Questions, and honest answers

A player for Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. It brings music from your own servers and from Apple Music, plus the books and podcasts on your Audiobookshelf, into one player, and then lets you get on with listening. Each kind gets one library of its own, however many servers feed it. It does not manage or edit those libraries, because your servers and Apple already do that.

Not yet. It is still being built and has not gone to the App Store. This site is where that will be announced.

Nothing. Lindale will be free. It was built for one person’s own listening, and there is nothing to earn from it.

No, the source is not published. The audio components it builds on are all permissively licensed, and their licence texts ship inside the app under Settings, in Acknowledgements.

Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, on macOS 26, iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and tvOS 26 or later. Each one gets a layout built for it. There is no Android, Windows or web version, and none is planned.

Not for music. Apple Music on its own is plenty, and Lindale then works as a calmer, album-first player for the subscription you already pay for. More about that. Books and podcasts are the exception: those come from an Audiobookshelf server, so without one you get a music player and no book shelf.

No. A server on its own is plenty too, and it is the side Lindale was designed around first. A subscription only matters for playing Apple Music content, and without one you get previews.

Never, and that is not a decision Lindale gets to make. Spotify does not allow third-party apps to play its catalogue: their platform lets an app control the official Spotify client, not stream the music itself. Apple Music does allow it, which is why it is the one subscription supported.

Anything that speaks OpenSubsonic, reachable over HTTPS. A self-signed certificate is fine. Navidrome is what gets used and tested daily. Others should work, since only documented endpoints are used, but they have not all been tried.

Yes, both. See audiobooks and podcasts. They come from an Audiobookshelf server, the only provider so far. Chapter marks come from that server, and your position and finished state go back to it.

Then that is all you see. A section turns up only when something you configured actually holds that kind of thing, so with no podcasts anywhere there is no Podcasts section on screen at all. It goes by what is really on a server rather than by what kind of server it is, which means a books-only Audiobookshelf puts no empty podcast shelf in front of you either.

No, only OpenSubsonic for music and Audiobookshelf for books and podcasts. Other kinds of server are an idea for later with no date on it, so do not count on it.

Yes. Add as many as you like, and browse them one at a time or all together. All Sources is one library rather than a stack of lists: the albums merge into a single wall, a record sitting on two servers shows up once with the copy you chose, and one search covers everything. Books and podcasts do the same on their own shelves. A queue still belongs to one source, because only one player can be playing.

Yes. Lindale explains what it could not verify and shows who issued the certificate, so you can recognise your own server. Accept it and that one certificate is trusted from then on, and if it ever changes you get asked again. Plain unencrypted HTTP is the one thing it will not do.

FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, DSD, and a long tail of older formats. Musepack and TrueAudio are the two that did not make it. Books and podcasts take a different route through the system’s own player, and whatever Audiobookshelf serves up plays.

For files from your own server, when the output route allows it. The original file is fetched rather than a transcode, and the output device is asked to move to the recording’s own rate. On the Mac that usually lands, unless the route is Bluetooth, AirPlay or an output fixed at one rate. On iPhone and iPad the system has more of the final say. Apple Music sits outside the claim entirely. Where it does not work out, Lindale marks the track resampled rather than pretend.

No. AirPlay re-encodes and Bluetooth codecs resample, so there is nothing left to be exact about. Lindale marks the track as resampled instead of showing a badge that means nothing.

Yes, for tracks that share a format, which within an album they almost always do, so live records and continuous mixes play through. Two tracks with genuinely different rates need the hardware reset between them, and that short pause beats resampling either one.

Because a slider in the app would mean scaling every sample, and that is the thing all this care is meant to avoid. Volume stays with your keyboard, your amplifier and the system. No equaliser either, for the same reason.

No. Lindale plays things, it does not curate them. Playlists, tags and adding albums stay in your server’s own interface and in Apple’s apps, which do those jobs properly. None of that has a date on it, and none of it is ruled out.

No. Search returns albums and artists, which suits an album-first app and does mean you cannot look up a track by name. Nothing planned there, though it is not ruled out.

Only by luck, and only for music from your own server. What you played recently is still in the cache and may well play without a connection, but the cache clears itself as it fills and there is no way to keep an album on purpose. Books and podcasts are not cached at all, so those want the server within reach. Do not plan a flight around any of it.

No. Two completely different players are doing the work, so a queue belongs to one source and starting something elsewhere begins a new one. Browsing and searching do span everything at once.

Not by itself. Lindale reports plays to your own server, and passing them on is a switch inside Navidrome, which is already good at it. That also keeps another set of credentials out of a music player.

Not planned, which is not the same as never.

None. No analytics, no ads, no tracking library, no account. It talks to the servers you configure, to Apple Music if you connect it, and to your own iCloud, all of which need what they need to do their job. There is nothing of mine in that list, so nothing about what you play comes back to me.

In the system Keychain, one per source, and never in a file or a log. An OpenSubsonic server gets a token worked out from your password rather than the password itself. An Audiobookshelf server gets the API key you gave it, because that is what it authenticates with. Neither goes anywhere but the server it belongs to, or, if you ask for it, straight across to your own Apple TV.

Because that is the shorter route, and the safer one. tvOS is the one platform Apple leaves out of Keychain sync, so your passwords were never going to arrive there by themselves. They could have travelled through iCloud another way, and deliberately do not: Apple encrypts your Keychain end to end by default, and app data in iCloud only once you turn on Advanced Data Protection. Rather than move a password somewhere weaker, the Apple TV asks a device standing in the same room. Apple’s own pairing does the finding, the encrypting and the asking, it only ever reaches devices on your account, and Lindale needs no access to your network for it.

Partly. Your sources sync through your own iCloud, your credentials through iCloud Keychain, and so do your hidden albums and preferred copies. An Apple TV is the exception, and asks a nearby iPhone or iPad for its credentials instead. Where you got to in a record stays on the device. Where you got to in a book or an episode goes back to Audiobookshelf.