NaviBeat 
Linux Version 1.0
A native desktop music player for Navidrome, Airsonic, Gonic, or any OpenSubsonic server. Time-synced lyrics, a pin-on-top Mini Player, downloads, a 10-band equalizer, and NaviSyncRock sync to a Rockbox player. No Electron, no web view, just a real Linux app. Run it with --tui and the whole thing works in a terminal over SSH, so a headless server or a Raspberry Pi can hold your library too. It is free, and it is version 1.0.
One step after the download: mark it executable, then run it.
chmod +x NaviBeat-linux-x86_64.AppImage && ./NaviBeat-linux-x86_64.AppImage
Prefer the mouse? Right-click the file, Properties, Permissions, tick Allow executing file as program, then double-click it.
Free
Free · on GitHub
0 SDKs
No analytics. No trackers.
1 file
Self-contained AppImage
Rockbox sync
NaviSyncRock, free on Linux
The short answer
01 / Actually native
Written in Kotlin with Compose Multiplatform. Real window management that remembers its size and position, a sidebar, keyboard control, directory browsing, and MPRIS so your keyboard's play and skip keys just work. The Mini Player stays on top of whatever you are doing.
02 / Rockbox iPod sync
Plug in a Rockbox iPod or player and send it a song, album, artist, or playlist: your own server does the transcoding, album art is re-encoded so old hardware renders it, playlists are written correctly, and plays sync back to Navidrome. On the Mac this is a paid add-on. On Linux it is free. See how it works.
03 / Audio quality
A 10-band equalizer (32 Hz to 16 kHz), ReplayGain so a shuffle across a mixed library does not swing in loudness, and crossfade. A quality badge shows FLAC or the exact bitrate. Send the original file untouched, or ask the server to transcode to a lighter tier.
04 / Play it somewhere else
NaviBeat finds the UPnP and DLNA renderers on your network by itself, with no address to type: a network receiver, a streamer, a soundbar, a smart TV. Your queue goes with it, and it asks each device what it plays, so a receiver that takes FLAC gets your FLAC. The speaker fetches the audio from NaviBeat, so nothing on your network is handed a token and a server behind a VPN still works.
05 / Homelab-grade access
Custom HTTP headers for Cloudflare Access and Authelia, mTLS client certificates, and access over Tailscale, with no third-party relay in between. Many clients only speak to a plain, directly exposed server. NaviBeat is built for the one behind your proxy.
Every screen
Sidebar navigation, keyboard control, a Mini Player, downloads that keep playing when you go offline. The same design as the Apple builds, drawn natively on Linux. Screenshots use a demo library.
01 / Home
The sidebar gives you Home, Artists, Albums, Playlists, Radio and Directories. Home opens on a Featured Album hero with Quick Play, Made for You, and Most Played below. Connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz and Home adds personalized shelves too.
02 / Now Playing & Lyrics
Open the lyrics panel next to Now Playing and each line lights up as it is sung. An optional word-by-word karaoke mode uses your server's timing when the track has it. Album art, a quality badge, ratings and full transport controls sit alongside.
03 / Albums
An Albums grid with cover art, artist name and release year. Sort by recently added, alphabetically, by artist, or by year. Click any album for the full track list, and keep control from the persistent now-playing bar.
04 / NaviSyncRock
Pick your whole library or just some artists, albums and playlists, choose a format and bitrate, and NaviBeat transcodes on your server and copies it to a connected Rockbox iPod or player. Set it up from Settings, or just plug the player in. It is a paid add-on on the Mac, and free here.
05 / Artists
Browse artists as circular tiles with their images and album counts. Open one for the full discography. Connect Last.fm for richer artist pages and Listening Stats.
No display required
Run it with --tui and NaviBeat draws itself in the terminal instead of a window. Your whole library, the queue, the lyrics, cover art, downloads, favourites, search, gapless playback, all of it over SSH on a headless server or a Raspberry Pi. On a machine with no display attached it starts that way by itself, so a music player never dies on a missing X server.
01 / Terminal client
Every section sits in its own frame, and the one your keys are going to is drawn in NaviBeat's own gradient, so you can see where you are from across the room. Tab moves between the library, Up Next and the lyrics. In the queue, enter jumps to a track; in the lyrics, enter seeks to that line. Above the transport, two lines with the time on them say what you just did, so an action taken while you were looking somewhere else leaves a trace. Ten screens still sit on the number keys, and it is the same engine as the windowed app underneath: the same library code, the same player, the same downloads, the same MPRIS integration, so your desktop's media keys still work.
02 / Now Playing
A whole screen for what is on. The cover takes as much of the frame as it can hold, drawn in real colour out of terminal cells, with the title, the artist, the album, the year and the format beside it, then what is coming next and the words underneath, moving with the song. The queue on that screen is yours to walk: the arrows or j and k move a cursor down it, enter plays whatever is under the cursor, and x takes a song out of it, without leaving the record you are looking at. It is the first thing on Home, so 1 then enter gets you there from anywhere. H and L widen and narrow the side column on the list screens, because a library of short album titles wants a wider queue and a library of box sets wants the opposite.
