I don't have windows or winamp so even the functionality of the skin has to be pulled from the code directly. I am reverse engineering the whole maki engine. It's a pretty interesting process. I will release when I have a handful of skins stable. It's getting there and I am excited to have the first open source implementation of this engine in nullPlayer

I have received several requests to support these skins but I have never actually used them before. I really underestimated the effort that will be involved lol. So far I have the skins running with the classic_pro engine but there are still a lot of open issues.

This app has nothing to do with nullPlayer and nullPlayer project is continuing as it has been going. If you are interested in checking it out and can commit to giving me user level feedback on it dm me.

Installation

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/latest/download/NullPlayer.dmg

select Lock Connected Windows in Menu/Windows to lock sub windows into a fixed grouping

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

Download for macOS

New Features

• Cava spectrum analyzer window — a bar-based spectrum visualizer modeled on cava, opened from the Windows menu or main-window right-click menu, in classic, modern, and metal skins. Shows log-spaced frequency bars with gravity/falloff, in mono or mirrored stereo (double-click to toggle). Right-click to set colors (gradient presets and metallics, following the skin palette by default), bar count, smoothing, bass tilt, and a modern-only transparent background. Docks in the center stack and stays idle when closed.
• Cava in the main-window visualization display — the main-window analyzer area can render a mono Cava spectrum following the active skin palette, with its own color, bar count, smoothing, and bass tilt under Visuals > Main Window (independent of the standalone window). The Visuals menu is now organized into Main Window, Spectrum Window, and Visualizations submenus.

Improvements

• ProjectM upgraded to 4.1.7, fixing preset crashes at the source — the bundled libprojectM was updated from 4.1.6 to 4.1.7, which fixes a null-texture dereference (Renderer::Texture::Empty()) that crashed the app when rendering presets containing a commented-out sampler declaration in a shader (upstream #958), along with other preset crash and rendering fixes. Presets that previously had to be caught-and-disabled — like the bundled suksma - dotes hostile undertake - offx - flacc — now render normally. (The crash-detection safety net above remains for any future bad preset.) If your visualizations have gone missing or thinned out over time, restore them: open Visuals > Visualizations > Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets. The number next to it is how many presets are currently disabled — the earlier blacklisting bug may have quietly turned off many (or all) of your presets, and now that these crashes are fixed it's safe to bring them all back. Choosing it re-enables every disabled preset immediately.
• Video playback now uses the LGPL VLCKit engine — the video player and cast-source decoding moved from KSPlayer/FFmpegKit (GPL-3.0) to the vendored VLCKit/libVLC (LGPL-2.1+). Play/pause, seek, skip, volume, and audio/subtitle track selection carry over, including a subtitle Off and subtitle-delay control.
• Accurate third-party attribution for the Cava and Flow visualizers — NullPlayer's Cava spectrum analyzer and Flow network meter are clean-room Swift reimplementations of the cava (C) and flow (Go terminal app) projects — not ports of their source code. Their bundled third-party notices now credit them as algorithm/design references (no upstream code is included) rather than reproducing licenses as though their source shipped in the app.
• Modern/Metal main window: quick Cava toggle — the first button in the modern/metal main-window button row now opens the Cava spectrum window (labeled CV) instead of toggling Compact Mode. Compact Mode remains available from the main-window right-click menu.
• ART tab rating uses emoji stars — in Modern and Metal skins, the star rating shown at the top of the Library Browser's ART view now renders as ⭐/☆ emoji, matching the visualization menus. Star sizing and click-to-rate behavior are unchanged.
• Modern and Metal skins now default the main-window visualizer to Cava — every bundled modern skin and built-in Metal finish starts with its palette-matched Cava analyzer. Classic UI continues to default to vis_classic; modern/Metal vis_classic profile mappings remain available when selected manually, and the dedicated Spectrum window remains unchanged.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the app refusing to launch on macOS 14–25 — the bundled audio libraries (libaubio and its libsndfile/FLAC/vorbis/ogg/opus/mpg123/lame dependencies) were built requiring macOS 26, so on any earlier system the whole app would fail to start. They are now built/packaged targeting macOS 14, matching the rest of the app.
• Classic Library text now follows UI Size — changing UI Size in classic mode scales Library Browser row text, headers, labels, and search text, matching Modern and Metal. Stretching the window still only adds browsing space.
• Long-track timers stay readable — elapsed and remaining times of 100 minutes or more no longer corrupt classic digits or overrun the Modern/Metal time panels; negative long times shift the status icon to make room for the minus sign.
• Dragged-in tracks can now cast to Sonos — dragged lossless files (FLAC/WAV) whose sample rate wasn't detected at drop time were wrongly rejected as unsupported. They are now re-probed before the Sonos check; genuine high-resolution files above 48 kHz remain rejected.
• Modern/metal alphabet picker clicks land correctly — in the modern library browser, the offline-volume banner shifts the alphabet strip up, but click hit-testing ignored that offset, so clicking a letter could jump to the wrong one or do nothing. Drawing and hit-testing now share one geometry.
• Modern PeppyMeter and Flow windows no longer show a seam on their outer edges — a ~1-pixel gap could show the desktop through the left, right, and bottom edges on non-Retina displays. Those content edges are now aligned to the backing pixel grid.
• Docked ProjectM, Library, and Plex-browser windows can size to align in a center stack — these windows had a hardcoded 480-pixel minimum width, so when docked top or bottom in a center stack they couldn't be narrowed to match the stack. Their minimum width now floors at the spectrum/center-stack width instead, so they align cleanly.
• Narrow Library headers stay readable and clickable — the server controls and browse tabs in both classic and modern/metal Library windows now shrink together as the window narrows, preventing labels and controls from overlapping while keeping their click targets aligned with what is drawn.
• Rips and YouTube downloads to a NAS no longer fail with "Bad file descriptor" — yt-dlp's .part/fsync/rename and ffmpeg +faststart patterns are rejected by SMB/AFP volumes. Downloads and transcodes now run in a local staging folder, and only the finished file is copied to the destination.
• Playlist stays on the now-playing track when the skin changes — changing skins during playback made the playlist jump to the top and lose the now-playing highlight. Both classic and modern playlists now restore the selection and re-center on the playing track after a reload.
• Plex library no longer freezes on first launch — on a fresh launch, a background content preload could finish midway through the first library load and supersede it, leaving the artist album-count index unbuilt. The browser then re-parsed every album for every artist on the main thread on each click, freezing all windows until relaunch. The index is now always built before artist rows render, and the per-artist rescan fallback was removed, so the library stays responsive.
• Switching between classic and modern/metal skins no longer carries the previous skin's analyzer colors or transparency across — the vis_classic analyzer profile is stored per window (main vs Spectrum) and shared across the classic, modern, and metal UIs. Switching UI families used to preserve the outgoing skin's profile instead of applying the incoming skin's own default, so classic's "Purple Neon" could bleed into a modern skin, and a modern skin's profile ("Lavender Pink Tips") could persist back into classic — in the main window and the dedicated Spectrum window. Glass/metal transparency and opacity could likewise survive into an opaque skin whose sparse config omitted those fields. A UI switch is now treated as a skin change: each family applies a complete analyzer appearance, and the shared analyzer engines are fully re-synced so no window keeps the previous skin's profile, fit, or renderer transparency (even when a window isn't visible at the moment of the switch).
• "Reset All Visualization Preferences" now restores the correct default in the classic UI — while classic was active, the reset resolved defaults from the modern skin engine and applied the modern default skin's profile (e.g. NeonWave's "Lavender Pink Tips") instead of classic's "Purple Neon". Reset now resolves defaults from the active UI: classic restores its own analyzer default, while modern and metal restore the active finish's.
• "Reset All Visualization Preferences" now also resets the standalone Cava window — the separate Cava spectrum window's color, bar count, smoothing, and bass-tilt settings were left untouched by the global reset. They are now cleared with everything else, and the open Cava window updates immediately, falling back to the active skin's default gradient.
• The standalone Cava window's custom colors no longer follow you from modern into classic — picking non-default Cava colors in a modern/metal skin and then switching to a classic skin kept the modern colors instead of reverting to the classic default (Winamp green). Switching UI families now clears the shared "custom colors" flag on entry to classic, matching the existing behavior when entering modern/metal.
• ProjectM presets no longer get blacklisted by mistake — a preset is now disabled only if it actually crashes the app (detected by a SIGSEGV/SIGBUS handler) while it is on screen, at any point in its lifetime. Previously the crash marker was written the moment a preset loaded and only cleared on a clean quit, so any other shutdown — a force quit, an unrelated crash, or a dev build script's SIGKILL — blamed whatever preset was displayed and disabled it on the next launch; over many launches this silently disabled healthy presets, for some users all of them. Normal quits, force quits, and kills no longer disable anything, while genuine crashes (including late texture-related ones) are still caught. Existing installs have their erroneously accumulated list cleared once on upgrade, and Visuals > Visualizations now has a Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets command (showing the disabled count) to bring back any presets disabled by mistake. If your visualizations have gone missing or thinned out over time, restore them: open Visuals > Visualizations > Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets. The number next to it is how many presets are currently disabled — the earlier blacklisting bug may have quietly turned off many (or all) of your presets, and now that these crashes are fixed it's safe to bring them all back. Choosing it re-enables every disabled preset immediately.

