Everything NaviBeat does.

Play to the speaker in the room.

Send your music to a UPnP or DLNA device on your network: a network streamer, an AV receiver, a smart television. Your phone hands the music over, goes quiet, and becomes the remote: play, pause, skip, position and volume, and changing track on the phone moves the speaker with it.

The speaker fetches the audio from your own server, so nothing goes through anybody's cloud. NaviBeat asks each device what it can actually decode and sends a format it accepts, rather than assuming. Speakers that announce themselves turn up in the search, and any other is added by typing its address, which is one line out of your router's device list.

Smart Playlists you write yourself.

Build a playlist out of rules rather than by hand: artist, genre, year, rating, play count, when you added it, whether it is in another playlist, and more. Results update as your library does, and you see them while you are still editing the rules. Definitions sync across your devices, and a snapshot can be written back to your server as an ordinary playlist so every other client sees it too.

Saved servers, and no retyping.

Keep several servers side by side and switch between them without entering anything again. Each entry carries its own proxy headers and its own mTLS client certificate, so a server behind an identity-aware proxy is a saved entry like any other.

A discography that behaves like a discography.

Albums grouped by release type, so albums, EPs, singles, live records and compilations stop fighting for the same list. An All Songs view flattens an artist's whole catalogue into one sortable list, and albums released in the same year are finally in the right order: if your files carry a release date, NaviBeat reads it down to the day, and an original release beats a later reissue.

An optional lyrics lookup, off until you ask.

If your server and its own lyrics plugin both come up empty, NaviBeat can ask lrclib.net instead. That lookup is off until you turn it on, and it sends the song title, artist, album and length. Nothing about you and nothing about your server.

Shortcuts, sharing and accessibility.

Shortcuts actions for play, pause, next, previous and shuffle, plus Play Album with an album picker and a shuffle flag, and Play Playlist by name. The album link works outside Shortcuts too, so an NFC sticker on a shelf can start the record next to it. Copy Share Link asks your server for a proper share URL rather than pasting anything of yours into a message. Every transport control announces what it does to VoiceOver, and Reduce Motion turns off the animation the rest of the app leans on. Play Album and the album link are iPhone, iPad and Mac; the transport actions and Play Playlist also reach Apple TV.

Search that reaches into lyrics.

Type a line you remember and NaviBeat finds the song, showing the lyric that matched under the title. The scope is narrow and worth stating: it works over songs you have downloaded, because a Navidrome search index does not hold lyrics and no client can ask it for them. iPhone and Mac.

Your library in the system search bar.

Find in Spotlight puts your artists and albums into the system index, and a result opens straight into NaviBeat. Off until you switch it on, scoped to your downloads by default and widenable to the whole library, and switching it off deletes everything it wrote. iPhone, iPad and Mac.

Play to a speaker on your network.

Hand a track to a UPnP or DLNA speaker or receiver on your own network, with transport, position and volume from the app, format negotiation and a saved device list you can edit. Adding one by address is the path that always works, including Denon and Marantz receivers; automatic discovery depends on what a given box announces and on a multicast permission Apple has not granted, so reach for the address field first. iPhone and Mac.

One song fades into the next.

Set the overlap and NaviBeat crosses from one track into the other. It works for downloaded files and, now, for streamed songs as well, once the whole outgoing track has arrived on the device. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.

Appears On, a genre tree, and labels you can follow.

An artist page carries an Appears On shelf of albums they only guest on, which Navidrome does not return and the app works out itself. Genres can be built as a tree from your own tags rather than a flat list. A record label on an album page is a link to the rest of that label, and so is the genre beside it. An E badge marks explicit tracks, on rows, on album headers, in the car and on the lock screen.

Seven groups, and a search field.

Settings is no longer one long scroll: Server & Library, Playback & Audio, Appearance & Language, Scrobbling & Stats, Devices, Downloads & Storage and About, each drilling in to its own screen. There is a search field at the top, so a row like Gapless playback or ReplayGain is one typed word away, and it knows a few synonyms: type bit perfect and it finds Direct Playback.

Playlist folders, and covers that move.

Group playlists into folders so a few hundred of them stop being one flat list. A playlist whose cover is an animated GIF plays it rather than showing a still frame. And Get Info on a song or album shows the file, the tags and the technical detail your server holds.

Turn off credential sync without turning off iCloud.

Your server password rides iCloud Keychain by default, because that is how the Apple Watch inherits your pairing without you typing on a watch. There is now a switch for it: Sync credentials to your other Apple devices, under Settings, Server & Library, Security & Sync. Off means the password stays on that one device. An imported mTLS certificate never syncs at all.

Point it at your own instance.

If you run a ListenBrainz-compatible server, NaviBeat can use it instead of listenbrainz.org: an address, a token and your name on that instance, on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. Because ListenBrainz Labs is a separate public host, similar-artist enrichment steps back on a self-hosted instance rather than quietly asking the public service about your listening.

The AAC rungs, and letting the server decide.

The quality ladder is nine tiers on every device, and fifteen where Opus plays: Original, AAC 320 down to 96 and MP3 320 down to 128 everywhere, plus Opus 320 down to 64 on the built-in playback engine. AAC is the codec every Apple device decodes natively, which is why the low end of the watch's ladder is AAC rather than Opus. Server decides sends no format and no bitrate at all, so the per-player transcoding profile you configured in Navidrome is what wins.

