I have been using Lollypop on my phone for about 2 years now. I have tried a few other apps but nothing worked quite as well for me as Lollypop.
That said, I still have a lot of gripes with Lollypop. Rather than complain about it, though, I’d rather hear about something new.
The last time I went looking for a new app was in 2023. Is there anything new in 2025 worth checking out?
My wants:
- Large-ish local library (350gb) and I want it to load/scroll through fast. Lollypop is quite slow here.
- I really prefer the UI to list artists, open one, then list albums, open one, then list songs. Too many apps list all your albums, or all your individual songs, and I hate this.
Edit: I guess I need to specify, I am looking for Linux-native apps. A few of the suggestions so far have been Android, and I am not seeking to run anything in Waydroid for this.
i keep my music organized on-disk so that each song is placed at
<artist>/<album>/<track-number>-<title>.flac
. then i just use any file browser (e.g. rofi, or portfolio) to navigate it, and when i select a song it opens inmpv
. i installed theplaylistmanager
mpv script so that when i open any song, mpv queues everything else in that folder (so if i open track 01, the default behavior is gapless playback of the whole album). i also installed theuosc
script, which provides a UI that’s much friendlier than the default IMO.i find i prefer configuring just one media player and then using that for everything (music, audiobooks, videos, podcasts, etc). then for example when i decide i want to cast music to my TV, i only have to solve that once, and not separately for casting youtube, local videos, etc.