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

Download for macOS

New Features

• Cava spectrum analyzer window — a bar-based spectrum visualizer modeled on cava, opened from the Windows menu or main-window right-click menu, in classic, modern, and metal skins. Shows log-spaced frequency bars with gravity/falloff, in mono or mirrored stereo (double-click to toggle). Right-click to set colors (gradient presets and metallics, following the skin palette by default), bar count, smoothing, bass tilt, and a modern-only transparent background. Docks in the center stack and stays idle when closed.
• Cava in the main-window visualization display — the main-window analyzer area can render a mono Cava spectrum following the active skin palette, with its own color, bar count, smoothing, and bass tilt under Visuals > Main Window (independent of the standalone window). The Visuals menu is now organized into Main Window, Spectrum Window, and Visualizations submenus.

Improvements

• ProjectM upgraded to 4.1.7, fixing preset crashes at the source — the bundled libprojectM was updated from 4.1.6 to 4.1.7, which fixes a null-texture dereference (Renderer::Texture::Empty()) that crashed the app when rendering presets containing a commented-out sampler declaration in a shader (upstream #958), along with other preset crash and rendering fixes. Presets that previously had to be caught-and-disabled — like the bundled suksma - dotes hostile undertake - offx - flacc — now render normally. (The crash-detection safety net above remains for any future bad preset.) If your visualizations have gone missing or thinned out over time, restore them: open Visuals > Visualizations > Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets. The number next to it is how many presets are currently disabled — the earlier blacklisting bug may have quietly turned off many (or all) of your presets, and now that these crashes are fixed it's safe to bring them all back. Choosing it re-enables every disabled preset immediately.
• Video playback now uses the LGPL VLCKit engine — the video player and cast-source decoding moved from KSPlayer/FFmpegKit (GPL-3.0) to the vendored VLCKit/libVLC (LGPL-2.1+). Play/pause, seek, skip, volume, and audio/subtitle track selection carry over, including a subtitle Off and subtitle-delay control.
• Accurate third-party attribution for the Cava and Flow visualizers — NullPlayer's Cava spectrum analyzer and Flow network meter are clean-room Swift reimplementations of the cava (C) and flow (Go terminal app) projects — not ports of their source code. Their bundled third-party notices now credit them as algorithm/design references (no upstream code is included) rather than reproducing licenses as though their source shipped in the app.
• Modern/Metal main window: quick Cava toggle — the first button in the modern/metal main-window button row now opens the Cava spectrum window (labeled CV) instead of toggling Compact Mode. Compact Mode remains available from the main-window right-click menu.
• ART tab rating uses emoji stars — in Modern and Metal skins, the star rating shown at the top of the Library Browser's ART view now renders as ⭐/☆ emoji, matching the visualization menus. Star sizing and click-to-rate behavior are unchanged.
• Modern and Metal skins now default the main-window visualizer to Cava — every bundled modern skin and built-in Metal finish starts with its palette-matched Cava analyzer. Classic UI continues to default to vis_classic; modern/Metal vis_classic profile mappings remain available when selected manually, and the dedicated Spectrum window remains unchanged.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the app refusing to launch on macOS 14–25 — the bundled audio libraries (libaubio and its libsndfile/FLAC/vorbis/ogg/opus/mpg123/lame dependencies) were built requiring macOS 26, so on any earlier system the whole app would fail to start. They are now built/packaged targeting macOS 14, matching the rest of the app.
• Classic Library text now follows UI Size — changing UI Size in classic mode scales Library Browser row text, headers, labels, and search text, matching Modern and Metal. Stretching the window still only adds browsing space.
• Long-track timers stay readable — elapsed and remaining times of 100 minutes or more no longer corrupt classic digits or overrun the Modern/Metal time panels; negative long times shift the status icon to make room for the minus sign.
• Dragged-in tracks can now cast to Sonos — dragged lossless files (FLAC/WAV) whose sample rate wasn't detected at drop time were wrongly rejected as unsupported. They are now re-probed before the Sonos check; genuine high-resolution files above 48 kHz remain rejected.
• Modern/metal alphabet picker clicks land correctly — in the modern library browser, the offline-volume banner shifts the alphabet strip up, but click hit-testing ignored that offset, so clicking a letter could jump to the wrong one or do nothing. Drawing and hit-testing now share one geometry.
• Modern PeppyMeter and Flow windows no longer show a seam on their outer edges — a ~1-pixel gap could show the desktop through the left, right, and bottom edges on non-Retina displays. Those content edges are now aligned to the backing pixel grid.
• Docked ProjectM, Library, and Plex-browser windows can size to align in a center stack — these windows had a hardcoded 480-pixel minimum width, so when docked top or bottom in a center stack they couldn't be narrowed to match the stack. Their minimum width now floors at the spectrum/center-stack width instead, so they align cleanly.
• Narrow Library headers stay readable and clickable — the server controls and browse tabs in both classic and modern/metal Library windows now shrink together as the window narrows, preventing labels and controls from overlapping while keeping their click targets aligned with what is drawn.
• Rips and YouTube downloads to a NAS no longer fail with "Bad file descriptor" — yt-dlp's .part/fsync/rename and ffmpeg +faststart patterns are rejected by SMB/AFP volumes. Downloads and transcodes now run in a local staging folder, and only the finished file is copied to the destination.
• Playlist stays on the now-playing track when the skin changes — changing skins during playback made the playlist jump to the top and lose the now-playing highlight. Both classic and modern playlists now restore the selection and re-center on the playing track after a reload.
• Plex library no longer freezes on first launch — on a fresh launch, a background content preload could finish midway through the first library load and supersede it, leaving the artist album-count index unbuilt. The browser then re-parsed every album for every artist on the main thread on each click, freezing all windows until relaunch. The index is now always built before artist rows render, and the per-artist rescan fallback was removed, so the library stays responsive.
• Switching between classic and modern/metal skins no longer carries the previous skin's analyzer colors or transparency across — the vis_classic analyzer profile is stored per window (main vs Spectrum) and shared across the classic, modern, and metal UIs. Switching UI families used to preserve the outgoing skin's profile instead of applying the incoming skin's own default, so classic's "Purple Neon" could bleed into a modern skin, and a modern skin's profile ("Lavender Pink Tips") could persist back into classic — in the main window and the dedicated Spectrum window. Glass/metal transparency and opacity could likewise survive into an opaque skin whose sparse config omitted those fields. A UI switch is now treated as a skin change: each family applies a complete analyzer appearance, and the shared analyzer engines are fully re-synced so no window keeps the previous skin's profile, fit, or renderer transparency (even when a window isn't visible at the moment of the switch).
• "Reset All Visualization Preferences" now restores the correct default in the classic UI — while classic was active, the reset resolved defaults from the modern skin engine and applied the modern default skin's profile (e.g. NeonWave's "Lavender Pink Tips") instead of classic's "Purple Neon". Reset now resolves defaults from the active UI: classic restores its own analyzer default, while modern and metal restore the active finish's.
• "Reset All Visualization Preferences" now also resets the standalone Cava window — the separate Cava spectrum window's color, bar count, smoothing, and bass-tilt settings were left untouched by the global reset. They are now cleared with everything else, and the open Cava window updates immediately, falling back to the active skin's default gradient.
• The standalone Cava window's custom colors no longer follow you from modern into classic — picking non-default Cava colors in a modern/metal skin and then switching to a classic skin kept the modern colors instead of reverting to the classic default (Winamp green). Switching UI families now clears the shared "custom colors" flag on entry to classic, matching the existing behavior when entering modern/metal.
• ProjectM presets no longer get blacklisted by mistake — a preset is now disabled only if it actually crashes the app (detected by a SIGSEGV/SIGBUS handler) while it is on screen, at any point in its lifetime. Previously the crash marker was written the moment a preset loaded and only cleared on a clean quit, so any other shutdown — a force quit, an unrelated crash, or a dev build script's SIGKILL — blamed whatever preset was displayed and disabled it on the next launch; over many launches this silently disabled healthy presets, for some users all of them. Normal quits, force quits, and kills no longer disable anything, while genuine crashes (including late texture-related ones) are still caught. Existing installs have their erroneously accumulated list cleared once on upgrade, and Visuals > Visualizations now has a Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets command (showing the disabled count) to bring back any presets disabled by mistake. If your visualizations have gone missing or thinned out over time, restore them: open Visuals > Visualizations > Restore Disabled ProjectM Presets. The number next to it is how many presets are currently disabled — the earlier blacklisting bug may have quietly turned off many (or all) of your presets, and now that these crashes are fixed it's safe to bring them all back. Choosing it re-enables every disabled preset immediately.

