Skip to main content
WaveFlow
en
The next wave · 1.8.0 out now

Your music.Local and free.

WaveFlow plays the music you own — no subscription, no ads, no tracking. Daily Mix built from your own listening, synced lyrics, Hi-Res sound and casting to your speakers, all on your computer.

Download v1.8.0View source

Available on Linux, macOS and Windows

  • Open source GPL-3.0
  • No account required
  • Zero telemetry
  • 15.5K downloads

New in 1.8.0

Feel every word.

Your music takes centre stage. Follow every word, lose yourself in the artwork, and keep the lyrics close.

WaveFlowInteractive concept · 1.8.0

Slow Light

WaveFlow Sessions

DEMO
Visual demo · no audio0:00 / 0:24

Word by word

Let the night unfold

Word-by-word highlighting. Original lyrics, romanization and translations together in the immersive view.

01

Sing every word.

Progressive karaoke highlighting, translations and romanization. With floating lyrics, the words follow you beyond the player. Pick a colour for the line being sung, or let it change with every line.

02

Let your library set the mood.

Playlist headers take their colour from your covers. Canvas, animated artwork and the immersive view put your music in the picture.

03

Hear the whole detail.

Exclusive output on Windows, Linux and macOS. DSD over PCM for compatible DACs, plus album ReplayGain and clipping prevention.

Features

Everything a modern player should do.

No feature thrown in for hype. Every detail serves your daily listening.

  • Auto-generated Daily Mix

    Three mixes regenerated from your last 90 days of listening, bucketed by tempo: Calm, Groove, Energy.

    Plus a rule-based smart-playlist editor: genre, BPM, year, rating, format, Hi-Res, likes.

  • Audiophile audio engine

    Your collection in high resolution, with gapless playback, ReplayGain and DSD support.

    New in 1.8.0: exclusive output on all three systems, DSD over PCM, album ReplayGain, and Opus and AIFF files.

  • Synced lyrics

    Lyrics that follow the song, found online for you or read from the files beside your music — local lyrics are always checked first.

    Fix a line or write your own in the built-in editor, then keep it in the file or beside it.

  • Listening stats

    Your year of listening at a glance: most-played tracks, artists and albums, favourite genres and the hours you listen most.

    Hide what doesn't interest you. Everything is worked out on your computer and never sent anywhere.

  • 5 interface styles, 70 looks

    Studio, Editorial, Lounge, Pulse and Liquid — combine each with the 14 colour themes for 70 combinations, saved per profile.

    Bundled fonts, per-style motion, a 'Pick a vibe' onboarding step. Zero Google Fonts request at runtime.

  • Album covers that move

    Your covers come alive during playback. Motion Artwork finds animated artwork for you, or you can choose your own local video for each album.

    An optional local cache keeps them offline. Albums without motion art show their normal cover, exactly like before.

  • WaveFlow Wrapped

    Your annual recap, told in a few slides: top artists, minutes listened, peak hours, dominant genres.

    Computed locally from your history. No data sent, no metric shared by default.

  • Mood Radio

    Five dynamic stations — Focus, Chill, Workout, Party, Sleep — filtered by tempo and energy from your own library.

    Plus per-artist radio: one click on any artist starts an infinite flow of similar tracks.

  • Rich artist pages

    Biography, clickable similar artists, full discography and fan count for every artist in your library.

    Fold the biography away to put the discography first. Biographies come from Deezer or TheAudioDB, or write your own.

  • Your speakers, and your phone as a remote

    Send your library to Sonos, Yamaha MusicCast, Kodi, VLC or any other network player at home. No pairing, no cloud.

    New in 1.8.0: control WaveFlow from your phone with any MPD remote app. Both stay off until you turn them on in Settings → Connections.

  • Smooth transitions

    Tracks blend into one another. The smart mode leaves an album's own transitions alone, so live records and concept albums play the way they were made.

    Also: loop a passage from A to B, and play anywhere from half to double speed.

