Music on this computer
MixMusic plays the music files on your computer beside Spotify and YouTube Music: in one library, one search and one queue. It plays them from their files, and uploads nothing.
Your own recordings, the albums you bought, a folder of live sets: add the folders they're in, or open the files, and they play as any track does, with the equalizer, crossfade, speed and the visualizer of the audio engine.
Add a folder
Settings › Playback › Music on this computer, or the add a folder button of Library › On this computer, opens your system's folder picker. MixMusic reads the folder and the folders in it, and keeps what it finds:
- Folders lists each folder with how many tracks it holds, and how many files it skipped: files of kinds it can't play, or broken.
- Remove takes a folder out of the library. Its files stay where they are, and its tracks stay in your mixes, greyed.
- Rescan reads the folders again now. MixMusic also reads them as it starts, quietly, and when you add or remove one.
A scan reads only what changed: a file new to it, or one whose size or time of change differs from the last scan. A library of thousands of files is read whole once, then in moments. MixMusic doesn't watch the folders as you work in them: rescan, or start MixMusic again, to see what you added. Hidden folders, whose names start with a dot, are passed over.
Open files without a folder
Open music files…, in the command palette or with Ctrl+O (⌘O on macOS), and open files in Library › On this computer, choose files to play now, as a queue. Drop files on the window, or a folder, and they play the same way, in the order of their names. MixMusic keeps none of them in the library: they play as long as their files are where they were, from the queue, your mixes or your liked songs.
Library › On this computer
The Library page's On this computer pivot shows how many tracks your folders hold, and:
- Songs: every track, with Play, Shuffle and open files, a box that searches the list, and a Sort menu: the list's own order, by album and track number, Title, Artist or Length.
- Albums: the albums your files' tags name, with their covers. An album is grouped by its title and its album artist, or, without an album artist, by the folder its files are in, as an album's files usually are; one of several artists without an album artist is by Various artists. Its page plays it.
- Artists: the artists of your files, whose page lists their songs and albums.
From N folders, beside the sections, tells where they come from, and manage opens Settings.
Search
The search finds the music on this computer too, in its own section, On this computer, above the results of the services, with both services chosen. It finds tracks by their titles, artists and albums, regardless of case and accents, and shows even without the network.
What plays
| Kind | Files | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| MP3 | .mp3 | MPEG-1, 2 and 2.5 Layer III; without the silence LAME's tag tells of at their start and end, so that an album's tracks follow each other without gaps |
| FLAC | .flac | up to 8 channels and 32 bits |
| WAV | .wav | PCM of 8 to 32 bits, or floats of 32 or 64 |
| AAC | .m4a, .mp4 | AAC-LC; HE-AAC and Apple Lossless (ALAC) aren't played |
| Opus | .opus, .ogg | in Ogg, mono or stereo |
| Vorbis | .ogg, .oga | in Ogg |
Files of more than two channels play mixed down to stereo. Files of
other kinds, as .wma or .aac alone, aren't read. A file MixMusic can't
play counts as skipped in Settings, and never stops a scan.
Tags and covers
MixMusic reads the title, artists, album, album artists, track and disc numbers and year your files' tags tell: ID3v2 and ID3v1 of MP3, MP4's tags, the Vorbis comments of FLAC, Opus and Vorbis, and WAV's INFO list.
- A file without tags shows by its file's name, by Unknown artist.
- Covers: the cover a file holds, the front cover when it holds
several, else an image beside it named cover, folder, front or album
(
.jpg,.pngor.webp). MixMusic keeps a copy of each in its cache folder, never beside your music, and never changes your files.
When a file is gone
A track whose file moved, was deleted, or is on a drive that isn't plugged in shows greyed, with File not found in place of its artists. Playing it moves on to the next track, with a short notice.
- A rescan drops the files that are gone from the library. Those of a folder that can't be read at all, as on a drive unplugged, stay, greyed, until it's back.
- Your mixes and liked songs keep the track, greyed, and it plays again once its file is back where it was.
What they do and don't do
Tracks on this computer join the queue, your mixes and your liked songs, and you can dislike them, as any track. What needs a service doesn't apply to them:
- No radio starts from them, Autoplay doesn't carry on after one, and no related tracks show under it.
- No YouTube Music match is looked for, and they don't go to Spotify or to YouTube Music playlists.
- They don't download: they're on your computer already.
- They don't play on cast devices, which can't reach your files.
- Show in Explorer, in a track's menu (Show in Finder on macOS), opens the folder of its file.
Privacy
Nothing of your music files leaves your computer. MixMusic keeps an index
of what your folders hold, their paths and tags, in local-files.json in
your data folder, and their covers
in the cache folder's local-art.
A track on this computer is treated as any other by the features that send what plays, as their settings say:
- Last.fm, once you connect it, scrobbles its title, artists, album and length. A track of no artist isn't scrobbled.
- Discord, unless you turn it off in Settings › Desktop, shows its title and artists, without a cover.
- Lyrics, when you show them, are looked for on Unison and LRCLIB by its title, artists, album and length.
A file that names no artist, as a voice memo, shows by its file's name, which may be anything: Last.fm and the lyrics hear nothing of it.
Your data and privacy lists every feature's.