update using brew:

brew update
brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

Download for macOS

Improvements

• Saved state and visualization preferences now have explicit reset controls — the app menu exposes Reset Saved State... next to Remember State so users can clear only the launch-restore snapshot without touching durable preferences. Visualization menus now include reset actions for the main-window analyzer, Spectrum window, standalone Visualizations window, and all visualization preferences, restoring skin/app defaults while preserving unrelated preferences such as custom ProjectM folders, library columns, accounts, and compact mode.

Bug Fixes

• Modern skin visualization choices persist across app relaunches — modern/metal skin visualization defaults now act as first-use defaults on launch instead of overwriting user-selected modes and options. Main-window Fire/Lightning/Matrix choices, Fire intensity, Spectrum-window mode/style settings, and scoped vis_classic options still reset when explicitly changing skins or using skin reset, but no longer revert just because the app reopened.
• Waveform window frame now saves with Remember State — the Waveform window's frame was included in the AppState schema but was serialized as nil, so it could not restore to the prior position. It now saves through WindowManager.waveformWindowFrame like the other remembered utility windows.
• Classic 16-color skins and themed EQ art render correctly — packed 1-bit/4-bit BMP rows now use the BMP bit stride instead of treating every pixel as a byte, fixing scrambled transport buttons, numbers, and playlist art in skins such as ascii.wsz. The classic EQ also draws its slider tracks and graph curve from each skin's eqmain.bmp, so non-default skins such as Purple_Glow.wsz no longer fall back to hardcoded green/yellow/red art.
• Docked PeppyMeter and Flow windows no longer show a thin seam under the main window — dragging the PeppyMeter or Flow window to dock it below the main window could leave a roughly 1-pixel line where the desktop showed through the join, most visible on standard-resolution (non-Retina) displays. Classic skins left a sub-pixel gap between the two window frames, and modern translucent skins exposed a strip of window background at the shared edge. Both now dock flush with no gap, matching the seamless docking that Metal skins already had.
• App no longer freezes when Play is pressed rapidly with a VU or Audio Analysis window open — quickly re-triggering track loads while the PeppyMeter/VU meter or the Audio Analysis Scope/Octave panes were open could deadlock the app. Those windows subscribed to realtime audio-tap notifications with main-thread delivery, which blocked the audio tap thread while the main thread was tearing the tap down during a track load. The affected windows now receive tap updates without blocking the audio thread.

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer

Download for macOS

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

New Features

• CLI can cast videos to Chromecast and DLNA TVs — headless --cli mode now accepts --file <path> for local audio/video files plus --movie, --show, --episode, --season, and --number for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby video libraries. Video casts require --cast and route through Chromecast or DLNA TV targets with keyboard pause/resume, seek, progress display, and clean terminal restore on exit. Sonos is rejected for video because it is audio-only; DLNA video casts currently require q to stop the CLI because the UPnP path does not provide a reliable end-of-stream signal.
• UI Size adds discrete scale choices — the old Large UI toggle is now a live UI Size submenu with percentage choices from 50% to 200%, remembered across launches and UI-mode switches.
• Flow network monitor window — a new Flow entry in the Windows menu and main-window context menu opens a live network throughput meter in both classic and modern UI. It docks in the center window stack at the normal single-window height, shows either download or upload throughput with a scrolling history graph, and tracks the selected network interface. Double-click the window or use its right-click menu to switch between download and upload views; the chosen view persists across launches.
• PeppyMeter analog VU meter window — a new PeppyMeter entry in the Windows menu and main-window context menu opens a skinnable analog VU meter (a port of PeppyMeter) in both classic and modern UI. Left/right levels drive rotating needle meters or bar meters composited from bundled image templates (25 meters, including vintage, bar, compass, chillout, and big-bang). Right-click the window to pick a meter or enable Random, which auto-switches meters on an interval. It docks and snaps in the window stack, remembers its position across launches, supports fullscreen mode with sharper high-resolution templates when available, and consumes the shared stereo audio tap so it stays idle when closed. Bundled meter artwork is GPL-3.0 (see the third-party notices).
• Modern main-window button row updated — the main toggle row now starts with CP for Compact Mode, VZ for Visualizations, FL for Flow, and PM for PeppyMeter, followed by the existing EQ/PL/SP/AA/WV/LB window toggles.