  • Search that sorts itself

    Type a few letters and the results come back sorted into artists, albums and titles, so you land on the right one straight away.

    Works from the keyboard, without leaving the page you're on.

  • Discord & Last.fm

    Show your current track on Discord and keep your listening history on Last.fm.

    Your keyboard's media keys and your system's media controls work too.

  • A library that respects you

    Point WaveFlow at your folders and it keeps up as they change. Browse by artist, album or genre, or straight through your folders.

    Fix titles, artists and albums in the tag editor, for one track or a whole selection at once. Choose your own covers, find duplicates, and let backups run on a schedule.

  • Free and open source

    No account, no ads, no tracking — and it stays that way. The code is public on GitHub under GPL-3.0.

    Available in 17 languages.

Smart Playlists

Daily Mix, made for you.

Three mixes regenerated from your last 90 days of plays. Artists are bucketed by their average tempo so each mix stays coherent from morning to night.

  • Lo-fi, ambient, ballads. For working, reading, drifting off.

  • Pop, rock, hip-hop, indie. The mid-tempo that owns your afternoons.

  • Dance, drum & bass, metal. For workouts, cleaning, long drives.

One click from the home view. Deterministic algorithm — the same listening week yields the same order.

Custom smart playlists

Build your own rules.

Beyond the auto Daily Mix, build living playlists from predicates: genre, BPM, year, audio format, POPM rating, likes. The playlist re-materializes whenever new tracks land in your library.

SmartPlaylistRules · Custom
  • Genre
  • BPM
  • Year
  • Rating ≥ 3★
  • Liked only
  • Hi-Res only
  • FLAC format
  • Duration

// example: { genre: "Jazz", year_min: 1955, year_max: 1965, hi_res_only: true, sort: "random", limit: 100 }

Mood Radio

Five moods. Always your library.

WaveFlow groups your tracks into five dynamic stations based on tempo, energy and spectral signature — then jumps between them as your mood shifts.

Each session draws from your local catalog. No streaming, no sponsored suggestions.

The home you won't leave.

Personalized greeting, at-a-glance stats, Wrapped banner, Mood Radio and Daily Mix — all in one view. Dark mode by default, light mode for those who like it.

Interface styles

Five looks. Seventy combinations.

An interface style reshapes the whole app — layout, typography, glass and motion. Pair any of the five styles with the 14 colour themes for 70 looks, each saved per profile. Switch from Settings → Appearance, or pick a vibe during onboarding.

5 styles × 14 themes = 70 combinations

  • Studio

    Default

    A clean interface that puts your music first. Dark by default, this is the look WaveFlow ships with.

  • Editorial

    Broadsheet

    A magazine layout with Playfair Display serifs, halftone artwork and the ornate WaveFlow Gazette masthead.

  • Lounge

    Warm glass

    Warm burgundy glass over blurred artwork, for a soft, enveloping atmosphere.

  • Pulse

    Neon club

    An OLED neon-club aesthetic with a dual magenta/cyan aurora and a vinyl-spin cover that mirrors playback.

  • Liquid

    Vibrancy

    Layers of glass and transparency that take on your theme’s colours, in light or dark mode.

All fonts are bundled — Playfair Display, Lora, Space Grotesk, Space Mono, DM Sans. Zero Google Fonts request at runtime.

Artist pages

Much more than a track list.

For every artist in your library: biography, clickable similar artists, full discography, fan count — plus a per-artist radio to keep exploring.

Biographies and similar artists come from Deezer if enabled; otherwise your library is enough.

Network casting

Your amp, no Sonos S2 required.

WaveFlow announces itself on the LAN as a UPnP MediaServer. Any DLNA renderer — Sonos, Yamaha MusicCast, Kodi, VLC — discovers it and plays your library, with no proprietary pairing and no cloud.

