
Show HN: I wanted better offline music on the iPhone, so I made Doppler - edwellbrook
https://brushedtype.co/doppler/
======
lolsal
I sincerely cannot tell how this is different from the Music app that I
already use on my iPhone other than the color-matching background stuff.

\- Minimal design: The 'now playing' drawer in the screenshot looks nearly the
exact same as the Music 'now playing' drawer. If anything it has more text for
buttons than the Music app.

\- Adapts to my music: The background color changes?

\- Import my music: Ok, but with Music app I don't have to do that.

\- Search artists, albums and songs: Ok, but I can already do that with Music
app.

\- Edit and reorder listen queue: Ok, but I can already do that with Music
app.

~~~
banku_brougham
There is a wealth of comment online and here on HN about the inadequacies of
the native music app. If you are enjoying the iOS music app you probably dont:

\- sync the library to a local machine

\- have any songs in your library that are unavailable via streaming service

\- use custom playlists that are organized on a desktop machine

\- listen to music by Genre

\- don’t mind authenticating all the time

~~~
coldtea
All of the above features are available in the Music app -- and the last one
is not an issue.

------
ig0r0
I think the offline claim should be explained a bit better. Like does that
mean I can get my old MP3 files to the app without stupid iTunes sync? Does it
support "File sharing" so the app is shown in iTunes and I can drag and drop
my MP3 files to its storage?

~~~
linkmotif
> I can get my old MP3 files to the app without stupid iTunes sync? Does it
> support "File sharing" so the app is shown in iTunes and I can drag and drop
> my MP3 files to its storage?

That’s what I want to know too. My biggest problem is having iTunes in the
middle.

~~~
thrav
Look into waltr: [https://softorino.com/waltr/](https://softorino.com/waltr/)

It’s perfect at what it does.

~~~
clay_the_ripper
This looks great. I actually wood prefer a third party app though because
using the stock apps means that audio auto plays when connecting to some
Bluetooth devices. It drives me insane that every time I get in my car some
audiobook I was listening to starts auto playing.

------
peterburkimsher
I use iTunes 10.6.3 and sync to an iPod.

That keeps track of play counts on both devices, lets me make smart playlists
and playlist folders, and syncs music, contacts, and calendars all over USB
without any cloud services prying into my personal data.

Apple went from being a leader in the music-listening industry with excellent
UX to trying to compete with Spotify and YouTube, who are frankly not even
that great (e.g. trying to keep playing a song in the background).

Flash memory was small when the iPhone came out in 2007, so everything moved
to streaming. Now the capacities are finally big enough again (e.g. 128GB
iPhone SE), Apple's broken their sync services.

I like having play counts, ratings, and playlists, and I like that I've
continually built up my music library since the days of Soundjam MP for the
Rio 600.

Doppler is trying to put a new theme on Finder's MP3 playing feature, but it's
not the syncing library manager that I need.

~~~
dsr_
I have a standalone MP3 player the size of a matchbox. (Anybody remember
matchboxes?)

The battery is good for 15 hours of play, it takes a 128GB microSD card, and
it can play FLAC as well as MP3. The buttons are real and tactile and oriented
so that you don't have to look at it to figure them out. It appears as a USB
mass storage device with a FAT32 filesystem, so every computer I've used in
the last 20 years can put music on it. If you put music in directories, it
will navigate the directory structure. If you build m3u playlists, it will use
those. You can ask for a random shuffle of all tracks or inside a directory.

It doesn't have play counts or ratings. If you have a USB3 microSD reader,
that's faster than updating directly through the USB2 interface.

Also, it's running an open-source alternative firmware called Rockbox.

~~~
runarberg
Please, I have been looking for a descent music player for a while (since my
Creative Zen had a hard drive failure). Did you get yours new or used (if so,
which brand? how much money? where from?), did you hack it together your self
(if so how)?

~~~
soylentcola
Probably a Sansa Clip or similar (not too familiar with their current model
lineup but it roughly mirrors my experience with them back when I used one).

~~~
dsr_
I own several Clip Plus models. They're great... and discontinued.

------
taylodl
How does Doppler compare with Cesium? I've been using Cesium for the past
couple of years and have been pretty happy, though like with any app
improvements can be made. I agree with you the iTunes app is not good for
simply playing music.

------
fitpolar
Define "better offline music". I'm sure it has a great UX, but Apple's music
app already gives me a pretty decent experience.

Honestly, I'll continue using that unless "better" is substantial.

------
mychael
I bought the app. A few ideas:

\- When importing, it would be great to see that "importing" is not a copy of
the exact same data, but rather a reference or link (like a symlink). I have
40 gb of music on my iPhone. I don't want to double that by using your app.

\- Needs a nicer looking app logo.

\- Needs a cooler app name that is more original than "Doppler".

------
scblock
This app page says nothing. It's just a few screenshots and some generic text.

Your "support page" is an email address, and doesn't actually contain any
information on the app.

If you're going to show us something and ask us to buy your app, then put a
little more care into your launch.

------
RobertDeNiro
Does apple still reject third party apps that are too similar to existing
first party apps?