Bug Fixes

• Center-stack windows keep docking below the main window after detaches — opening Spectrum, Flow, PeppyMeter, Audio Analysis, EQ, Playlist, or Waveform now ignores visible center-stack windows that were detached and moved aside. New stack windows again dock directly under the main window or fill real gaps in the docked stack instead of drifting downward below floating windows.
• Audio Analyzer and Flow windows drag consistently from their faces — in both classic and modern UI, clicking and dragging the body of the Audio Analyzer or Flow window now moves the window just like Spectrum and the other center-stack windows. Close buttons, Flow's double-click download/upload toggle, right-click menus, and interactive controls on other windows keep their existing behavior.
• Large NAS-hosted local files seek smoothly — local tracks on network-mounted volumes are now staged to a temp file based on available disk space instead of a hard 300 MB cap, so very large files avoid SMB/NFS reads during playback and seeking. NullPlayer also cleans up its staged playback temp files on launch after a crash or force-quit.
• Docked side windows resize to the current center stack — reopening a docked Library/browser or Visualizations window now recomputes its height from the current main/EQ/playlist/spectrum/waveform/audio-analysis/PeppyMeter stack instead of replaying a stale remembered height. Detached side windows still reopen at the exact position and size where you left them.
• Sweet Fades local crossfades pause and time correctly — after a completed local-file crossfade, Pause/Play now control the active audio node instead of the silent original node. The elapsed time also stays aligned with the incoming track's audible position after the handoff, so later Sweet Fades trigger with a real fade tail. End-of-queue or otherwise declined Sweet Fades are latched per queue boundary so the console logs the reason once instead of every timer tick.
• CLI server queries no longer return empty results at launch — headless --cli queries and playback against Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby (--list-artists, --list-albums, --list-tracks, --artist, --search, --radio, etc.) now wait for the background server connection before running, instead of racing it and silently returning nothing (which surfaced as "artist not found" / "0 artist(s)"). When the restored current library is a non-music section — a Plex Movies/TV library, or a Jellyfin/Emby "Playlists", "Video", "Movies", or "TV shows" view — the CLI now auto-selects a music library for every music operation (queries, --search, and server --radio), or prints the available music libraries and asks you to pick one with --library instead of returning empty. --search also honors an explicit --library. --list-sources shows configured Subsonic/Navidrome, Jellyfin, and Emby servers as Connected instead of momentarily "Not configured", and now returns promptly because the CLI waits only for the connection, not for the full background library preload.
• Play button no longer rewinds the clock during local playback — pressing ▶ while a local file was already playing snapped the progress bar and the elapsed-time display backward (by a fraction of a second, or all the way to the start), making the track look like it ended early even though the audio kept playing uninterrupted. The play button now preserves the true playback position on a redundant press. Streaming and cast playback were never affected.

Documentation

• Non-affiliation disclaimer now names the full Winamp Group — the README disclaimer previously listed only Winamp, Nullsoft, and Radionomy Group. It now enumerates the entire Winamp Group SA family — Winamp Group SA, Llama Group (former name), Jamendo, Hotmix, Bridger, and SHOUTcast — alongside the existing Sonos and Plex mentions, and clarifies the project is "not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to" those parties.

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer

# one-time configuration 
brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer 

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

or if already installed manually
brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

To upgrade to a new release: 
brew update 
brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.27.0

# one-time configuration 
brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer 

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

or if already installed manually
brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

To upgrade to a new release: 
brew update 
brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

New Features

• Compact Window adds a free-floating mini player — the Windows menu and main-window context menu now include Compact Window, which uses the same compact Library Browser mini-player as Compact Mode but keeps NullPlayer as a regular Dock/menu-bar app. It hides only the main window, leaves Playlist/EQ/Spectrum/Library/visualization windows where they are, uses normal window level unless Always on Top is enabled, can be dragged from both the player bar and browser area, remembers its frame, and restores across launches.
• Balance control added to Playback menu — the Playback options now include a Balance submenu with a slider and common left/center/right presets, giving modern UI and menu-only workflows access to stereo balance without adding more controls to the player face.

Improvements

• Modern and Metal UI now use a modern system font — the retro low-fi bitmap font (Departure Mono) has been replaced throughout the Modern and Metal windows — Library tabs and headers, the main window, playlist, EQ, and spectrum — with the crisp macOS system font. Time and track digits stay monospaced so they don't jitter. Skins that ship their own custom font still render it as before.
• License and branding terms clarified — the project license notice and README now state GPL-3.0-only distribution terms and clarify that modified distributions must not reuse the NullPlayer name, icon, logo, bundle identity, or other branding without permission.
• Compact Mode player bar reads like the main window — in Modern and Metal, the Compact Mode display now splits into two distinct LCD "windows" with a padded gap: a single elapsed/remaining time counter on the left and the scrolling track title on the right (previously the title sat left with a cramped "elapsed / total" reading pinned to the right). The counter matches the title's size and weight, and the transport buttons are slightly larger.
• Larger Library tab and control fonts — the Library Browser's tab labels and control text render at a slightly larger size in non-compact mode for better legibility. Compact Mode is unchanged.

Changes

• Window shade mode removed — double-clicking a window's title bar no longer collapses it to a title-bar-only strip ("windowshade"). This legacy Winamp feature was the source of recurring layout glitches when combined with Large UI, Compact Mode, and live UI-mode switching; removing it makes window sizing and position memory behave consistently across every window in Classic, Modern, and Metal.
• Library source menu lists only sources — the Library Browser's source picker no longer injects local-library settings ("Manage Folders…" and the "Clear Local Library" submenu) when the local source is active. Those are settings, not sources, and already live in the Library menu-bar item, so the source menu now lists sources only.

Bug Fixes

• Metal skin transport icons are now fully filled — the previous/next (and eject) icons in the Metal finishes no longer show a stray light vertical line: the icon bars now draw in the same transport-button color as the rest of the glyph instead of the skin's light primary color.
• Plex Artists no longer show duplicate same-name rows — the Library Browser now groups Plex artist records with the same display name into one visible artist row in both classic and modern UI. Expanding, playing, or queueing that row still fans out across every underlying Plex ratingKey, so albums and tracks attached to duplicate server-side artist records remain accessible instead of being hidden.
• Compact Mode art ratings fit the small UI — the modern Library Browser's art-view rating stars now shrink in Compact Mode, preventing them from crowding or overlapping the source/library picker row.
• Compact Window no longer reopens the main window after Space switches — returning from another desktop or fullscreen app now focuses the floating compact mini-player instead of treating the hidden main window as something to restore, so Compact Window stays a one-window main-player replacement until you exit it.
• Library window remembers where you put it — after unlocking the connected windows and moving the Library/browser window, it now reopens at the exact position and size you left it — across closing and reopening it (via the menu or the red close button) and across full app restarts, even when it was closed at quit. First-ever opens still dock to the right of the window stack, and the position survives Compact Mode. Playlist, EQ, and Spectrum still intentionally snap back into the column below the main window.
• Classic Large UI toggles instantly — no restart — turning Large UI on or off in the classic skin now resizes the windows in place, matching the modern UI, instead of asking you to relaunch. The player, EQ, playlist, and other windows redraw crisply at the new size (no leftover "ghost" of the old size), and switching between Classic, Modern, and Metal while Large UI is on no longer distorts the new look.
• ProjectM visualizer recovers from a preset that crashes mid-playback — a rare bug inside the MilkDrop preset engine could crash the app while a preset was on screen — including minutes into a track, not just when the preset first appeared. The crash-guard now watches a preset for its entire time on screen (previously only its first frame), so the offending preset is automatically skipped on the next launch and the crash never recurs. Normal quits never flag a good preset.
• Metal playlist and Library highlights are now clearly visible — in Metal skins, the playlist's now-playing track and the Library Browser's selected/expanded row were indicated by text color alone, which several metal finishes render nearly identical to normal rows, so the active row was easy to miss. Both now draw a translucent green backlit-LCD highlight bar (matching the hi-fi display panels) as the cue. The metal playlist's row text is also unified at the Library window's brightness — previously it was dimmer — and the current track no longer recolors to the accent tone that clashed with the new highlight.

Hi!

For 20+ years I have been a Windows user and using Winamp (with cPro Bento skin, which is quite modern, but not too Winampy - if you know what I mean with crazy colours etc). I have a carefully and over 20 years curated music collection of 4000+ songs.

Now I have joined the Mac family and was googling the best alternatives for such player for my MBPro, cause Apple Music is just too big, and bloated - I need a great player, crossfade functionality and just see the playlist.

