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 like using Gapless, though I’m a sucker for GTK4 apps and I’m not sure it has the artist -> album UX you’re looking for.
+1 for Gapless. My library is not nearly as large, but it’s still plenty quick (no noticeable delay) with my 1 digit gigabytes library and IMHO the best native feeling media player on Phosh/GNOME Mobile.
It also does the Album -> Artist -> Song thing (which made me notice that I still have not fixed every error in metadata I managed to add to a part of my Library by blindly applying musicbraiz suggestions via Tagger, but that’s just a me thing).