~~~
dawnerd
They allow Spotify soooooo.....

------
chrisseaton
Where do you get the music from though?

~~~
dewey
You can still buy them from Bandcamp, Qobuz or even buy it on iTunes. What are
you trying to imply?

~~~
chrisseaton
> What are you trying to imply?

That I didn't know about any of those services? I thought everything was
streaming these days. What are you trying to imply that I'm trying to imply?

~~~
dewey
I thought you were implying that the only way to get music files (after
disregarding CDs as you don't have a drive) these days was to download them
from unofficial sources. Not streaming music files was the standard for a long
time so I was a bit surprised about the question.

That's usually a point that comes up for products like Plex etc.

------
Invictus0
I have a large mp3 library and have used Marvis for over a year. Marvis is
great and extremely customizable, but it has a few bugs and the developer has
abandoned the app. I won't use any music app that doesn't allow shuffling by
album. It sucks that Apple bastardized the main music app to promote Apple
music; I think that app was at it's best around iOS 7.

~~~
taylodl
You should check out Cesium. I've been using it for the past couple of years.
It accesses your music library, so all your music and playlists are there. You
can play by album (and shuffle the music) or even play by artist (and shuffle
all songs by the artist). You can even play by genre if you so desire. Of
course it provides all the typical music queue management facilities as well,
but I don't tend to use those too much. I like it's extreme simplicity.

------
zakk
I don't know if it is technically possible, but a polished, fast app for Apple
Music is badly needed!

~~~
rvanmil
Should be possible
[https://developer.apple.com/musickit/](https://developer.apple.com/musickit/)

~~~
zakk
I didn't know this! I would gladly pay 10x its price, if Doppler supported
Apple Music through MusicKit...

------
radutzan
So I've been making a music player app called 'Doppi' for years now, I wonder
if it served as inspiration? [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doppi-offline-
music-player/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doppi-offline-music-
player/id1002899671?ls=1&mt=8)

------
lloeki
This looks great, I'll try it out, congrats!

Now, questions:

Any chance of supporting BS2B (Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural), which VOX
player supports?

Do you plan to add, if at all possible, Spotify or VOX Music Cloud as
providers?

Do you plan to support 3D Touch? I found the use of Peek on songs (+slide and
release on menu options) very useful in Apple Music, and I definitely miss
that in Spotify.

------
ainiriand
Like I always say when I see a music related app submission: Get a lawyer.

It looks pretty awesome by the way, any plans for android?

~~~
martin-adams
I'm genuinely curious why you say to get a lawyer for all music apps as I
can't really see why this one would necessarily need a lawyer. Are you talking
in terms of music licensing issues or patent violations, or other?

~~~
ainiriand
Licensing rights, because if you develop an app that makes money out of
playing music it is gonna make some people uncomfortable, even if it the music
of the owner of the app. There's gonna be C&D letters even if the app proves
to be licit.

~~~
opencl
This makes no sense, there are no licensing rights involved because no music
is being provided. It just plays files provided by the user. Are people
sending C&D letters to Sandisk for selling MP3 players, or the hundreds of
music player apps for Android?

~~~
ainiriand
Agree, it makes no sense, lets see if the OP can tell us if this happens in
the future or not. Maybe I'm just scared.

~~~
opencl
There are already a huge number of apps out there doing the exact same thing,
as far as I am aware zero have been sued/threatened out of existence over
this.

------
jakecopp
Android users: I build some tools to Rsync your iTunes library to your phone
over WiFi and it's absolutely bulletproof, works great!

[https://github.com/jakecoppinger/android-itunes-
rsync](https://github.com/jakecoppinger/android-itunes-rsync)

------
minikites
Have you considered adding support for Subsonic?
[http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp](http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp)

Manually choosing songs to load onto my phone is a significant chore and my
phone can only fit a subset of my collection.

~~~
edwellbrook
Haven't heard of Subsonic before. Will see what I can do. Cheers!

------
kall
You should consider opening the 'Now Playing' drawer with an actual, direct
gesture instead of a trigger on a detected swipe. The way it is now feels
weird for iOS.

I really missed the album artwork color extraction from iTunes and seeing
album covers in a reasonable size, so thank you for that.