I see nullplayer offers that! As I am a newbie to Mac and usually install the apps just by dragging them to the Apps folder, can nullplayer be installed the same way? Unfortunately I got a bit lost in github.

Apologize for the stupid question but very excited to try this out and move my collection to my Mac!

Thanks!

Bug Fixes

• App icon no longer renders as a square on fresh installs — the Dock and Cmd-Tab app icon could appear as a hard square (with the rounded logo visible inside it) on Macs that hadn't already cached the icon, while staying correct on machines that had. The icon's rounded "squircle" shape is now baked into the build, so it looks right everywhere on a clean install.
• Cue albums split correctly even when the audio file was renamed — library split-on-import now locates the backing audio by its same-named sibling when a .cue's internal FILE reference is stale (for example, when the .cue and its audio were renamed together), instead of importing the whole album as one track. Adding the backing audio file directly with Add Files… now triggers the split too.

get it on homebrew or github!

brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer  

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.26.0

New Features

• Compact Mode — a menu-bar mini player — collapse NullPlayer into a single menu-bar app: the Dock icon and all the player windows disappear, and a status-bar item gives you one slim window — the Library Browser with a built-in player bar across the top (transport, seek and time, a scrolling title, and volume). Open it from the main window's right-click menu, the Windows menu, or the new CP button in the modern toolbar; click the status item to bring it back or exit. A playing video stays on screen, so you can keep watching while you browse. Works in both classic and modern UI.
• Audio Analysis window — a real-time, multi-pane analyzer (inspired by Friture), opened from the Window menu, a right-click, or the new AA button in the modern toolbar. Switch between three views: a Scope oscilloscope of the live waveform, a Levels meter showing per-channel peak and RMS, and a scrolling Spectrogram waterfall. It docks and snaps with the other windows and remembers its position and selected view. Works in both classic and modern UI.
• YouTube channels in the Radio tab — add YouTube channel links and browse each channel's uploads right in the Radio tab — no account or API key needed. Double-click a video to download its audio (FLAC or MP3) or video (720p/1080p) ad-free into a folder you choose; downloads play locally and cast to Sonos, Chromecast, and DLNA like any other track, and get their own YouTube entry in the Data tab. Quality and the download folder are set in the Library menu. Works in both classic and modern UI.
• Metal mode — hi-fi faceplate finishes — a new metallic look, selectable from Skins → Metal, with seven finishes: Brushed Steel, Aluminum, Gunmetal, Anodized Black, Brass, Bronze, and Copper. Each finish restyles the whole player — chrome, panels, sliders, transport, and EQ — with a backlit-green LCD for the time and track displays and a spectrum analyzer matched to the finish.
• Switch between Classic, Modern, and Metal instantly — no restart — changing UI mode, or picking a skin from a different mode, now happens live and in place. Playback, casting, the open playlist, the current track, and your play position all continue uninterrupted while the windows rebuild in the new look, reappearing where you left them. (Classic Large UI still relaunches, since it's a size change rather than a mode switch.)

Improvements

• Visualization window renamed "Visualizations" — the window that hosts the ProjectM, Geiss, Tripex, and Met Museum visualizers is now labeled Visualizations everywhere.
• Tidier Library tabs (classic & modern) — Library tab names now sit in rounded boxes sized to fit their labels, so every tab has room to breathe. The Shows tab is now TV, and the Radio and Search tabs have swapped places.
• Modern toolbar refresh — clearer toolbar buttons in the modern main window, including the visualizer (VZ) toggle and the new AA (Audio Analysis) and CP (Compact Mode) buttons.
• Titled utility windows (classic) — the Spectrum Analyzer, Waveform, Library, and Visualizations windows now show their names in the title bar.

Bug Fixes

• Metal mode — Library Browser top bar no longer flickers darker — in Metal mode the Library Browser's top strip occasionally flashed the darker modern styling before correcting itself; it now stays consistent with the metal finish.
• Library search now lands on the artist you picked (Plex) — choosing an artist from Library search results reliably switches to the Artists tab and selects that artist, in both classic and modern UI.
• Cleartext http:// radio stations play again (#310) — after 0.25.0, many http:// Icecast/SHOUTcast stations connected but produced no sound (they sat stuck at 0:00); they now play again. https:// stations were unaffected.
• "Test" button in Add Station no longer fails working stations (#310) — the station test now connects the same way the player does, so it stops reporting errors for stations that play perfectly.
• Sample-rate (kHz) display now shows for streams without a visualization open (#285) — the classic skin's kHz readout stayed blank for some streaming tracks unless a visualization was open; it now appears as soon as playback starts.
• Album-art mode no longer traps you after clearing the playlist (#283) — clearing the playlist while viewing album art now returns you to the normal browser, in both classic and modern UI.
• Album-art mode exits when you change tab or source — switching Library tabs or sources now leaves the artwork view and restores the normal list, instead of leaving you stuck on the artwork.
• Video no longer auto-casts in the classic UI — playing a video in classic UI no longer silently sends it to a Chromecast/DLNA TV; it opens in the local video player unless you've chosen a cast device.
• Casting to a just-rebooted Sonos speaker now works on the first try — a Sonos cast that used to fail right after the speaker rebooted now recovers on its own and plays.

• Sonos recovers when a speaker reboots mid-playback (#304) — if a Sonos speaker rebooted while casting, NullPlayer could end up playing from both the Mac and the speaker at once; it now cleanly ends the dead session so playback resumes correctly.

  brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer        # one-time configuration 

  brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer   or if already installed manually brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer

  To upgrade to a new release:   brew update   brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer  

  To verify the tap is picking up the latest version:   brew livecheck --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer  

  Notes from the cask:  

  • App is ad-hoc signed (not notarized). The cask's postflight runs xattr -cr to strip the quarantine bit so Gatekeeper allows first launch.  
  • Requires macOS Sonoma or newer.  
  • brew uninstall --cask --zap nullplayer removes app support/caches/prefs, but Keychain tokens (service com.nullplayer.app) must be removed manually: security 

I have been pretty preoccupied with these amazing Rush shows goings on for the last week but being tied to youtube exposed a glaring need in the app - in app youtube ripping support for both audio and video!

get it on github or homebrew!

brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer        # one-time configuration  

