NaviBeat · iOS 18+
Stream your self-hosted music library from Navidrome, Airsonic, Gonic, or any OpenSubsonic-compatible server, on the phone in your pocket. Tab bar, full-screen Now Playing, time-synced lyrics, Up Next queue, long-press sleep timer and AutoMix. One $5.99 Universal Purchase covers every Apple device.
iOS 18+
iPhone XS/XR and later
0 SDKs
No analytics. No trackers.
Full screen
Now Playing · with lyrics
$5.99 once
Universal Purchase · all Apple devices
The short answer
01 / Offline
Pin a song, an album, a playlist, or an entire artist. Artwork and metadata come down with the audio, so the whole library browses offline, not just plays. An LRU cache with a size limit you set manages the space for you. Prefer Downloaded Music plays the local file even when you are online, so a weak signal never touches your listening. The download queue shows live speed, transfer history, and one-tap retry.
02 / CarPlay
CarPlay is included in the same purchase, with your library, playlists, downloads, and Now Playing controls on the car screen. Say play and the name of an artist, album, song, or playlist in any of the app's 11 languages: the search resolves against your own library, not a streaming catalog, and when nothing matches it shows you exactly what it heard instead of failing silently.
03 / Cellular
Streaming quality is set separately for Wi-Fi and for cellular, across 10 tiers (Original, Opus 320 down to 64, MP3 320 to 128). Auto sends the original file on Wi-Fi and a light Opus transcode on cellular, so the buffer stays ahead of the playhead on a train. But the tiers are the smaller half. On mobile data NaviBeat downloads the next two tracks in your queue in full while the current one plays, then plays them from the local file. A cell-tower handover, a dropped connection or a slow server-side transcode cannot restart or stall a song that is already on disk. Your first track still starts instantly as a stream; from the second track of a session onward the network is no longer in the playback path. The cache is a rolling 300 MB, cleans itself oldest first, never duplicates your real downloads, and is not used on Wi-Fi. That matters because the track jumps back to the beginning while driving problem is universal in this ecosystem and is not really a client bug: a server transcoding on the fly answers without a content length and ignores range requests, so a client that loses the connection can only refetch from the start. Removing the network from the path is the only complete fix. Seeking inside transcoded streams is accurate, and playback recovers by itself if iOS resets its audio service or if you come back from a dead-signal stretch.
04 / Audio quality
A selectable high-fidelity playback engine with a 10-band equalizer and presets. ReplayGain (track, album, or automatic) so a shuffle across a mixed library does not swing 10 dB between songs. Gapless playback, so live albums and DJ mixes run through without a hole. Your server does the transcoding, in the format and bitrate you choose, or none at all.
Every screen
Tab bar navigation, full-screen Now Playing, time-synced lyrics that scroll in sync with the music, and an Up Next queue you can reorder by drag-and-drop. The controls you expect, where you expect them. Classical listeners get automatic work-and-movement grouping too, with a Navidrome 0.63+ server.
01 / Now Playing
The Now Playing view fills the screen with album art and transport controls at thumb level. Swipe up for the Up Next queue. Swipe down to minimize. Everything reachable with one hand.
02 / Time-Synced Lyrics
The lyrics view scrolls automatically in sync with the music. The active line highlights in amber. Tap any line to jump to that position in the track. Works with .lrc files and server-side lyrics.
03 / Home & Library
Home, Artists, Albums, Playlists, Radio: all accessible from the tab bar. Connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz in Settings and Home adds a personalized stats shelf on top of the standard iOS music-app layout you already know, connected to your Navidrome server instead of a streaming service.
04 / Up Next Queue
Swipe up from Now Playing to see the Up Next queue. Drag tracks to reorder. The queue persists across app switches and lock-screen playback. AutoMix keeps music going when the queue runs out, seeded from your connected Last.fm or ListenBrainz account.
05 / 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.
06 / Offline Mode
Offline Mode keeps your downloaded albums one tap away on Home while it dims anything you have not pinned. Turn on Prefer Downloaded Music in Settings and those same tracks keep playing from disk even after you are back online.
07 / Albums
The Albums grid packs more cover art on screen, and the A-to-Z rail on the right jumps straight to any letter. Your whole collection, browsable by cover, without a scroll marathon.
All screenshots
Now Playing
Time-synced lyrics
Home
Library
Up Next queue
Sleep timer
Downloads
Offline Mode
Albums
Launch price
One purchase. Every device.
iPhone, Mac, Apple TV, iPad, Apple Watch. Forever.
Questions
Open the App Store on your iPhone, search for NaviBeat, and install it. It runs on iOS 18 or later, on iPhone XS/XR and later (that includes iPhone 11 and newer).
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: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.
Yes. CarPlay is included with the iPhone app, so your library and Now Playing controls come along on your car's screen.
