NaviBeat · iPadOS 18+
The full Navidrome and Subsonic library on a bigger canvas. Sidebar + detail view, drag-and-drop playlist editing, keyboard shortcuts, and landscape support across every screen size. One $5.99 Universal Purchase covers every Apple device.
iPadOS 18+
iPad Pro, Air, mini
0 SDKs
No analytics. No trackers.
Sidebar + detail
Full landscape support
$5.99 once
Universal Purchase · all Apple devices
The short answer
01 / A real iPad layout
A persistent sidebar with your libraries, playlists, and downloads, plus an album grid sized for the display instead of two fat columns stretched from a phone. The multi-library picker lives in the sidebar, where it belongs on a big screen.
02 / Lyrics and stats
Time-synced .lrc lyrics that scroll with the music and let you tap a line to seek, and full Listening Stats: a 24-hour listening clock, a weekday heatmap, and top artists, albums, and songs with a week, month, or year switcher.
03 / Offline
Pin whole artists, albums, or playlists with artwork and metadata, so the library browses offline and not just plays. An LRU cache with a size limit you set handles the space, and Prefer Downloaded Music keeps playback local even when you are online.
In the beta right now
All of this is built and in testers’ hands through TestFlight today, and it reaches the App Store in the next release. Anyone can join the beta, and it is free.
01 / Now Playing
The cover fills its half of the window and the lyrics or the queue take the other, split evenly, both growing with the display instead of leaving space around them. The second row of controls is spread out rather than crowded, and the right-hand pane can sit as a floating card over the artwork or as a column beside it. It opens on whichever panel you had open last.
02 / Offline
With no connection you still get the real Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists screens, sorts and filters and all, read from the iPad, with anything you have not downloaded greyed out rather than hidden. NaviBeat switches to offline on its own when the server stops answering and switches back when it returns. Offline Library can keep the whole collection downloaded for you, held to Wi-Fi, with a floor of free space it will not cross.
03 / Continuity
Home shows what is playing on your iPhone, Mac or Apple TV with a live position. One tap takes it over from the exact second, and the device you left pauses itself instead of playing to an empty room.
04 / Sidebar
Drag the Library rows into the order you want. Below Playlists there is now a Servers section, collapsible, with the active server ticked, so switching between your servers is one tap and no typing. Each saved server keeps its own password, home address, proxy headers and client certificate.
05 / Smart Playlists
Rules over rating, genre, year, play count, date added, format, duration, even membership of another playlist, combined with ALL or ANY and sorted six ways including a random you can re-roll. The results stay current on their own, and Save Snapshot writes a real playlist onto your server so your other clients see it too.
06 / Playback
When a stream is cut short, NaviBeat notices and picks the song back up at the second it stopped instead of skipping ahead. FLAC starts about nine times faster on a cold stream, gapless now works for ALAC too, and there is crossfade, which works for downloaded files and for streamed songs once the whole outgoing track has arrived. Like the equalizer and ReplayGain, it is off while Direct Playback is on.
Every screen
The iPad layout takes advantage of the larger canvas. Persistent sidebar, split view, and full-screen lyrics side-by-side with your queue: the whole app visible at once, with no scrolling required.
01 / Home
Persistent sidebar with Home, Search and Now Playing pinned at the top, a Library band you can drag into your own order (Artists, Composers, Albums, Recently Added, Recently Played, Recently Released, Songs, Favorites, Genres, Playlists, Radios, Directories, Downloads) and a Servers section below it. The main area opens on a rotating Featured Album hero with Quick Play and Recently Added shelves below. Connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz in Settings and Home adds a personalized stats shelf too.
02 / Albums
The Albums grid fits more covers on screen at once, each one still large enough to actually look at. Title, artist, year, and genre stay visible at a glance; tap any album for the full track list with Hi-Res badges.
03 / Lyrics + Queue
On iPad, the cover takes one half of the player and the lyrics or the queue take the other, so you can follow the words while the music keeps going. The pane can float as a card over the artwork or sit as a column beside it, and it opens on whichever one you had last. AutoMix keeps the queue going when it runs dry, seeded from your connected Last.fm or ListenBrainz account.
04 / Downloads
Browse everything you have downloaded by album, artist, or playlist. Behind the scenes, NaviBeat tracks live speed and queue stats while a download runs, keeps a history of every transfer, and lets you retry anything that failed with one tap, including sends from your Apple Watch.
05 / Offline Mode
Offline Mode keeps your downloaded albums front and center on Home while everything else dims. Prefer Downloaded Music, in Settings, keeps those tracks playing from disk even once you are back online.
06 / Classical
Albums tagged as classical group by work, with every movement listed underneath in order. Suite No. 1 in D minor stays one work, not four separate tracks. Needs a Navidrome 0.63+ server for the work and movement tags.
All screenshots
Home
Albums
Lyrics
Up Next queue
Directories
Downloads
Offline Mode
Classical
Launch price
One purchase. Every device.
iPad, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, Apple Watch. Forever.
Questions
Open the App Store on your iPad, search for NaviBeat, and install it. It runs on iPadOS 18 or later, on iPad Pro, iPad Air, and iPad mini.
NaviBeat is a client, so it connects to your own server. It works with Navidrome v0.50 or later, or any OpenSubsonic-compatible server, including Airsonic-Advanced and Gonic. It does not host or stream any music of its own.
NaviBeat is $5.99 USD, one time. It is a Universal Purchase, so that single price covers all five Apple platforms: iPad, iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.
No. The iPad layout gives your library room to breathe, with a wider interface built for the larger screen rather than a stretched phone view.