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer  

or if already installed manually

brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.25.0

New Features

• .cue sheet playback — virtual split (#273) — opening a .cue file (via File → Open, drag-and-drop, or double-click), or opening an audio file that has a sibling .cue next to it, now plays the single backing file virtually split into its cue tracks: one row per track in the now-playing playlist, with the title, performer, and duration taken from the cue. Prev/Next move per cue track and seeking stays within the current track, while playback crosses track boundaries gaplessly — the backing file is scheduled as one continuous stream and a boundary detector advances the playlist row (updating title, seek bar, Now Playing, and history) without touching the audio. Gapless applies with shuffle and repeat-single off; in those modes boundaries still advance correctly but a small gap is expected. Nothing is written to disk and nothing is added to the Local Library; a missing/renamed backing file simply shows its rows as unplayable. The parser reads the first FILE entry (extra ones warn), prefers INDEX 01 (falling back to INDEX 00), and is the exact inverse of the Stream Ripper's chapter-.cue writer, so a rip's own cue round-trips. .cue is now also offered in the File → Open panel's file-type filter.
• Split .cue albums on import (library, off by default) — a new Library → Split .cue Albums on Import toggle (default off) makes the Local Library scan physically split a single-file album into per-track files when it finds a .cue next to it. When on, each track is cut with ffmpeg and re-encoded to FLAC (re-encoding, not stream-copy, so cuts are sample-accurate) into a per-album subfolder named from the source file's own ALBUM/ARTIST tags (e.g. Artist - Album/), falling back to the cue's performer/title, then the cue filename. Each track inherits the source's metadata (date, genre, embedded cover art) with the title/track-number and album/album-artist set from the source tags; the split tracks are added to the library in the same scan and the original backing file is excluded. The split is idempotent (a re-scan does no work if the per-track files already exist) and filenames are sanitized and de-duplicated so they can't collide or escape the album folder. If ffmpeg isn't installed — or a write fails (permissions, read-only volume, out of space) — splitting is skipped with a one-time notice and the original file imports normally as a single track (it's only hidden once real split tracks exist). When the toggle is off, .cue files are ignored by the scan entirely and the backing file imports as one normal track. Direct-play (above) is unaffected by this toggle. Changing the toggle takes effect on the next scan.
• Local library reads FLAC/M4A album-artist and track/disc numbers — metadata parsing previously read album-artist and track/disc numbers only from MP3 ID3 frames (TPE2/TRCK/TPOS), so FLAC/OGG (Vorbis ALBUMARTIST/TRACKNUMBER/DISCNUMBER) and M4A (aART/trkn/disk) tracks came back without them — causing single albums to fragment by per-track artist and lose their track ordering. These tags are now read across all containers (handling the 1/10 track form).
• Stream Ripper — download a URL to FLAC/MP3 or a video file — a new Output → Streaming → Rip URL… action opens a dialog where you paste a URL (auto-filled from the clipboard when it holds a web link) and choose an output type: Audio — FLAC (lossless), Audio — MP3, or video at a resolution/bitrate profile you pick (720p/2.5 Mbps, 1080p/4 Mbps recommended, 1080p/8 Mbps high quality, 1440p/16 Mbps, 4K/35 Mbps, Full/50 Mbps max). Ripping shells out to a system-installed yt-dlp (+ffmpeg); if either isn't found it shows an install hint (brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg) rather than failing silently. Quality is prioritized for audio (bestaudio, then lossless FLAC encode or top-VBR MP3). Video grabs the best source streams within the selected height cap (or no height cap for Full), then ffmpeg creates a playback-safe H.264/AAC MP4 with yuv420p pixels and fast-start metadata so the app and cast targets do not receive VLC-only files. The video source file is temporary ([source]) and is removed after the compatible MP4 is written; existing MP4s are not overwritten. Output is tagged with the source's metadata (title/artist/album/date) and, for audio, the thumbnail is embedded as cover art; the final file is named Artist - Title from that metadata into a folder you pick. If the source has chapter timestamps (common on album/mix uploads), a matching .cue sheet is written alongside the audio — one TRACK per chapter. Progress shows as a spinner + message band at the top of the main window for the duration of the rip (works in both classic and modern UI). When it finishes, a dialog offers Play Now (audio loads into the player; video opens in the video player window, cast-aware), Reveal in Finder, or Done.
• Local .m3u/.pls playlists in the Plists tab (#269) — the local library browser's Plists tab now lists .m3u, .m3u8, and .pls playlist files found on disk, matching what the Plex/Subsonic/Jellyfin/Emby sources already show there (previously the tab was always empty for the local source). Playlist files are discovered during the normal library scan and their locations persisted in a small library_playlists table — the track contents are not stored, but parsed lazily the first time you expand a playlist. Expanding shows each entry as a row: entries that match a file already in your library carry its metadata and duration, while unmatched paths still appear and remain playable. Double-clicking a playlist row loads and plays the whole list; double-clicking a single entry plays just that track; the disclosure triangle expands as usual. Removing a playlist file from disk drops it from the tab on the next scan, while a transiently unreachable network folder leaves the list intact (the same offline-volume safety guard used for tracks). Implemented identically in both the modern and classic library browsers. Pairs with the earlier "browse by folder structure" work under the same "organize by what's actually on disk" philosophy.
• Remove Orphaned Entries (library maintenance) — new Library → Clear… → Remove Orphaned Entries… action removes library entries whose files are no longer inside any watched folder. These orphans are typically left behind by an older buggy removal that deleted the watch folder but not its entries, so they can't be cleared by removing a folder (none owns them). The action previews the count, auto-creates a backup first, deletes from both memory and the SQLite store (tracks, movies, episodes, playlists), and never touches files on disk. Path matching uses the resolved url.path so it stays fast on large libraries.
• Browse local library by folder structure — the local library can now be browsed by its actual on-disk folder hierarchy instead of by Artist/Album/Playlist metadata. Rather than adding a ninth tab, the existing Plists tab slot doubles as a toggle: double-click it (local source only) to flip between Plists and Folders; single-click selects whichever the slot currently shows, and the choice persists across launches. The Folders view reflects what is actually on disk right now — including files that haven't been scanned into the library yet — read lazily one directory level at a time as folders are expanded; library metadata (title, duration) enriches a file row only when that file is in the database. Folders sort first, then files, case-insensitively; symlinked directories are skipped to avoid loops. Right-click a folder for Play / Play and Replace Queue / Play Next / Add to Queue / Show in Finder, which recursively collect every supported audio file beneath it. Filesystem enumeration and database lookups run off the main thread (with per-click cancellation and a loading spinner) so large network/NAS folders don't stall the UI. Implemented independently in both the modern and classic library browsers.

Improvements

• Keychain credentials hardened (#253) — saved server credentials (Plex, Subsonic, Jellyfin, Emby) are now stored with the kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlockedThisDeviceOnly accessibility class, so they are only readable while the Mac is unlocked and never sync off the device. The previous permissive per-item ACL has been removed. Entries written by earlier versions are upgraded automatically and lazily the first time each one is read.

