The 12 best local music players on Android in 2022

For many audiophiles playing locally stored music is the way to go since streaming often means compromising on compression. This is why AP has compiled a roundup of its favorite local music players, a hand-picked list of the best Android apps currently available. So if you’re looking for a worthy local music playback app for Android that offers a rich feature set like a built-in equalizer and a wide range of codec support, you’ve come to the right place. So whatever your music playing needs, there is an app waiting for a new phone to call home. Of course, it’s not possible to cover all the local music playing apps in the Play Store, so if there are any popular releases you think we missed, leave a comment!

Poweramp Music Player

Poweramp is as powerful as its name suggests. Along with playing a myriad of local music file types, it lets you import HTTP streams from sites like Digitally Imported. It offers Android Auto, Chromecast, and Google Assistant support to bridge the gaping hole left by Play Music’s untimely departure. Bass heads can adjust the bass and treble from a decidedly user-friendly equalizer interface, and there is even Direct Volume Control (DVC) for extended dynamic range and deeper bass. If you want to listen to music loudly from your phone, you can select the “Speaker (Loud)” setting in the equalizer to rapidly increase the gain and get loud results.

I like Poweramp’s overall look and feel. It’s easy to find the menu item you’re looking for, whether you’re fielding playlists, streams, or all songs. If you’re putting on a party—even if it’s just you alone, as per these COVID times—you can choose from several animated visualizations that either appear over the interface or take over your screen as an ambient display of sorts. Poweramp is a very robust app, with even more features buried in the Settings. The app is free to try for 15 days, so you can thumb through everything it does before committing for $5.

HiBy Music

If you’re looking to play lossless hi-fi audio, HiBy Music is a solid contender that offers a wide range of support for multiple codecs. DSD(DSF,DFF,DST), ISO, WAV, FLAC, AIFF, M4A, AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis are all supported, and you can even play ISO images. The app offers direct USB audio output, which is great if you use a USB DAC. There’s even a 10-band EQ built-in.

Design-wise, the app is intuitive enough to navigate easily, though some things are left unexplained on the Play Store listing, like what the $10 IAP is for. Well, that’s for a subscription to MQA, a high-res streaming option. Otherwise, HiBy Music is completely free to use, making it an excellent choice for all of you audiophiles out there.

jetAudio HD Music Player

Team Jet’s jetAudio HD has been around for a while, dating all the way back to 2012. It’s an extremely robust app that offers tons of codec support along with a solid 20-band equalizer. Heck, you can even edit your tags within the app to clean up any erroneous info in your library. While the listed app is the premium version that retails for $3.99, there is also a free version available if you’d like to take the app for a spin to see if it’s up to snuff to handle your FLAC library.

Bass boost is built-in, there are 32 equalizer presets to get you going, and there are visualizations you can use to spice up your phone or tablet when jamming to some tunes. Plus, the UI is pretty intuitive, which is more than can be said for many music apps. All around, jetAudio HD is a great option if you require a feature-packed music player.

Music Player Go

If you like the idea of using a local music player that’s keen on open source, Music Player Go proudly waves the flag. The app is powered by Kotlin, and because it’s consistently updated by the developer, Music Player Go plays nice with Android 10 and 11’s scoped storage. You can grab Music Player Go from F-Droid, the open-source Android app store, or sideload it directly from GitHub.

Music Player Go hails all the music playing abilities you need in a local playback app, including simple queue management, a favorites list, and precise volume control that’s separate from the device controls. There’s also edge-to-edge support, dark and light themes in various color schemes, and the ability to hide albums and folders with songs and sounds you’d preferably not include in your shuffle.

Omnia Music Player

Omnia looks like a Plain Jane on the outside, but inside it’s a full-featured music player with a strong emphasis on music playback. It’s the sister application to Pulsar Music Player, also on this list.

Omnia has all the standard features, like lossless audio support and smart playlists, and playback support for some very nuanced file types, including Windows Media playlists. It works with Google Cast and Android Auto, and it scrobbles to Last.FM. Omnia is nicely laid out in Material Design, but beyond dark and light modes, you’ll have to pay $2.99 for theming. The one-time price also unlocks a 10-band equalizer, 15 presets, and a reverb panel powered by Freeverb.

