NaviBeat · macOS 15+
A beautifully native SwiftUI music player for Navidrome, Airsonic, Gonic, or any OpenSubsonic server. Mini Player with pin-on-top, time-synced lyrics, AutoMix, sleep timer, and directory browser. No Electron, no Catalyst, just native Mac code.
macOS 15+
M1 & Intel
0 SDKs
No analytics. No trackers.
Mini Player
Pin-on-top · compact mode
$5.99 once
Universal Purchase · all Apple devices
The short answer
01 / Actually native
Written in SwiftUI for macOS 15. Real window management that remembers its size and position, a sidebar, keyboard control, directory browsing, and a menu-bar icon that stays put. The Mini Player pins on top of whatever you are working in. There is a 7-day free trial on the Mac App Store.
02 / Rockbox iPod sync
A one-time $4.99 in-app unlock, shipped in 1.3.0. Right-click a song, album, artist, or playlist and send it to a Rockbox player: your own server does the transcoding, album art is re-encoded so old hardware renders it, .m3u8 playlists are written correctly, plays made on the device sync back to Navidrome, and two custom NaviBeat iPod themes are installed. No terminal, no Python scripts. See how it works.
03 / 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 wildly in loudness, and gapless playback for live albums and mixes. 15 streaming-quality tiers, from Opus 320 down to 64, AAC 320 down to 96 and MP3 320 down to 128, or send the original file untouched. Server decides hands the choice to your own Navidrome transcoding profile instead.
04 / 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.
In the beta right now
All of this is built and in testers’ hands through TestFlight today, and it reaches the Mac App Store in the next release. Anyone can join the beta, and it is free.
01 / Now Playing
The cover takes one half of the window and the lyrics or the queue take the other, split evenly, and both grow with the display: a bigger screen gives you more music and more words rather than more empty space. The right-hand pane can sit as a floating card over the artwork or as a real column beside it, and Now Playing opens on whichever panel you had open last.
02 / Offline
With no connection you get the real Artists, Albums, Songs and Playlists screens, sorts and filters and all, read from the Mac. Anything you have not downloaded is greyed out rather than hidden, so you can see what is missing. Offline Library can also keep the whole thing downloaded for you: pick how often to check for new albums, hold it to Wi-Fi, and set a floor of free space it will not cross. It catches up when you open the app, and it may catch up overnight. Nothing you downloaded yourself is ever deleted by it.
03 / Continuity
Home shows what is playing on your iPhone, iPad or Apple TV with a live position. One click takes it over from the exact second, and the device you left pauses itself instead of playing to an empty room.
04 / Smart Playlists
Build rules over rating, genre, year, play count, date added, format, duration, even membership of another playlist. Combine them with ALL or ANY, sort six ways including a random you can re-roll, and the results stay current on their own. Save Snapshot writes a real playlist onto your server, so every other client you own can see the list too. Your definitions follow you to your other devices through iCloud Keychain.
05 / Saved servers
Keep your servers side by side and switch between them in one gesture. Each entry carries its own password, its own home address, its own custom proxy headers and its own mTLS client certificate, so a switch restores the whole setup. The Servers section sits under Playlists in the sidebar, collapsible, with the active server ticked.
06 / Speakers
NaviBeat can hand a track to a UPnP or DLNA speaker or receiver on your own network, including Denon and Marantz receivers. Adding one by address is the path that always works; automatic discovery depends on what a given box announces and on a multicast permission Apple has not granted, so the address field is the one to reach for first.
07 / Crossfade
Set the overlap and one track fades into the next. It works for downloaded files, and now for streamed songs too, as soon as the whole outgoing track has arrived on the Mac. It sits in Settings under Playback & Audio, beside ReplayGain and the equalizer, and like both of those it is off while Direct Playback is on, because Direct Playback exists to hand you the file untouched.
08 / Finding things
Turn on Find in Spotlight and your artists and albums become searchable from anywhere on the Mac; a hit opens straight into NaviBeat. Settings itself is now seven groups with a search field at the top, so a row like Gapless playback or ReplayGain is one typed word away instead of one long scroll.
Every screen
Sidebar navigation, keyboard shortcuts, menu bar mini player, drag-and-drop queue reordering. Every detail of the macOS platform considered: not a port, not a compromise. Downloads now keep a retryable history with live speed and queue stats, and Prefer Downloaded Music, in Settings, keeps local copies playing from disk even when you are back online.
01 / Home
The sidebar holds the whole app: Search, Home, Now Playing, Connect RockBox, then a Library group with Artists, Albums, Recently Added, Recently Played, Favorites, Genres, Songs, Recently Released, Playlists, Radios, Directories and Downloads, and a Servers section under Playlists with the active server ticked. The main area opens on a Featured Album hero with your recently played albums below. Connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz in Settings and Home adds a personalized stats shelf too.
02 / Mini Player
Switch to the Mini Player and it floats above every other window, even full-screen video. Album art, track name, transport controls, and the same time-synced lyrics and Up Next queue the full window has. Resize it to taste, and the overflow button on the artwork holds Pin Window On Top. One keyboard shortcut to show or hide it.
03 / Time-Synced Lyrics
Open the lyrics panel alongside your library, or expand it to fill the window. Drop an .lrc file next to your track or let NaviBeat pull synced lyrics from your server automatically.
04 / Albums
Albums grid with cover art, artist name, release year, and genre. Sort by recently added, alphabetically, by artist, or by year. Click any album for the full track list with Hi-Res badges.
05 / Internet Radio
Internet radio stations configured in Navidrome appear in the Radio sidebar item. One click to start a stream. Station name and now-playing metadata show in the toolbar and Mini Player.
06 / Classical
Albums tagged as classical group by work on Mac too, with movements listed in order beneath each one. A suite stays one work instead of several unrelated tracks. Needs a Navidrome 0.63+ server for the work and movement tags.
All screenshots
Home
Albums
Artists
Playlists
Lyrics panel
Mini Player
Mini Player + Lyrics
Up Next queue
Internet Radio
Directories
Classical
Launch price
One purchase. Every device.
Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch. Forever.
Questions
Open the Mac App Store, search for NaviBeat, and install it. It runs on macOS 15 or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
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: Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, and Apple Watch.
It is a native Mac app that looks and behaves like one, not a scaled-up iPad build.