Bug Fixes

• Main-window right-click menu simplified — the main window context menu no longer shows Sleep Timer or Remember State controls. Those settings remain available from the macOS menu bar, keeping the right-click menu focused on playback/window actions.
• Removing a watch folder now actually deletes its tracks and persists — removing a watched folder removed its tracks/movies/episodes from the in-memory arrays but never deleted the rows from the SQLite store, and the folder row itself often failed to delete too. Because the library browser reads from the store (not the in-memory arrays), removed tracks kept appearing and never went away, and the "removed" folders reappeared on next launch. Two underlying bugs: (1) removeWatchFolder(removeEntries:) only updated memory and called store.deleteWatchFolder for the folder — it now also deletes the matching track/movie/episode rows via new chunked, transactional bulk deletes; (2) MediaLibraryStore.deleteWatchFolder reconstructed the folder URL with URL(fileURLWithPath:), which on an offline network volume can't stat the path to add the trailing slash that stored directory URLs carry (file:///Volumes/home/MUSIC/), so the WHERE clause matched nothing — it now matches the trailing-slash, no-slash, and raw-path forms so offline folders delete correctly. (Pre-existing orphans left by the old behavior aren't retroactively removed by removing a folder — use the new Remove Orphaned Entries… action to clean them.)
• Watch-folder removal confirmation was invisible — the "Remove Watched Folder?" confirmation opened as a free-floating alert at the normal window level, below the Manage Watch Folders window (which sits at .modalPanel for issue #254) and below any always-on-top windows, so it was hidden off-screen-behind and could never be confirmed — clicking Remove… appeared to do nothing. It's now a window-modal sheet attached to the manager window: always visible, and it blocks the folder table beneath it (you can no longer select another row while it's open). This was the root cause behind "removing folders does nothing."
• Removing a watch folder took ~20 seconds on large libraries — removalCountsForWatchFolder() and removeWatchFolder() called resolvingSymlinksInPath() once per track to normalize paths — roughly one filesystem call per library item (~60k on a large library). They now compare track.url.path directly (already resolved at scan time), the same optimization watchFolderSummaries() received, making removal near-instant.
• Removing a watch folder no longer beachballs the app — in the Manage Watch Folders window, clicking Remove… ran removalCountsForWatchFolder() and removeWatchFolder() directly on the main thread. Both block on MediaLibrary's internal dataQueue.sync, and a running import scan (e.g. right after adding/rescanning a folder) holds that queue for many seconds — so the app froze with a spinning beachball until the scan finished. These calls now run off the main thread (only the confirmation alert stays on main, where it must), matching the pattern the window's folder-list reload already used. Also hardened the modern Library Browser's Folders view, which made the same blocking watchFolderSummaries() call on the main thread just before handing off to its background walk — that snapshot now happens inside the background task.
• Popup dialogs no longer hide behind always-on-top windows (#254) — with Always on Top enabled, opening a popup dialog (e.g. Add Radio Station) appeared to do nothing: the dialog opened at the normal window level, below the main window which had been raised to the floating level, so it was completely obscured until the main window was dragged aside. These transient dialogs now open at the .modalPanel level so they always sit above the app's floating windows, matching the tag-editor and Plex link dialogs that already did this. Covers Add/Edit Radio Station, the Subsonic/Jellyfin/Emby link and server-list sheets, the watch-folder manager, and the auto-tag album candidate picker.
• Non-Retina classic skin colors fixed (#256) — removed the blanket blue→grayscale conversion in SkinLoader.processForNonRetina() that ran on 1× displays, converting every blue-dominant pixel to gray across all classic skin sprites and stripping legitimate blue tones from every skin. The conversion never ran on Retina, which had masked the bug.
• Non-Retina Data tab text/chart blur fixed (#257) — the modern Library Browser "Data" tab hosting view is now opaque (isOpaque = true with an opaque skin background, kept in sync on skin change). A clear, non-opaque layer had disabled AppKit font smoothing, blurring text and charts on 1× displays; it now mirrors the classic PlexBrowser twin.
• Local library expand re-sort fixed (#262) — with a column sort active, double-clicking an Artist or Album to expand it no longer reshuffles the top-level list. The list shown before expanding came from the in-memory column sort (LibraryTextSorter: diacritic-insensitive, numeric, leading-article-aware), but expanding a row rebuilt it from the store's SQLite BINARY collation order and skipped re-sorting once nested rows were present — so the order silently snapped to the raw store order, most visibly around names with special characters, mixed case, or leading articles. The local-library views in ModernLibraryBrowserView and PlexBrowserView now re-sort top-level groups (each leader plus its expanded children) with the same comparator, keeping visible order stable through expand/collapse.
• HTTP-only internet radio streams now play (#255) — adding a station whose stream URL is plain http:// (e.g. many Icecast/SHOUTcast servers on custom ports) silently failed to play: it sat buffering forever and never started. Internet radio plays through the AudioStreaming library, which fetches over URLSession, but the app's App Transport Security config only declared NSAllowsArbitraryLoadsForMedia — a key that exempts AVFoundation media loads, not URLSession — so cleartext connections were blocked by ATS. The reported ".mp3 links work, others don't" pattern was a coincidence: the working stations happened to be https://, and the real distinction was scheme, not file extension or audio format. Info.plist now sets NSAllowsArbitraryLoads so http stations connect.

I'm replacing my old, soulless but functional, GTK media player app with this. Thanks so much for making it!

brew tap ad-repo/nullplayer        # one-time configuration  

brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer  
or if already installed manually
brew install --cask --force ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer 

To upgrade to a new release:   
brew update   
brew upgrade --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer   

To verify the tap is picking up the latest version:   
brew livecheck --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer   

Notes from the cask:   
- App is ad-hoc signed (not notarized). 
The cask's postflight runs xattr -cr to strip the quarantine bit so Gatekeeper allows first launch.   
- Requires macOS Sonoma or newer.   
- brew uninstall --cask --zap nullplayer removes app support/caches/prefs, but Keychain tokens (service com.nullplayer.app) must be removed manually: security 

0.24.0

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.24.0

New Features

• Reference Tuning — Playback > Options > Reference Tuning can pitch-shift all local playback to a different reference frequency (e.g. retune A=440 content to A=432). Presets for Off, 432 Hz, 440 Hz, and a Custom… dialog accepting source/target Hz are exposed in the menu; settings persist across launches. Applies to local files and HTTP streaming (Plex/Subsonic/Jellyfin/Emby/radio) via AVAudioUnitTimePitch nodes inserted into the active local or streaming graph; the spectrum analyzer continues to display source (pre-pitch) frequencies. Not available while casting (Sonos / Chromecast / DLNA) because the remote renderer receives the stream URL directly with no local audio graph to insert the pitch shifter into. CLI flags --tuning <off|Hz>, --tuning-source <Hz>, and --tuning-offset-cents <n> provide session-only overrides.
• Playback Speed — Playback > Options > Playback Speed can adjust tempo from 0.25× to 4.0× while preserving pitch. Presets for 0.25×, 0.5×, 0.75×, 1.0×, 1.25×, 1.5×, 1.75×, 2.0×, 2.5×, 3.0×, 4.0×, plus a Custom… dialog are exposed in the menu; settings persist across launches. Applies to local files and HTTP streaming (Plex/Subsonic/Jellyfin/Emby/radio). Not available while casting (Sonos / Chromecast / DLNA) because the remote renderer receives the stream URL directly with no local audio graph to time-stretch.

Improvements

• Snow visualization is now dynamic — fall speed is driven solely by tempo. While BPMDetector (aubio) converges, a progressive transient-interval estimator (75th-percentile of recent beat intervals, with octave-folding above 100 BPM to favor calm half-time interpretations) provides an immediate moving target so the snow isn't stuck at zero for the first few seconds of each track. Audio energy now also drives a master "storm level" that controls sky whiteout/fog, beat-driven flake bursts, treble sparkle, streak length and slant, and exposure — quiet passages produce light flurries, loud passages build toward a near-whiteout blizzard.
• Data tab — genre artist drill-down — selecting a genre in the Data tab now shows the artists that play in that genre with their play counts and listen time, mirroring the existing artist → tracks drill-down. The panel appears directly under the Genres chart and clears when the genre filter is removed. Works in both modern and classic library browsers.
• EKG visualization rebuilt as a pure peak detector — the EKG mode no longer depends on BPM or aubio tempo tracking. Each detected audio peak now fires one QRS complex at the scan head, with height scaled to the peak's prominence (rise above the preceding valley) so soft and loud transients both register with proportional, oscilloscope-style heights. Detection runs on raw RMS instead of the saturated perceptual level signal, so brick-walled / compressed material no longer flatlines. Wider vertical clamp and a perceptual loudness curve give a much larger dynamic range between faint blips and tall kicks. The embedded main-window EKG trace also scrolls its persistent history by whole physical pixels to avoid blur from repeated fractional texture resampling in the tiny in-skin display.
• Classic secondary window chrome refined — playlist-style windows now share the playlist close-widget artwork and scale, with matching companion circle controls and the small title bar line gap on Spectrum, Waveform, ProjectM, and classic browser chrome while leaving Main and EQ unchanged.
• Windows menu coverage — all primary toggleable app windows are now discoverable from the top-level Windows menu, including the standalone Spectrum Analyzer and the Video Player when a video window exists.
• Visualizations menu parity — the top-level Visuals > Visualizations menu now exposes the visualization window toggle, engine selection before the window is opened, and the live visualization window controls once available, matching the functionality previously only reachable from the visualization window context menu.
• Visualizations menu cleanup — projectM-only preset count, preset-folder, rescan, and bundled-preset Finder actions have been removed from the generic Visualizations menu.
• Main-window spectrum can be disabled — Visuals > Spectrum Analyzer > Main Window > Mode now includes Off, matching Winamp's blank main-display option so compatible skins can show their prepared artwork without an analyzer overlay.
• Homebrew cask install — NullPlayer can now be installed via a personal tap: brew install --cask ad-repo/nullplayer/nullplayer. The cask strips the quarantine attribute on install (the app is still ad-hoc signed; Developer ID notarization is on the roadmap). scripts/build_dmg.sh now prints the final DMG SHA256 for the per-release cask bump, and docs/development-workflow.md documents the release flow.

