Noctis

A music player that respects what's yours. Zero tracking, total control.

   

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Screenshots

Artist pages

Word-by-word karaoke lyrics

Cover Flow

Themes & accent colors

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Install

Windows, via a package manager:

# winget
winget install heartached.Noctis

# Scoop (add the bucket once, then install)
scoop bucket add noctis https://github.com/heartached/scoop-bucket
scoop install noctis

Or download the installer or portable zip from the latest release.

macOS and Linux: download the .dmg or AppImage from the latest release. Both ship with everything they need, so there is nothing else to install.

Self-hosting: noctis-server is the same library scanner and OpenSubsonic API without a window, for a NAS, a VPS or Docker. Grab noctis-server-linux-x64.tar.gz or noctis-server-linux-arm64.tar.gz from the latest release, or build the image:

docker build -t noctis-server .
docker run -d --name noctis -p 4747:4747 -v /path/to/music:/music:ro -v noctis-data:/data noctis-server
docker exec -it noctis /app/noctis-server user add alice

Options and client notes are in docs/SELF-HOSTING.md.

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Features

Sound

• Plays FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, APE, WavPack, MP3, AAC, OGG, Opus, WMA and M4A
• Bit-perfect exclusive output on Windows
• Parametric EQ with presets, and a saved preset per track if you want one
• Gapless playback, crossfade and AutoMix transitions
• ReplayGain and Sound Check volume leveling
• Automatic BPM and musical key detection
• Track Radio and Autoplay keep the music going when the queue runs out
• Batch converter between formats (ffmpeg)
• Audio CD playback
• Multi-channel upmix, and pitch shift independent of playback speed
• Spectrogram window and an audio visualizer (Bars, Mirror, Wave)

Library

• Songs, Albums, Artists, Folders and Playlists views
• Albums split into Albums, Singles and EPs
• Smart playlists, favorites, star ratings and play counts
• Full metadata editor for artwork, lyrics and per-track options
• Auto-tagging and cover art search using Deezer, MusicBrainz and Apple Music
• Drag and drop import, watched folders, bulk edits
• Playlist import from Exportify CSV, TuneMyMusic JSON and m3u files
• Duplicate finder and file organizer
• Command palette
• Listening stats with a monthly and yearly Wrap
• Artist pages with Top Songs, About, Similar Artists and fan counts from Deezer
• Playlist and album import from TIDAL and Deezer links
• Add from YouTube, Send to Folder, and Open with Noctis file associations
• Explicit content toggle, with an Explicit badge on albums
• Group Artists By with editable separators; drag and drop for playlists and the sidebar
• Rebindable keyboard shortcuts

Lyrics

• Word-by-word karaoke lyrics, Apple Music style
• Reads plain text, LRC, word-level LRC, TTML and Lyricsfile sidecars
• Auto-fetched from LRCLIB and NetEase, cached offline
• Lyrics panel you can keep open next to any page
• Written By credits for the songwriters and producers
• Built-in lyrics editor with .lrc export
• Share lyrics as image cards or short clips
• Lyrics Studio: speech-to-lyrics alignment on your own machine with Whisper
• Video or GIF backgrounds on the lyrics page, per song or per album, and music videos in the artwork slot
• Global lyrics offset and lyrics import from file

Look and feel

• Cover Flow browsing with Carousel, Cascade and Collage layouts
• Now Playing artwork as a CD, a vinyl record or a cassette
• Animated cover art
• Ambient blurred backdrops on the lyrics page
• Themes and accent colors, plus a custom theme editor
• Liquid Glass translucent window mode
• Resizable mini player with search, queue, volume and karaoke lyrics
• Kawarp warped background, album pages tinted from the cover, accent color that can follow the album art
• Settings organized into 13 searchable pages

Connect

• Stream from Jellyfin, Navidrome, Airsonic, Gonic or any Subsonic server
• Built-in Noctis Server: stream your library to Symfonium, substreamer, Feishin or any Subsonic client
• Self-hosted noctis-server for a NAS, a VPS or Docker, see docs/SELF-HOSTING.md
• Discord Rich Presence
• Scrobble to Last.fm and ListenBrainz
• Web remote so you can control playback from your phone
• Media keys on every platform, plus Windows taskbar controls
• Artist images from Deezer
• Sleep timer, tray icon and launch at login
• Updates itself from GitHub releases
• Song progress on the Windows taskbar

Languages

• English, Arabic, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese
• Switch language from Settings without a restart

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Plugins

Noctis can be extended three ways, from safest to most powerful:

• Content packs: themes, lyrics presets and languages as plain JSON, with no code. They keep working in restricted mode. See Content packs.
• Local API: HTTP + JSON on 127.0.0.1 for Stream Deck buttons, OBS overlays and scripts in any language. Nothing runs inside Noctis. See the Local API reference.
• Plugins: .NET libraries built on the Noctis.Plugins.Abstractions SDK, with a plugin.json manifest and permissions, installed from a .zip. See the plugin guide.

Community plugins start off (restricted mode) and ask for approval before they run. Sample plugins, a sample content pack and Local API examples are in samples/.

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Build

git clone https://github.com/heartached/Noctis
cd Noctis
dotnet run --project src/Noctis/Noctis.csproj

Requirements: .NET 10 SDK

Supported platforms: Windows 10/11 (x64), macOS 12+ (Intel and Apple Silicon), Linux (x64 and ARM64).

Native dependency: libvlc

The released downloads already carry everything they need. This only matters if you are building from source.

• Windows: bundled automatically via NuGet, nothing to install.
• macOS: install VLC, which Noctis loads from /Applications/VLC.app. Packaged release builds bundle their own copy of VLC inside the app, so a downloaded Noctis needs no VLC install.

  brew install --cask vlc

• Linux: install via your package manager. The -dev package provides the unversioned libvlc.so symlink that the .NET loader looks for. The released AppImage bundles libvlc and its plugins, so it runs without this.

  # Debian/Ubuntu
  sudo apt install libvlc-dev
  # Fedora
  sudo dnf install vlc-devel
  # Arch
  sudo pacman -S vlc

Running a downloaded build (macOS / Linux)

The macOS and Linux artifacts on the Releases page are unsigned self-contained builds.

macOS, using the portable zip:

unzip Noctis-osx-arm64.zip
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine Noctis.app   # remove Gatekeeper quarantine flag
open Noctis.app

Linux, using the AppImage:

chmod +x Noctis-x86_64.AppImage
./Noctis-x86_64.AppImage

Or the portable tarball, which extracts without a top-level folder:

mkdir noctis && tar -xzf Noctis-linux-x64.tar.gz -C noctis
chmod +x noctis/Noctis
./noctis/Noctis

Build for another OS

dotnet publish src/Noctis/Noctis.csproj -c Release -r linux-x64   --self-contained
dotnet publish src/Noctis/Noctis.csproj -c Release -r osx-arm64   --self-contained
dotnet publish src/Noctis/Noctis.csproj -c Release -r osx-x64     --self-contained
dotnet publish src/Noctis/Noctis.csproj -c Release -r linux-arm64 --self-contained

Build the server

dotnet publish src/Noctis.Server/Noctis.Server.csproj -c Release -r linux-x64 --self-contained
docker build -t noctis-server .

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Star History

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Feedback

If you have any feedback about bugs, feature requests, etc. about the app, please let me know through issues.

Yours Truly, heartached.

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License

MIT, see LICENSE

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Warning

Windows may flag the installer as untrusted because it isn't code-signed. This is normal for indie software and the app is safe to use.