Pulsar Music Player

Pulsar Music Player is the sister app to Omnia Music Player, but its focus is on aesthetics. Choose Pulsar if you’re looking for a capable music player that lets you match its color scheme to the rest of your highly customized interface. The Pulsar interface is the same Material Design look as Omnia, but with a ton of dark and light color presets to choose from provided you pay the .99 for Pulsar Pro or subscribe through Google Play Pass. You can customize each of the themes, selecting colors for up to six different interface elements.

Pulsar has a couple of other standard music playback features, including smart playlists and lyrics display, as well as essential Google Cast and Android Auto support. Unlocking the app also gets you a 5-band equalizer controller, 9 presets, a bass booster, and a reverb option.

VLC for Android

Traditionalists love VLC for Android for its reliable simplicity and tons of utility. Those of you looking for something design-forward will find not much here besides a very barebones, no guff kind-of music playing experience. On the plus side, you can include video in your music playback.

VLC for Android is a full audio player with support for a ton of video and audio file types, including MKV, MP4, FLAC, and OGG. Media junkies can access internet streams, DVD ISOs, and disk shares. There’s also support for multi-track audio and subtitles. One minor caveat to consider is that the app’s gesture control is rather sensitive.

AIMP

If you’re keen on playlists and all that matters in your music life is the order in which you listen to songs, try out AIMP. This app’s primary focus is quick access to the lists you rely on to get you through your day-to-day. And though playlists exist on every other music player app featured here, the playlists you make in AIMP are embedded directly into the hamburger menu. Dig into the settings, and you’ll find options for theming, gesture control, and even choosing the criteria displayed in the file name during playback. And if what you love to do is listen to those playlists while driving, AIMP has Android Auto support.

Neutron Music Player

Okay, so Neutron Music Player may not look as appealing as many of the options in today’s list, but it’s actually one of the most audiophile-grade apps around. This is all thanks to its platform-independent in-house 32/64-bit audio engine, which is precisely how you can get the most out of your DAC, with an audio engine that excels at playing hi-res audio straight to the DAC, cutting out the middleman (the OS).

Not only is Neutron Music Player great for hi-res audio, but it also comes packed with features, like support for all audio codecs, along with a parametric equalizer, bit-perfect playback, and every other feature you’d expect from an audiophile-grade music app. So even though the UI looks a little dated and poorly laid out, it’s the tech behind the app that makes this release shine.

Simple Music Player

There’s a reason K.I.S.S. stands for “keep it simple, stupid.” Keeping it simple helps remove the chances of complications. And in the case of Simple Music Player, keeping it simple means focusing on local music playback.

Simple Music Player still gives you all the features you need from a beefier music player, including playlists, an equalizer with a handful of presets, color customization, and even a playback widget. There’s also a handy search button for quickly fetching what you’re looking for, and any new audio you download is added to the queue. Simple Music Player has no ads, and of the apps featured here, it asks for the fewest permissions. But there is no Google Cast integration, so you will have to find another method to send out music to a nearby smart speaker.

Oto Music

If you’re looking for something that’s genuinely free, then Oto Music should be on your radar. This full-featured music player offers gapless playback, fade in/out, synched lyrics, a sleep time, an inbuilt equalizer, a choice of 5 widgets, and the whole thing clocks in at under 5MB for the entire app. It’s small, easy to use, and supports a wide range of music codecs.

The best part is, you get all of this for free. All of it. Sure, the app contains in-app purchases, but these are optional and only exist for donating to the developer and nothing else. Best of all, the app is a looker, sporting both light and dark themes, with tons of animations abound to keep navigation looking real slick. So whether you require Android Auto support, Chromecast support, or simply enjoy free apps, Oto Music is a top option that easily competes with the paid apps in today’s list.

Musicolet

Musicolet puts a little more effort in terms of interface stylings, though it can seem a bit busy at times, and it’s not as customizable as some of the other apps here. If what you like is easy-to-make queues, Musicolet sings like the sound of its name. They’re easy to create, and for those with really massive music libraries, there’s a batch editor for editing tags and album art. You can choose how to peruse through those files with linear or hierarchical browsing.

For playback, Musicolet has it all, too: embedded lyrics, gapless playback, sleep timers, and shortcuts for your favorite album or playlists. There’s Android Auto support here, and light and dark themes, as well as a handy backup and restore feature.

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