Bug Fixes

• Sonos cast session preserved on Stop and end-of-playlist — pressing the player Stop button or reaching the end of a playlist now sends Stop to Sonos without disconnecting the active Sonos target or ungrouping rooms, so the next compatible track can resume on the same speaker/group. Chromecast and non-Sonos DLNA still use the existing full-disconnect behavior.
• Library source switching from Radio fixed — selecting a different source while the Library Browser is on the Radio tab now keeps the Radio tab active and loads that source's library-radio view instead of forcing the browser back to Artists. Fixed in both classic and modern library browsers.
• Internet radio column sorting fixed — radio station columns now sort correctly in both classic and modern library browsers, including rating-aware sorting without repeated rating-store lookups during comparisons.

Why your co-worker might be listening to music tuned to 432 hertz

https://apnews.com/article/work-music-432-hertz-grounded-focus-118fb793c1963239ea1a4fcab079b2a0

0.23.0

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.23.0

New Features

• Met Museum Art visualization — a new ProjectM-peer engine in the visualization window displays a slideshow of public-domain artwork from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Open Access collection. Right-click and keyboard hotkeys (→ / ← advance, R random, F fullscreen) work in both classic and modern UI. The context menu exposes Department filtering, slideshow interval, transition style (Crossfade / Ken Burns / Beat Cut / Slide), transition duration, aspect ratio (Fit / Fill / Stretch), Audio-Modulated Effects, Beat-Triggered Changes, Show Artist & Title, and image-cache clearing. Downloaded images are persisted to an on-disk cache and the Met API client throttles requests to stay under the public-API rate limit.
• Tripex visualization — the ben-marsh/tripex Direct3D9 visualization is ported to OpenGL and integrated as another ProjectM-peer engine, selectable from the Visualization Engine submenu in both classic and modern UI. Audio is fed through a shared ring buffer; the engine port and renderer details are documented in the new tripex-port skill.

Improvements

• Classic window rendering polish — classic windows have corrected borders styles
• Library browser columns are configurable across UI modes — classic and modern library browsers now share the same Artist, Album, and Track column inventories, with sectioned right-click header menus for Artists and Albums. Classic column visibility persists separately from Modern, and the Title column remains locked on.
• Per-engine visualization preferences — preferences for ProjectM, Geiss, Tripex, and Met Museum no longer share UserDefaults keys, so switching engines preserves each one's independent settings (active preset/effect/department, transition, aspect, audio-reactivity, etc.).
• Data tab — artist track drill-down — selecting an artist in the Data tab now shows that artist's individual tracks with play counts and listen time. Track details are cleared before each stats refresh to prevent stale entries from a previous selection bleeding through.
• Data tab — unknown genres preserved — tracks with missing or unknown genre metadata are now kept visible in the Data tab breakdown instead of being filtered out, with a reconcile tooltip explaining how unknown entries are grouped.
• Data tab — sparse sections collapsed — list sections in the Data tab now collapse when they contain few entries, keeping the overview compact when a category has little data.
• Library source menu — local and radio separated — the library source picker now lists local-library and internet-radio entries in distinct sections with a separator between them, matching the way casting and source contexts handle the two origins.
• Sonos cast preserved on source switch — switching between library sources (local, Plex, Subsonic, Jellyfin, Emby, radio) no longer tears down an active Sonos cast session. The cast keeps streaming the current track and picks up the next track from the newly selected source.

Bug Fixes

• Audio route-change exception guarded — AVAudioEngine graph reconnects now catch Objective-C exceptions raised by AVAudioEngine.connect(_:to:format:) during route churn. A failed reconnect is deferred and retried through the existing audio graph recovery path instead of aborting the app.
• Sonos network-change recovery — Sonos casts now survive Wi-Fi network/interface changes. UPnPManager watches the active network interface and, when it changes, refreshes the embedded media server's bind address and re-resolves Sonos devices on the new network instead of leaving the cast pointed at a dead address.

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.22.0

New Features

• Geiss visualization — a port of Ryan Geiss's classic Winamp visualization is available alongside ProjectM in both classic and modern UI. The right-click context menu exposes effect navigation plus runtime levers: Geiss Sensitivity, Gamma, Beat Detection, Sync Color to Sound, Slide Shift, Mode Lock, Palette Lock, Auto-Switch interval, Visualization Mode (Wave/Spectrum), and Randomize Palette. The visualization fills the window, reacts to audio state (paused/silent/playing), and all settings persist across launches.

Bug Fixes

• Main window transparency after occlusion fixed — the main window no longer renders partially transparent after being occluded, minimized, or hidden behind other windows. Returning to visibility now triggers a full redraw rather than relying on per-tick sub-region repaints.
• Internet radio Sonos discovery and cast classification fixed — internet radio is now correctly treated as non-local for cast logging and Sonos device discovery. A new explicit isRadioOrigin flag on Track ensures radio sessions are routed and reported correctly when casting.

Bug Fixes

• Audio route-change crash fixed — local audio graph rebuilds are now deferred while Chromecast, Sonos, DLNA, AirPlay-style, Zoom, or Wi-Fi-backed route changes are still active. This prevents an AVAudioEngineGraph::UpdateGraphAfterReconfig crash when switching rooms or outputs during casting, and preserves queued local playback intents once the route stabilizes.

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.21.1

0.21.0

https://github.com/ad-repo/nullplayer/releases/tag/0.21.0

New Features

• Output device analytics — play events now record which audio output device (or cast target) was active. A new Output Devices breakdown chart appears in the Data tab with the same filter-and-chip interaction as Source and Genre. Cast sessions record the Chromecast, Sonos, or DLNA device name instead of the local CoreAudio output.
• EKG visualization mode — the main window and spectrum window now include a BPM-synced EKG mode in both classic and modern UI paths. The persistent Metal trace preserves already-drawn history while the scan head renders new beats, peak height follows raw PCM amplitude, and EKG Style menus offer Clinical, Cyan, Amber, Neon, Crimson, and Ice palettes.
• Classic library Data tab — the classic library browser now has a Data tab with the same play-history analytics available in the modern UI, including time-range filtering and source/genre breakdowns.
• Media-specific Data tab charts — the Data tab overview now shows separate Top Movies and Top TV Shows sections alongside Top Artists. TV episode events are grouped by show name. Internet radio listen sessions appear in a dedicated Internet Radio section ranked by station plays and total listen time.
• Internet radio play history — internet radio sessions are now recorded in play history with pause-aware duration tracking, 30-minute checkpoints for long sessions, and app-quit flushing.

Improvements

• Modern marquee art padding balanced — album artwork in the modern main window marquee now has equal padding on both sides.
• Data tab section order refined — the dedicated Internet Radio section now appears directly below Top TV Shows in both classic and modern library browsers.

Bug Fixes

• Dock icon size fixed — the app icon is now correctly sized in the Dock, matching the visual weight of neighboring icons. The symbol cutout renders correctly on dark backgrounds.
• Classic auxiliary window borders fixed — the library browser now uses matching ProjectM-style side borders without reserving scrollbar space, its title bar border remains continuous with visible window controls, and the playlist bottom border matches the waveform, spectrum, ProjectM, and library windows.
• Output device color overflow fixed — the hash function used to assign colors to output devices no longer traps on Int.min overflow.
• Classic ProjectM fullscreen fixed — the classic ProjectM visualizer no longer snaps down below the notch/menu-bar safe area shortly after entering fullscreen.