WaveFlow

MediaServer:1

  • Sonos S2
  • Yamaha MusicCast
  • Kodi
  • VLC
  • BubbleUPnP
  1. 01

    SSDP announce

    Periodic broadcast on 239.255.255.250:1900 — renderers find WaveFlow with zero configuration.

  2. 02

    DIDL-Lite browse

    Your artists and albums show up in the renderer's UI just like a native media library.

  3. 03

    HTTP Range streaming

    Progressive playback with HTTP Range — accurate scrub, resume, efficient transfers.

Integrations

Plays nice with your stack.

WaveFlow plugs into what you already use — but never depends on any of these services to run.

  • DiscordRich Presence
  • Last.fmScrobbling + bios
  • LRCLIBSynced lyrics
  • DeezerMetadata
  • MPRISLinux media keys
  • SMTCWindows Now Playing

Plugin store

Add more of what moves you.

New releases to discover, artwork in motion and even more lyrics. Pick your extensions right inside WaveFlow.

  • Download in the app

    Release Radar

    Find new albums and singles from the artists in your library, brought together in a dedicated view.

    Discover more from the artists you already listen to.

  • Download in the app

    Motion Artwork

    Bring your Now Playing screen to life with animated album artwork.

    Your covers move while your music plays.

  • Download in the app

    Word By Word Lyrics

    Sing along with word-by-word synced lyrics, translations and romanization when available.

    The words, their meaning, their pronunciation: follow every track.

  • Download in the app

    Canvas

    Add short looping videos to your Now Playing screen.

    A short visual loop that draws you deeper into the track.

Web Radio

Already included

Thousands of radio stations from around the world, browsable by country, language or genre. Web Radio comes with WaveFlow, ready to play.

Open the Plugin store in WaveFlow settings to install extensions. Enable, configure or uninstall them from your installed plugins.

Local-first

You own your music. Let's take it back.

  • No subscription

    Your files, your player, for life. Download the app, that's it.

  • No DRM

    FLAC, ALAC, MP3, AAC, OGG, WAV, DSD — your files open everywhere, forever.

  • No tracking

    Online features — lyrics, artist info, updates, plugins, radio — are optional, and offline mode turns them all off in one click.

  • No cloud

    It all lives on your disk. One SQLite per profile. Zero-effort migration.

  • Hi-Res & DSD

    24-bit decode up to 192 kHz, native DSF/DFF. The Hi-Res badge lights up automatically.

  • Multiple profiles

    One library per person, fully isolated. Exportable .waveflow archive and scheduled auto-backup.

Download

WaveFlow v1.8.0 for your system.

Signed binaries, verifiable with .sig. No third-party installers, no embedded telemetry.

v1.8.0

Or install with your package manager

Updates keep flowing through the tool you already use.

  • Windows · winget

    winget install InstaZDLL.WaveFlow

  • Arch · AUR

    yay -S waveflow-bin

  • Fedora · Copr

    sudo dnf copr enable instazdll/waveflow && sudo dnf install waveflow

  • Debian / Ubuntu · APT

    sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://packages.buildkite.com/instazdll/waveflow/gpgkey | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/waveflow.gpg echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/waveflow.gpg] https://packages.buildkite.com/instazdll/waveflow/any/ any main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/waveflow.list sudo apt update && sudo apt install wave-flow

No Homebrew cask yet on macOS — grab the .dmg above. The Debian package is wave-flow (kebab-case, per the Debian naming spec).

View all assets on GitHub

Frequently asked

If yours isn't here, open an issue on GitHub.

  • Is WaveFlow really free?

    Yes, and it always will be. WaveFlow is released under GPL-3.0. No subscription, no premium tier, no ads.

  • How do I install WaveFlow v1.8.0?

