Lossless · Cross-platform · Open Source
Your music,
exactly as recorded.
Needle is a hi-fi player for your own library. Bit-perfect lossless playback through mpv, a living now-playing dashboard, and a mini player that stays out of your way — no subscriptions, no telemetry.
Free & GPLv3 · macOS, Windows & Linux · No subscriptions, no telemetry
Built for people who care about sound
Everything a serious listener wants from a local library — and nothing a streaming app tries to sell you.
Bit-perfect lossless
Playback runs through mpv over JSON IPC, so your files play exactly as encoded — no resampling, no hidden DSP. FLAC, ALAC, 24-bit, 192kHz and more.
A dashboard that's alive
A Now spinning hero with an animated vinyl and album-art backdrop, recently-added rows, and smart picks drawn from your own play history, favourites, and ratings.
Artists with a story
Portraits and biographies pulled automatically from MusicBrainz → Wikidata → Wikipedia, with album notes to match. No API keys, cached locally so it stays fast.
Mini player, always there
An artwork-first mini player that pins always-on-top, drags anywhere, and expands into a resizable Up Next queue — control playback without leaving what you're doing.
Smart mixes from your library
Library signatures like 2000s Pop, BPM-aware vibe mixes, and Favourites / Top rated / Most played playlists — generated from your own tags and history, no machine learning required.
Local-first & open source
Your library lives in a local SQLite database. No account, no telemetry, no hidden network calls. Built with Tauri and Rust, GPLv3 licensed.
Mini player
Stays on top, stays out of the way.
A compact, artwork-first window you can pin always-on-top and drag anywhere on screen. Full-bleed cover art, the controls you actually reach for, and nothing else.
Keep the music in the corner of your eye while you work — no window-switching required.
Up Next
Your whole queue, one tap away.
Expand the mini player into a resizable Up Next queue: reorder tracks, jump anywhere, or clear what's coming — all without opening the main window.
True gapless album playback keeps live records and continuous mixes flowing exactly as intended.
See it in action
A player that respects your music — and looks the part.
Download Needle
Free, open-source, and ready for your platform. Pick your build — no account, no subscription, no telemetry.
Linux
64-bit · amd64
Download .AppImageGet the .deb packageAppImage runs anywhere · .deb for Debian & Ubuntu
Version 0.1.2 · GPLv3
Needle is free. Your support isn't required — but it means everything.
I've poured a lot of time, late nights, and frankly too much coffee into Needle. It costs nothing to download and always will — but if it's brought some joy to your listening, a small contribution goes a long way toward keeping the project alive.
No account needed. Processed securely via PayPal.
Open source, built in the open
Needle is GPLv3-licensed and developed publicly on GitHub. No closed-source bits, no telemetry, no hidden network calls — the full source is there to read, fork, or contribute to.
It's a personal project, built around how one person wants to experience their music. Opinionated by design — use it, break it, and make it your own.