------
primitur
I guess this is going to be a much better upgrade from my current non-
Apple/-cloud music-player, VLC ..

------
mixmastamyk
Would like something like VLC, but with a better interface. I copy media to
its folder, and then play it.

One pet peeve, on iOS the audio transport buttons are in a different location
in music apps than they are on the lock screen. Leading to more fumbling
around than needed.

------
matt_the_bass
I’d love to have a way to sync my google play music files with apples app. The
reason I’m interested in apples app is so that I can fully control it with
Seri. This way in the car I can just tell seri what song, artist, album, genre
to play.

------
granjoz
+1 for Best of Omar S playlist

------
evanb
Does "Import your music and playlists" means it will use my synced iTunes
library? I would love this. But I tried to click to find out more, only to
find that almost nothing on that landing page is a link.

~~~
edwellbrook
Yep that's right!

------
gabrielcsapo
This is gorgeous, thank you for caring about my life. _purchased_

------
walden789
Would be great if one could skip using iTunes alltogether....like being able
to just import Mp3, Flac and m4a files from cloud storage into the app.
Is/will this (be) possible with doppler?

~~~
edwellbrook
I have importing mp3/flac etc working but needs a bit more work before I can
release it. Coming very soon!

------
oscarteg
Does it support casting to chromecast? This is something that is really
missing in the native app. If this is supported I would buy.

~~~
ssfrr
+1 - I have a couple Chromecast Audios that I use as a poor-man's Sonos and it
works pretty well, but the Spotify iOS app's Chromecast streaming is pretty
half-assed. It can only adjust volume when the app is in the forground, and
sometimes not even then, sometimes forgets it's streaming and loses sync.

------
hisabness
funny thing is that apple used to have good offline music support that it has
since butchered.

------
walterbell
GoodReader on iOS can synchronize offline files via SSH and play audio/video.

------
dewey
Which features did you miss from the stock app / Apple Music?

~~~
hellofunk
I find Apple's music app on iOS terribly hard to use. It didn't used to be
this way. I struggle to do basic things, like just playing the songs in order
on an album! Sounds silly, but there are so many buttons that sweep away to
different screens, and it's not at all clear what you are doing.

Now I just use GoodReader to store and play back all offline albums, since
it's just a file directory and I can just play the tracks in the order they
are stored.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
I have this problem with Apple's podcast player[0]. They really didn't make it
intuitive at all.

[0] Pocketcasts solves that problem, though.

~~~
colomon
What the heck, why did I think Pocket Casts wasn't available on iOS? I've used
it in the browser and on my Android phone for years...

------
tempodox
Does it also display lyrics for songs that have them?

------
nuopnu
foobar2000 on the App Store:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/foobar2000/id1072807669?mt=8)

~~~
jedimastert
What about it?

~~~
nuopnu
A "better offline music on the iPhone".

------
khazhoux
FLAC support?

------
luigi23

      Supports your favourite speakers and headphones Doppler works with AirPods, HomePod and any Bluetooth or AirPlay enabled speaker
    

But it doesn't require any setup - it comes out of the box. Or put it in
another way - I don't see any music app that does not support that.

~~~
teekert
0 calories water baby!

Still, as a non-iPhone user I actually expect Apple hardware to only work
properly with Apple software, I was never able to use airplay on any other
software than iTunes (in Windows), it always broke after some time when I did
find something that worked on Linux. So perhaps it's not so bad to mention it.

~~~
rrdharan
AirServer ([http://www.airserver.com](http://www.airserver.com)) has been
working quite well for me for the past few years, though I don’t use it all
that much.

------
Aaargh20318
What is this 'offline' thing I keep hearing about ? Is it something US-
specific ?

~~~
jamix
It's the good old MP3s that you download and send to your phone with iTunes.

~~~
Aaargh20318
But why would I want to if I can just stream them ?

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Some people don't have unlimited bits.

~~~
gm-conspiracy
or connectivity.

~~~
Xylakant
or travel via plane and/or train

~~~
Aaargh20318
Trains have wifi or you can just use 4G.

I never ttavel by plane but I assume they offer wifi too nowadays.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Trains have wifi

On the WCML, you have to pay ££ for WIFI unless you're in first class and even
then it's patchy because the train doesn't always have a clear view for the
satellite data.

> or you can just use 4G.

Down the WCML, you're lucky to get even 3G thanks to the combination of poor
coverage from cell towers (not much call for them in rural landscapes, really)
and the metallised glass they use on the trains.

(They did try per-carriage femtocells but they didn't help.)

------
command
Is there a Linux (or wireless) solution for transferring music to my iPhone
yet? VLC Player allows for wireless sync via web browser, but it lacks way too
many features to be used regularly just for music.