03 / Keys
The bindings are cmus and mpd vocabulary: j and k to move, enter to play, space to pause, n and p for next and previous, / to search the server, a to queue, d to download, f to favourite, w for the side panes. The arrow keys work alongside the letters, so nobody has to learn anything to get started, the line along the bottom always shows the keys that work where you are, and ? puts the whole map on screen.
04 / Listening
Seven days by twenty four hours, built from the play log NaviBeat keeps on your own machine and nowhere else. Your busiest hour, and your top artists, albums and songs beneath it. [ and ] move between week, month, year and all time. A grid of cells is the one thing a terminal draws better than a window, and this one fills as you listen.
05 / Guess the Year
A track from your library plays with its name hidden, and you pick from four years. Ten points for the exact year, eight if you are within two, and the track keeps playing after you answer, because it is a way to listen rather than a quiz. It sits on Home, next to the heatmap.
All screenshots
Home
Now Playing
Lyrics
Albums
Artists
NaviSyncRock
Rockbox sync
Terminal client
Terminal keys
Get it running
chmod +x NaviBeat-linux-*.AppImage./NaviBeat-linux-*.AppImageThe AppImage carries its own Java runtime, so you do not need to install Java. Runs on 64-bit Intel and AMD, and on ARM64 like a Raspberry Pi or Asahi Linux.
An AppImage does not really install, it is a single file you run. The natural home for it is a ~/Applications folder. For a menu entry and icon, use AppImageLauncher or AppManager.
slim build is a smaller file that uses yours.--tui for a full terminal client, on a headless server or a Raspberry Pi over SSH. With no display attached it starts that way by itself.sudo apt install libfuse2), or run it with --appimage-extract-and-run.NaviBeat has its own signed repository, so it arrives with a menu entry and an icon, and apt upgrade, dnf upgrade or pacman -Syu carries new versions along with everything else on the machine.
Copy each block whole, not one line at a time. The lines belong together, and in the Arch block everything between <<'EOF' and the closing EOF is one single command that writes the file. Paste only its first line and the shell waits for the rest instead of running anything.
Debian, Ubuntu, Raspberry Pi OS, Mint
sudo install -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://dl.navibeat.app/navibeat-repo.gpg \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/navibeat.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/navibeat.gpg] \
https://dl.navibeat.app/deb stable main" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/navibeat.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install navibeatFedora 38 and newer
sudo dnf install https://dl.navibeat.app/navibeat-release.rpm
sudo dnf install navibeatArch Linux, and Arch Linux ARM
curl -fsSL https://dl.navibeat.app/navibeat-repo.asc -o /tmp/navibeat-repo.asc
sudo pacman-key --add /tmp/navibeat-repo.asc
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 0940E93F0EA97642
sudo tee -a /etc/pacman.conf >/dev/null <<'EOF'
[navibeat]
SigLevel = Required
Server = https://dl.navibeat.app/arch/$arch
EOF
sudo pacman -Syu navibeatThe Debian and Fedora packages carry Java and VLC inside, the same as the full AppImage, so they depend on nothing but a C library and work on a Fedora that has never added RPM Fusion. The Arch package carries its own Java and uses the libvlc already in Arch's own repositories, which is how a package on Arch is expected to behave. x86_64 and ARM64 for all three.
Every package is signed. The key's fingerprint, so you can check the one you are asked to trust:4ABC 7093 F4A6 6FFD EF71 6DAD 0940 E93F 0EA9 7642
Free
Free to download. Free to keep.
Free on GitHub. The Apple builds are a one-time $5.99 Universal Purchase.
Then mark it executable and run it: chmod +x NaviBeat-linux-x86_64.AppImage, or right-click the file, Properties, Permissions, Allow executing file as program.
Questions
It is free. The Linux build is free to download from GitHub. The Apple builds (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch) are a one-time $5.99 Universal Purchase on the App Store.
It is a 1.0 release. Every build is put on real hardware before it goes out. If something does break, please report it on the GitHub issues page so it can be fixed.
Two ways. On Debian 12+, Ubuntu 24.04+, Raspberry Pi OS, Mint, Fedora 38+ and Arch Linux, add the NaviBeat repository and run apt install navibeat, dnf install navibeat or pacman -Syu navibeat, and every later version arrives with apt upgrade, dnf upgrade or pacman -Syu. Anywhere else, download the AppImage, make it executable with chmod +x, and run it. The Debian and Fedora packages and the AppImage carry their own Java runtime and their own VLC, so there is nothing else to install; the Arch package brings its own Java and uses the libvlc in Arch's own repositories. If you already run VLC and want a smaller download, the slim AppImage uses your system libVLC instead. See both, with the commands.
Yes. Run it with --tui and NaviBeat draws itself in the terminal instead of a window, so it works over SSH on a headless server or a Raspberry Pi. It is the same app underneath: the same library, the same queue, the same downloads, the same gapless playback, with cmus and mpd style keys. On a machine with no display attached it starts in terminal mode by itself. See the terminal client.
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.