A modern Music Player Daemon based on Rockbox firmware releases

[2026.05.09]

Fixed

• DSP compressor divide-by-zero crash on x86_64 (SIGFPE in get_att_rls_coeff) — added release > 0 guard in compressor_update() mirroring the existing attack > 0 guard; ARM64 silently returned 0 on integer divide-by-zero while x86_64 faulted; also added function-level guards in get_att_rls_coeff and get_lpf_coeff for zero rc/fs/rc_units parameters, and an early fs <= 0 return in compressor_update for uninitialised output frequency
• Startup hang on second+ launch — FTS5 backfill WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM fts_table f WHERE f.id = t.id) forced an O(N) full scan per row (O(N²) total) because id is UNINDEXED in FTS5; replaced all four backfill INSERTs with an uncorrelated WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 FROM fts_table) which SQLite short-circuits at the first row (O(1) for non-empty tables)
• Library startup blocked indefinitely on repeated runs — SQLx hangs when re-executing CREATE VIRTUAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS on an existing FTS5 virtual table; fixed by checking sqlite_master before the migration and skipping it entirely if track_fts already exists; same guard added for dedupe_genres (checks UNIQUE constraint on genre table)
• FTS5 and dedupe_genres migrations ran in slow DELETE journal mode — PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL was set only after all migrations; moved to SqliteConnectOptions::journal_mode(Wal) so WAL is active from the first connection
• FTS5 index migration moved to a background tokio::spawn task so startup is non-blocking; dedupe_genres (schema DDL) remains synchronous with an O(1) skip guard
• cpal PCM sink: audible silence gap at the start of every track on Linux — sink_dma_start() previously stored the first chunk in pcm_data/pcm_size and then called pthread_create, leaving the ring empty for the 1–5 ms thread-creation window; fixed by pushing the first chunk synchronously via pcm_cpal_push() before spawning the writer thread so the ring is pre-filled when running=true is set; the writer thread now picks up from chunk 2 onwards; also added !r.running early-exit to the f32 cpal callback (mirrors the existing i16 guard) and reset resampler state (cur_valid = false, phase = 0) in pcm_cpal_start() to prevent interpolation artefacts from the tail of the previous track

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.05.06...2026.05.09

[2026.05.05]

Added

• Headless host target and cpal PCM sink (audio_output = "cpal") — runs Rockbox without SDL on any OS audio backend (ALSA, CoreAudio, WASAPI, JACK) via CPAL; build with scripts/build-headless.sh; documented in HEADLESS.md
• Genres API — gRPC, GraphQL, REST, and CLI endpoints to list genres, fetch tracks by genre, and add genre-based smart playlist rules; genre deduplication SQL migration bundled
• Disc/track number support in the Expo mobile album view — TrackList component sorts by (disc, track) and renders disc-section headers for multi-disc releases; proto track_number/disc_number fields mapped through to the UI
• Pull-to-refresh / rescan in the Expo library tab

Changed

• CI workflows, macOS build scripts, Dockerfile, and install.sh streamlined — significant reduction in duplication and overall build time
• Android cdylib option now available in the tools/configure interactive menu

Fixed

• M4A/AAC files decode silently in CODECS_STATIC builds — dead-write elimination in libm4a/demux.c was optimizing away box-parsing reads; replaced with live-return readers (stream_read_uint* + stream_skip)
• macOS linker: Security.framework explicitly linked in zig/build.zig to resolve missing symbol errors when using macOS Security APIs
• Expo mobile app re-establishes gRPC subscriptions when the app returns to the foreground (reconnectEpoch bump + reapplyServerUrl())

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.05.03...2026.05.05

[2026.05.03]

Added

• Mintlify documentation site under mintlify/ with the Linden theme; OpenAPI spec regenerated and ASCII architecture diagrams replaced with CardGroup components
• Linux-specific window controls (minimize / maximize / close) in the GPUI titlebar — macOS/Windows continue to use native traffic-light controls

Changed

• GPUI titlebar drag areas now call window.start_window_move() from an on_mouse_down handler instead of relying on WindowControlArea::Drag, fixing window dragging on Linux/X11
• Debian and RPM packages now declare XKB/XCB build dependencies (libxkbcommon-dev, libxkbcommon-x11-dev, libxcb1-dev, libxcb-render0-dev, libxcb-shape0-dev, libxcb-xfixes0-dev); README updated with the matching install instructions
• Debian package version bumped to 2026.05.03

Fixed

• GPUI app no longer fails to build on Linux: souvlaki is now a non-Linux-only dependency and NowPlayingManager ships a no-op Linux stub, since the OS media-control APIs souvlaki targets are not available there

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.05.02...2026.05.03

[2026.05.02]

