v1.6.3 latest release

A music player that respects what’s yours.

Noctis plays your lossless library on Windows, macOS and Linux. Gapless playback, synced lyrics and full theming. No account to make, no telemetry to switch off.

Download for Windows Download for macOS Download for Linux
winget install heartached.Noctis
scoop bucket add noctis https://github.com/heartached/scoop-bucketscoop install noctis
choco install noctis
See the features

Free and open source · Windows, macOS and Linux · No account

The Noctis home screen showing most listened tracks, top artists and recently played albums.
  • FLAC
  • ALAC
  • WAV
  • AIFF
  • APE
  • WavPack
  • MP3
  • AAC
  • OGG
  • Opus
  • WMA
  • M4A
14,000+ downloads
  • 276 GitHub stars
  • 13 formats
  • 3 platforms
  • MIT licence
  • 0 trackers

Choose the view that suits you.

Home, Songs, Albums, Artists, Folders, Playlists and Favourites, plus Cover Flow and full-screen lyrics.

The Noctis Home view with continue listening, top artists and most played.
Home
Now playing with synced lyrics beside the album artwork.
Lyrics
The Cascade view of album artwork.
Cascade

Seven library views. One window.

A library that looks as good as it sounds

  • Bad by Michael Jackson
  • Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter
  • Tha Carter V by Lil Wayne
  • eternal sunshine by Ariana Grande
  • Death Race for Love by Juice WRLD
  • Un Verano Sin Ti by Bad Bunny
  • Thriller by Michael Jackson
  • GUTS by Olivia Rodrigo
  • Take Care by Drake
  • 714EVER by Yung Pinch
  • Goodbye & Good Riddance by Juice WRLD
  • Revival by Selena Gomez
  • ? by XXXTENTACION
  • Dangerous Woman by Ariana Grande
  • Tha Carter III by Lil Wayne
  • The Secret of Us by Gracie Abrams
  • 17 by XXXTENTACION

Time-synced lyrics

Each line lights up as it is sung, down to the word when the lyrics carry the timing.

See the whole chain

Five stages sit between the file on your disk and your output device.

  1. 01 File On disk
  2. 02 Decode LibVLC
  3. 03 ReplayGain Levelling
  4. 04 Parametric EQ 18 presets
  5. 05 Exclusive output Windows only

  • Exclusive output

    Windows only. Bypasses the system mixer and opens your device at the track’s own rate; 16-bit sources pass through untouched.

  • Gapless playback

    One album side, no seam between tracks.

  • Crossfade and AutoMix

    Blend one track into the next, by hand or automatically.

Where it stands

Every cell was checked against the source.

Noctis foobar2000 MusicBee Harmonoid Strawberry
Runs on all three desktops Win + Mac foobar2000 has no native Linux build; Linux use means Wine. Windows MusicBee is Windows-only and the project calls a port unlikely. sponsor build Strawberry supports all three, but prebuilt Windows and macOS binaries are available to sponsors at $7/month. Linux builds are free.
Licence MIT OSI-approved permissive licence. freeware Binary-only freeware under its own licence, not open source. freeware Closed source. The project FAQ answers "Is MusicBee open source? No". PolyForm PolyForm Strict 1.0.0 — source-available, but not an OSI-approved open source licence. GPL-3.0 OSI-approved copyleft licence.
Native app, not Electron
Artwork carousel browsing plugin Not built in — provided by a third-party plugin for foobar2000, and that plugin is unmaintained since 2020. plugin Not built in — provided by a third-party plugin for MusicBee.
Discord Rich Presence plugin Not built in — provided by a third-party plugin for foobar2000. plugin Not built in — provided by a third-party plugin for MusicBee.
Theme editor, any accent colour partial Per-element colour overrides and theme files, but no propagating accent colour. skin files No in-app editor — theming means hand-authoring skin XML.
In-app self-update components Updates its components in-app, not the application itself. macOS only Self-update ships on macOS builds only.
ReplayGain
Gapless playback
Noctis Free Spotify Premium Apple Music Subscription
Works with no subscription
No account required
No telemetry or analytics
Plays FLAC files you own partial FLAC added via Local Files usually plays on the desktop app, but FLAC is not an officially supported format and does not sync to the mobile apps.
Nothing can be delisted or swapped
Offline forever, no re-auth check-in
Open source, MIT
Edit metadata tags
Embed your own artwork
Bring your own lyrics files
Folder-based browsing
Parametric EQ with presets basic Spotify ships a fixed-band graphic equaliser with presets on mobile and desktop, with no per-band frequency or Q control. basic Apple Music offers a fixed 10-band graphic EQ with presets — in-app on Mac, system settings on iOS — with no frequency or Q control.
Always-on listening stats annual recap Spotify Wrapped is published once a year. annual recap Apple Music Replay is published once a year.
Cover Flow browsing
Full theme editor, any accent colour
Last.fm scrobbling
ListenBrainz scrobbling account link Nothing in the Spotify app itself — ListenBrainz can link a Spotify account on its own site and import listens automatically.
Discord Rich Presence

Questions, answered.

What is Noctis?

An open source music player for your own files. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, is built in C# with Avalonia rather than Electron, and plays lossless and lossy formats through LibVLC.

Which formats does it play?

Thirteen: FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, APE, WavPack, MP3, AAC, M4A, MP4, OGG, Opus and WMA. Bit depth and sample rate are shown per file, with a Hi-Res Lossless badge for 24-bit files above 48 kHz.

Is it really free?

Yes. Noctis is MIT-licensed, every feature is included, and there is no paid tier, trial or account. If it earns its keep you can buy the developer a coffee.

Does it track me?

No telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, no ads. The app does contact GitHub to check for updates and Deezer to fetch artist portraits; nothing about your listening leaves your machine.

Does it play gapless?

Gapless is on by default. Crossfade runs from 1 to 12 seconds, and AutoMix can time the blend using BPM and key when the tags carry them. ReplayGain has Track, Album and Auto modes with a built-in scanner.

Where do the lyrics come from?

From LRCLIB and NetEase, cached offline once fetched, or from .lrc, .lyricsfile and .ttml files beside your music. Lines light up as they are sung, and individual words do when the source carries word timing.

Can I change how it looks?

Five built-in themes — Dark, Gray, Midnight, Light and System — plus an accent colour picker and a custom theme editor for when none of them fit.

Which languages does it speak?

Ten: English, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. Pick one in Settings → General → Language and it switches straight away. Translations come from the community on Crowdin.

How do I install it?

Download the build for your platform from GitHub Releases, or on Windows use winget, Scoop or Chocolatey. Noctis checks for new versions itself and links you to the update.

Ask something else on GitHub

Put your music
back on your desktop.

Free and open source, and it stays that way. No account, no trial.

MIT licence · No telemetry · Straight from GitHub Releases