In 2025, playing your own music on an iPhone is surprisingly hard, unless you pay Apple or navigate a maze of limitations. So I built my own player from scratch, with full text search, iCloud support, and a local-first experience. GitHub link
Why I Built My Own Audio Player Like many people, I’ve picked up too many subscriptions, some through Apple (iCloud, Apple Music), others got lost in random platforms (like Netflix, which I forgot I was still paying for). I actually used Apple Music regularly (and previously Spotify), but the streaming turned out to be more convenience than necessity. With a curated local library, I didn’t lose much, just the lock-in.
Honest question, what’s hard about playing an MP3 on any Apple device?
Nothing
The article is just misleading ragebait turned into an excuse to show their app and things about iOS development.
It’s not. I use my Windows 10 video game machine to drag and drop MP3s onto my iPhone from my 400GB library. I use iTunes to do it (but I listen using Foobar2000 on my computer, I only use iTunes to put music on my phone and make iPhone incremental image backups.)
I wish I could drag and drop FLAC files, but I can easily convert them. I do t use my really nice cans on my phone anyway.
Look into PlexAmp for lossless streaming. It’s pretty dope.
I do have Apple Music for lossless streaming! But I do still load obscure things on my phone that don’t exist there. Which is shockingly few things, to my surprise.
I keep Apple Music too, because it does offer a lot of value for the price. The inclusion of Classical makes it a no-brainer for me.
I was shocked at how much stuff is there. A few outliers (a Team Teamwork album, Squincy Jones mixes, and Keifer Gr33n mixes) aren’t there, among some other super obscure shit. All the other stuff I love that isn’t popular, like The Blood Brothers or Xiu Xiu, all there.
Nothing, if you want to only play 1 at a time. From the file app you can play an mp3 with no issue. But that is all, you play a single mp3 file, and hten it closes when it is finished playing. I have yet to find a decent app that plays MP3s like you would want to do for listening to music.
Apples own Music app (without Apple Music subscription), VLC, PlexAmp…
It’s not hard if you look.
I thought you had to have a subscription to play your own mp3s (not purchased through the app store) on music?
You do not.
how does one add them then? I am looking at music and none of the MP3s on my phone are availabe to be played, nor do I see an option to add any.
It’s really just drag and drop. I always drop the album folder, with all mp3s and then edit all with correct meta information, album cover etc, if needed.
Edit: you have to do this, in order to add them to the itunes/music library. It actually makes copies of the mp3s in the library folder iirc.
It doesn’t even look for music on the hard drive, that’s why it has to be added to the music library.
I have never connected my phone iPhone to my Mac. I do not even have iTunes installed on my Mac.
It’s called Music on the Mac, but it’s still basically iTunes. You might have it installed and not realize it.
Note, the syncing process happens in a Finder window.
Did you ever have an iPod? Do you remember how you had to have a library on the computer which then synced to your iPod? That’s how this works. Create a local library on a computer, and then sync that library Apple Music.
My solution: vmware fusion or virtualbox with windows installed on a vm and running winamp with passthrough audio.
…so you’re one of those people who seeks out overly complex and convoluted solutions for the sake of being different.
Maybe it’s just that I am in IT and the problem isn’t that difficult for me or others with tech savvy to begin with.
I was just trying to offer a solution, damn, ease up