Added

• New SDKs for controlling rockboxd from Python, Ruby, Elixir, Gleam, and Clojure (sdk/python/, sdk/ruby/, sdk/elixir/, sdk/gleam/, sdk/clojure/) — each ships with examples covering playback, queue, library search, saved/smart playlists, volume/EQ, browse, devices, Bluetooth, and plugins
• TypeScript SDK gains 15 runnable examples (sdk/typescript/examples/) plus a Bluetooth API (api/bluetooth.ts) and a getVolume / VolumeInfo endpoint on api/sound.ts
• TS SDK types extended with browse.displayName and album.copyrightMessage

Fixed

• HTTP/remote tracks now hydrate Mp3Entry metadata (title, artist, album, duration, etc.) from the DB Track record in the playlist handlers when Rockbox cannot read tags locally
• GPUI Library page: text truncation and unexpected overflow on likes and track rows resolved by adding min_w_0 / flex_shrink_0 to the flex containers

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.05.01...2026.05.02

[2026.05.01]

Added

• Bluetooth button in the GPUI mini-player — shown when Bluetooth is available; opens the device picker and fetches paired devices on toggle
• Cover URLs in GPUI now follow the active server via get_covers_base() instead of the hardcoded http://localhost:6062/covers/ base

Changed

• HTTP server (crates/server) migrated from a custom request/response layer to Actix-web — handlers now accept web::Data, web::Path, and web::Query and return actix_web::Result<HttpResponse>; blocking C FFI work is offloaded to web::block
• Tokio runtimes for the controls and MPD servers are now shared via OnceLock instead of being created per-thread, reducing overhead and avoiding nested-runtime panics
• RLIMIT_NOFILE is raised to 4 096 at startup on Unix to accommodate large music libraries

Fixed

• Audio stop and pause are now non-blocking — they use audio_queue_post so they can safely be called from any OS thread; audio_hard_stop posts Q_AUDIO_STOP with data=2 and the audio thread frees audiobuf_handle itself, preventing cross-thread frees
• Blocking C FFI calls in playlist handlers run on web::block threads to avoid starving Actix worker threads and prevent nested tokio/reqwest blocking contexts
• Live metadata lookups are skipped for HTTP tracks; Rockbox's own UPnP renderers are excluded from the UPnP device list
• Bluetooth availability check uses fetchGlobalStatus() (gRPC GetGlobalStatus) instead of getDevices() to avoid spurious UNIMPLEMENTED errors on probe
• Bluetooth availability is now polled in a background task and updated via std::sync::mpsc to avoid cross-runtime waker issues when bridging Tokio → GPUI
• observe_global registrations in GPUI now call .detach() instead of silently dropping the subscription handle
• RFC3339 datetime migration — a SQL migration normalises NULL/blank and YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS timestamps in the library database to RFC3339 so SQLx DateTime<Utc> decoding no longer fails
• Favourites queries now use INNER JOIN and filter out empty-string IDs, excluding bogus entries from results
• mDNS scanning now prefers IPv4 addresses (192.168 → 10 → others) and selects the best non-loopback/link-local address so multiple records for the same host coalesce correctly
• println!/eprintln! diagnostics in crates/controls and crates/mpd replaced with tracing::error!
• macOS app listens for server-change notifications and restarts streaming, re-fetches settings, device state, and Bluetooth state on server switch

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.31...2026.05.01

[2026.04.31]

Fixed

• mDNS device ID is now persisted across restarts — a 64-bit hex ID is generated once and cached in ~/.config/rockbox.org/device-id, so the registered mDNS service name remains stable between daemon restarts instead of changing on every launch

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.30...2026.04.31

[2026.04.30]

Added

• Bluetooth device support in the GPUI and web UIs — list paired/discovered devices, connect and disconnect directly from the device picker
• mDNS-based server discovery and runtime server switching — scan_mdns() in the daemon registers itself via mDNS; the GPUI app and macOS app gain a Server Picker UI that enumerates nearby rockboxd instances and switches without restart; a notification triggers one-shot syncs to re-run on server change
• UPnP album art saved for remote tracks — album_art_uri is returned from UPnP directory listings; save_audio_metadata downloads and caches the cover when no embedded art is present; remote metadata is persisted concurrently (semaphore-limited) without blocking C/FFI
• copyright_message field on the Album GraphQL type, displayed in AlbumDetails alongside a formatted release date
• Typesense bundled in the Docker image — the Dockerfile now pulls the typesense image and copies typesense-server into the final image

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.29...2026.04.30

[2026.04.29-2]

Added

• Bluetooth speaker management commands in the rockbox CLI (bluetooth scan, bluetooth devices, bluetooth connect <address>, bluetooth disconnect <address>) — Linux only, talks to a running rockboxd via gRPC
• Bluetooth GraphQL resolvers (bluetoothDevices query, bluetoothScan / bluetoothConnect / bluetoothDisconnect mutations) now call rockbox-bluetooth directly instead of going through the HTTP server — eliminates an extra round-trip on Linux

Fixed

• BluetoothService gRPC RPC renamed from Connect to ConnectDevice to avoid a name collision with tonic's auto-generated transport connect constructor, which caused a compile error (duplicate definitions with name connect)