A Home screen made of your own listening.

Recently played, most played, recently added, favourites, On This Day, and shelves built from what you actually return to. Star ratings and favourites sync straight to your server, so they are the same in every other client you use.

Nothing recommended by a stranger.

Listening stats that stay on your side.

A 24 hour listening clock, a weekday heatmap, and your top artists, albums and songs with a week, month or year switcher. Computed from your own play history, not from a service.

iPhone, iPad and Mac.

A real audio path.

A selectable high fidelity playback engine, a 10 band equalizer with presets, ReplayGain per track or per album or automatic, and gapless playback for the records that were written to be heard that way.

FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, Opus, Ogg and more.

Wi-Fi and cellular, set separately.

Nine tiers on every device and fifteen where Opus plays: Original, AAC 320 down to 96 and MP3 320 down to 128 everywhere, and the six Opus rungs, 320 down to 64, on the built-in playback engine, streaming on iOS 26, macOS 26 and tvOS 26 and newer and downloading on any version, chosen independently for Wi-Fi and for mobile data. Auto sends the original at home and something kind to your data plan on the road, and Server decides hands the choice to your own Navidrome transcoding profile. Downloads carry their own setting. Your server does the transcoding, so nothing is re-encoded on the phone.

A codec and bitrate badge tells you what you are hearing, and can be turned off.

The queue, and what happens when it ends.

Reorder, shuffle, repeat, play next, add to queue, and a sleep timer. AutoMix keeps going when the queue runs out, using similar tracks resolved from your server or from Last.fm and ListenBrainz if you connect them. Internet radio stations too.

iPhone and CarPlay.

The full library in your pocket, Siri support, Home Screen, Lock Screen and StandBy widgets, and CarPlay with voice search that understands the play command in all twelve app languages and resolves it against your own library. iPhone page.

iPad, as an iPad app.

A real iPadOS layout with a sidebar, a Featured Album hero and density tuned for the display, not a phone app stretched to fill the glass. Pointer and keyboard are first class. iPad page.

Mac, natively.

SwiftUI, not Electron, not Catalyst, not an iPhone binary. A Mini Player that pins on top of any window, a menu bar presence, four desktop widgets, and a 7 day free trial. Mac page.

Linux now, Android and Windows next.

A native Linux desktop build is out, free and at version 1.0, carrying its own Java and VLC so there is nothing to install. It also runs with --tui as a full terminal client, so a headless server or a Raspberry Pi over SSH can hold your library too. A native Android client is finished and in closed beta, and a Windows client is in active development. Linux page.

Last.fm, routed through your own server.

Listener counts, similar artists, loved track sync, and scrobbles that go out through Navidrome rather than straight from the app. See the integration.

ListenBrainz, first class.

The open, self-hostable alternative from the MusicBrainz nonprofit. Your ListenBrainz shelf, Weekly and Daily Jams, two way loved track sync, and a Preferred Source picker where it shares a surface with Last.fm. See the integration.

Mixes your own server builds.

A free, open source plugin for Navidrome 0.63.1 and newer that generates up to 23 playlists from how you listen: morning and night mixes, Rediscover, artist and genre radios, decade mixes. They are ordinary server playlists, so every client sees them. Get the plugin.

Zero analytics. Zero tracking.

There is no NaviBeat backend. The app talks to your server and to nothing else, unless you connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz yourself. No telemetry, no crash pings, no accounts. Privacy policy.

mTLS client certificates.

Import a client certificate and reach a server that refuses anyone without one. No other Apple client here supports them at all. Custom proxy headers ride alongside, for setups behind an identity-aware proxy.

Twelve languages, and you can force one.

English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Simplified and Traditional Chinese. An in-app picker overrides the system language, including on Apple TV. Ask for yours.

Do I need my own server to use NaviBeat?

Yes. NaviBeat is a client, not a service. You run Navidrome, Airsonic-Advanced, Gonic or another OpenSubsonic server, and NaviBeat plays from it. Navidrome is free and open source and sets up in about fifteen minutes with Docker on a Raspberry Pi, a NAS or any spare machine.

Does one purchase cover all the platforms?

Yes. $5.99 once, and it installs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Watch through Apple's Universal Purchase. There is no subscription and no per-device charge. The only extra is NaviSyncRock, a separate $4.99 unlock on the Mac for Rockbox iPod sync.

Does NaviBeat work offline?

Yes, thoroughly. Pin songs, albums, playlists or whole artists. Artwork and metadata come down with the audio, so the library browses offline as well as plays. An LRU cache with a size limit you set manages the space, and Prefer Downloaded Music plays the local copy even when you are online.

Which Apple platforms does NaviBeat support?

All five: iPhone on iOS 18 and later, iPad on iPadOS 18, Mac on macOS 15, Apple TV on tvOS 18 and Apple Watch on watchOS 11, plus CarPlay. Among the clients listed in the Navidrome apps directory, NaviBeat is the only one with a native app on all five.

Does NaviBeat track me or collect data?

No. There is no NaviBeat backend and no analytics of any kind. The app connects to your server, and to Last.fm or ListenBrainz only if you set those up yourself. Scrobbles are routed through your own Navidrome rather than sent from the app.

Can I try it before paying?

On the Mac there is a 7 day free trial. On every platform the TestFlight beta is free and open while you are in it, so you can put your own library in front of it before buying. Join the beta.