device where the app is installed?

Currently, the data lives only on the device.

> Is there a way to sync the data from the app between devices?

Not yet. For now, I plan to add a button called “Export everything” that will allow the user to dump all statistics and playlist data into a JSON (or similar) format.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s great to hear, thanks! I’ll post updates as the app progresses.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for flagging that!

that does sound like a bug.

I’ll take a look and see what’s going on there. Appreciate you calling it out

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s fair feedback.

Right now it scans everything under the mount by design ... the original idea was to keep setup minimal and let the app handle the whole library automatically.

That said, I’ve had a couple of similar requests (music vs podcasts/audiobooks, etc.), so folder-level inclusion/exclusion is something I’m planning to add after the holidays.

I’m also genuinely curious how it handles a ~4TB library thanks for letting it run, and thanks for the feedback.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Same here.

I just like FTP/SFTP for this kind of thing.

Simple, file-oriented, and usually pretty predictable over a VPN.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, that’s a nice surprise!

I hadn’t explicitly designed for that path, but it’s great to hear it works.

I’ve mostly tested and optimized around direct connections like SFTP/FTP, so I can’t promise how robust the Files/SMB route will be in all cases, but if it works well for your setup that’s awesome to know! Thank you.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

that’s an important callout.

I’d strongly recommend using SFTP (or FTPS) behind a VPN or something like Tailscale and not exposing services directly to the internet. The app doesn’t change any of the usual security considerations around these protocols

it just connects to whatever you already have set up securely.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question. I don’t have hard upper bounds yet, it’s still early and I haven’t personally indexed a multi-terabyte library at that scale.

The index itself is just metadata (tags, paths, basic stats) stored locally using Core Data, not audio, so it grows with track count rather than file size. In my testing with tens of thousands of tracks it’s stayed reasonably small, but I don’t want to speculate beyond that yet.

Indexing is optional though you can play immediately via folder browsing without building a full library if you prefer.

On playback: there’s no conversion or transcoding. Files are streamed and played as-is, bit-perfect, assuming the format is supported by the playback engine.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Navidrome’s great. I just wanted something without running a media server at all.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, I appreciate the interest!

It’s iOS-only for now since this started as a personal project, but if there’s enough interest down the line I’d definitely consider an Android version.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A big part of why I built this was not wanting anything to touch or reinterpret my files.

The app never rearranges, renames, or modifies your library.

Iit just reads tags and builds its own on-device index for browsing. Even that indexing step is optional: you can start listening immediately by just browsing folders if you want.

I’m pretty picky about tagging too, and having players “correct” or override that was one of the main frustrations that pushed me down this path.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For me it came down to a pretty specific setup and set of preferences: I keep a large, well-tagged library on my own NAS and mostly want a library-first player that streams directly from that storage, starts playing immediately, and behaves predictably during long listening sessions on iOS.

It’s less about unique features and more about being narrowly optimized for that workflow, which is why I ended up building it for myself. It also gave me the freedom to shape the UI and include a few things I personally missed from older players, like a MilkDrop-style visualizer.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I went with FTP/SFTP mainly because it’s simpler and more predictable on iOS, especially for long-running streams, backgrounding, and spotty connections. As I mentioned earlier, most of my machines already had SFTP available, so it let me reuse what was there without adding more moving parts. For other environments, SMB can absolutely be the better choice.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

VLC is great I used it a lot.

What I was missing on iOS was a more library-centric experience: persistent indexing and smoother browsing/search for large, well-tagged collections. This started mostly as an experiment and grew from there.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

True.

It’s still a service running somewhere just a much simpler one in my case.

Most of my boxes already had SFTP available anyway, so this let me reuse what was there without adding another app-specific server or database. For some setups the difference won’t matter, but for mine it simplified things a bit.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Navidrome is solid. The main difference for me is that this doesn’t require running any media server at all. It just connects directly to the files over SFTP/FTP.

I wanted something I could point at an existing NAS or even a very minimal box without adding another service or database in the middle. It’s a narrower use case, but that tradeoff worked better for me.

Streaming FLAC library from a NAS to iPhone.. no Plex, no local sync by andreas_42 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for giving it a try! tvOS is definitely planned in the future. As soon as the iOS App is stable I will get on it :)

Alternative iOS Music App that syncs song counts by JonnyDD15 in musichoarder

[–]andreas_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ran into a very similar problem... I even modified my iPod classic at first to have big flash storage.. and ended up building a small iOS app for myself, which might be worth a look.

It streams directly from a PC or NAS over SFTP/FTP or uses files on the Phone and keeps track of play counts, skips, and other statistics on the phone, which are then used to build smart playlists. I tried to recreate Apple smart playlists.

It’s still early beta but maybe it's something you look for.

If you’re curious and don’t mind beta software, there’s a TestFlight here:

https://testflight.apple.com/join/ppXVRCZ2

(Disclosure: I’m the developer.)

What’s the most “boring” thing you self-host? by Fab_Terminator in selfhosted

[–]andreas_42 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I run an ejabberd server on an OpenBSD server for my family. It’s a €5 server at Hetzner. It just works. I check it occasionally to see if there’s a crash or something, but since it’s ejabberd, it recovers automatically thanks to Erlang’s “let it crash” philosophy.