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.29-1...2026.04.29-2

Fixed

• macOS app Files view: navigating from the root into Music no longer yields an empty list — .task ID now encodes both mode and path so a mode change with a nil path correctly triggers a reload
• macOS app device picker: now lists all output devices (including the current one, marked with a checkmark) instead of only non-current devices; added snapcast icon/colour entry
• macOS app device picker: no longer shows a loading spinner on open when devices were already preloaded at startup — refresh() only sets isLoading when the device list is empty

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.29...2026.04.29-1

[2026.04.29]

Added

• UPnP device browsing in the Files view — queue and play tracks directly from any UPnP/DLNA media server on the local network

Fixed

• HTTP stream (netstream) no longer permanently breaks after a failed seek: seek_to() now only replaces the active response on success, so a failed Range request leaves the stream readable at the current position
• Small forward seeks (≤ 128 KB) in HTTP streams are now satisfied by skipping bytes in the existing response body instead of issuing a new Range request, avoiding unnecessary round-trips during codec metadata parsing
• Buffering: TYPE_ID3 handles for remote tracks that fail to open now send BUFFER_EVENT_FINISHED with an empty mp3entry instead of silently never posting Q_AUDIO_FINISH_LOAD_TRACK, which caused the track-loading chain to stall on playlist restore with many queued UPnP tracks
• Web UI Files view: Music and UPnP Devices row icons no longer disappear on hover — CSS selector changed from descendant ( ) to direct-child (>) combinator so the .no-play guard is respected

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.28...2026.04.29

[2026.04.28-1]

Added

• Real-time PCM loudness normalizer (normalize_volume = true in settings.toml) — RMS-based AGC with asymmetric attack/release, similar to Spotify's "Normalize Volume"; applied across all PCM sinks (SDL, FIFO, AirPlay, Squeezelite, UPnP, Chromecast, Snapcast TCP)
• GET /player/volume REST endpoint returning { volume, min, max }
• volume GraphQL query returning live current volume with min/max range
• useGetVolumeQuery GraphQL hook in the web UI
• get_current_volume() gRPC client helper in the GPUI app

Fixed

• Volume slider in GPUI mini-player now responds to mouse clicks (replaced plain div with SeekBar component)
• Volume slider in web UI now uses correct 0–100 range with explicit min/max on the MUI Slider
• globalSettings.volume in GraphQL now returns the live current volume via rb::sound::current(0) instead of a hardcoded 0
• VOLUME_MIN_DB constant in GPUI corrected from -74 to -80 (SDL target range)
• Volume in GPUI loads the live value at startup via SoundCurrent gRPC instead of the stale saved setting
• adjust_volume now has audible effect on all non-SDL PCM sinks (FIFO, AirPlay, Squeezelite, UPnP, Chromecast, Snapcast TCP) — SW volume scaling (pcm_copy_buffer) was not being applied in any of these sinks

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.28...2026.04.28-1

What's Changed

• Add Snapcast TCP PCM sink and stream metadata by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/159

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.27...2026.04.28

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.27-1...2026.04.27-2

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.27...2026.04.27-1

What's Changed

• Add UPnP/DLNA media server and sink by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/152
• Enhance Chromecast WAV header accuracy and art caching by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/153
• Enforce Content-Length for Chromecast WAV and add documentation by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/154
• Add Chromecast section to README by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/155
• Add device picker UI and Squeezelite client support by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/156

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.25...2026.04.27

What's Changed

• Add saved and smart playlists support by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/148

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.24...2026.04.25

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.23...2026.04.24

What's Changed

• Add multi-room AirPlay support with receiver management by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/145
• Add GPUI desktop GUI crate by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/146

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.22...2026.04.23

What's Changed

• Add tracing support and FIFO PCM sink functionality by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/141
• Add AirPlay output sink and rockbox-airplay crate by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/142
• Add Squeezelite PCM sink with Slim protocol support by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/143

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.20...2026.04.22

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2026.04.19...2026.04.20

What's Changed

• Add HTTP(S) network stream playback to Rockbox Desktop by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/135
• Integrate Typesense server and update Zig build configuration (Zig 0.16) by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/136

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.12.27...2026.04.19

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.12.25...2025.12.27

What's New

• Native macOS application
• System media controls integration (play/pause with keyboard keys)
• Optimized performance for macOS

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.12.24...2025.12.25

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.12.23...2025.12.24

What's Changed

• feat: add support for media controls on macos by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/131
• feat: Add SwiftUI app for macos by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/132

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.12.06...2025.12.23

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.07.19...2025.12.06

What's Changed

• chore: upgrade to zig 0.14 by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/124
• build.zig: add itoa_buf.c to build.zig by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/125
• fix(sys): update SystemStatus bindings, add volume by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/126
• fix(sys): update UserSettings bindings, remove volume by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/127

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.07.17...2025.07.19

What's Changed

• [rocksky] control rockbox remotely with rocksky web ui (websocket) by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/120
• fix(webui): fix incorrect album art url by @tsirysndr in https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/pull/122

Full Changelog: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig/compare/2025.02.16...2025.07.17