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On Google Play

Retro Player

An Android music player that looks like it is 1997 and behaves like it is not.

Get it on Google Play
The player: time display, spectrum analyser, transport buttons, a ten-band equaliser and the playlist below it
Player, equaliser and playlist — stacked, the way they used to be.
The playlist filtered to two named categories, Driving and Late Night, with coloured hearts marking each track
Three coloured hearts, named by you. Tap to filter down to them.
The add-music screen: five new files found, two struck out
It finds the audio on your phone and asks before adding any of it.
A ten-band graphic equaliser with a preamp slider and preset button
Ten bands at the classic frequencies — the same ten on every phone.

What it does

Your music, on your terms

  • Finds the audio on your phone and asks before adding any of it
  • Tick what you want, strike out what you don't

Sound

  • A real ten-band equaliser, at the classic frequencies
  • The same ten bands on every device, not whatever the phone offers
  • A spectrum analyser driven by the actual audio — and it needs no microphone permission to do it

Radio

  • Paste a Shoutcast, Icecast or HLS URL and it plays
  • Station song titles update as they change

Privacy

  • No account, no analytics, no crash reporting
  • It cannot record audio — there is no microphone permission to ask for
  • Your playlist and your categories never leave the phone
  • The whole policy, in plain words

Out of the way

  • Keeps playing in the background
  • Lock screen, Bluetooth and Android Auto controls
  • Three colour categories you name yourself, to filter the playlist down

What it deliberately does not do

No library browser. No recommendations. No account, no analytics, no video. It plays a playlist.

About the look

This is a homage to the desktop players of the late nineties, drawn entirely from scratch: every pixel on screen is produced by code, and no third-party skin file, bitmap or sprite sheet is used anywhere.

It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the makers of the player it is inspired by.