    Use the package manager that fits your platform: winget install InstaZDLL.WaveFlow on Windows, yay -S waveflow-bin on Arch, the Copr repo on Fedora (dnf copr enable instazdll/waveflow), or the APT repo on Debian/Ubuntu (the package is wave-flow). Or grab the binary on the GitHub releases page: the Linux AppImage is portable (chmod +x), or install the .deb / .rpm. On macOS, open the .dmg and drag WaveFlow into Applications — the bundle isn't Apple-Developer-signed, so right-click → Open the first time (or run xattr -cr /Applications/WaveFlow.app). On Windows, the .msi is silent, the .exe a classic installer.

  • Which audio formats are supported?

    MP3, FLAC, ALAC, AAC, Opus, OGG Vorbis, WAV and AIFF, plus DSD (DSF / DFF), converted to PCM or, on a compatible DAC, sent natively as DSD over PCM (DoP). Hi-Res badges light up automatically at 24-bit or ≥ 44.1 kHz.

  • How do Daily Mixes work?

    WaveFlow scans your last 90 days of plays, buckets your artists by average tempo (< 95 BPM, 95-130, ≥ 130) and materializes three deterministic playlists — plus five Mood Radio stations (Focus, Chill, Workout, Party, Sleep) filtered by tempo and energy. A 'Regenerate' button on the home view is all you need to refresh them. And you can build your own smart playlists from rules.

  • Can I cast to my hi-fi?

    Yes. WaveFlow exposes your library as a DLNA / UPnP server. Sonos S2, Yamaha MusicCast, Kodi, VLC or any compatible renderer sees it appear on the network — no cloud, no proprietary pairing. Toggle it from Settings → Connections.

  • Does my data leave my machine?

    Not unless you use a feature that needs it. Your library, plays, playlists and stats are stored in SQLite on your computer. Online features — artwork, lyrics and artist info (Deezer, Last.fm, LRCLIB), scrobbling, update checks, plugins and web radio — only reach their services when you use them, and a global offline mode cuts them all in one click.

  • Does WaveFlow replace a streaming service?

    For streaming, no. For your local library, yes — with comparable interface quality, auto Daily Mix, Hi-Res, DLNA, and zero cloud dependency.

  • Does it work with Discord and Last.fm?

    Yes. Discord Rich Presence shows your current track and its album artwork; it is on by default and can be turned off in Settings → Connections. Last.fm scrobbling is opt-in: authenticated, with a persistent queue and automatic reconnect.

  • Can I contribute?

    Gladly. The project is on GitHub, written in Rust (Tauri 2) and React 19 + TypeScript. Issues, PRs and translations welcome.

  • Can I get beta releases?

    Yes. WaveFlow has an opt-in beta update channel — switch to it in Settings → Maintenance to get pre-release builds early, or stay on stable. You can switch back at any time.

  • Can I sync my library across machines?

    Yes, with a server you host yourself: WaveFlow can connect to WaveFlow Server, an open-source music server, currently in beta and shipped as a Docker image. Your library, favourites, ratings and playlists then follow you from one machine to the next, and any Subsonic app can play it too. For a one-off move, the .waveflow export bundles your profile, database and artwork into a single archive.

  • Is there an offline mode?

    Your music plays without a connection — that's the whole point. The global offline mode cuts every online feature, from Deezer, Last.fm and LRCLIB to updates and plugins, in one click.

  • Can I control WaveFlow from my phone?

    Yes. WaveFlow can act as an MPD server, so any MPD remote app on your phone or tablet can play, pause, skip and choose what plays next, over your home network. It is off until you turn it on in Settings → Connections.

  • Does WaveFlow show lyrics word by word?

    Yes. When the lyrics carry word timing, each word fills in as it is sung, in the immersive view, the lyrics panel, the mini-player and the floating desktop lyrics. For lyrics timed line by line, WaveFlow can estimate the words' timing, and translations and romanization can be shown alongside.

Take your music back.

WaveFlow v1.8.0 is out for Linux, macOS and Windows. Install it with winget, the AUR, Copr or APT — or download the binaries on GitHub: AppImage, .deb, .rpm, .dmg, .msi.

Download v1.8.0View source