llms.txt
# Daft Music
> Daft Music is a beautiful player made for Apple Music. It replaces Apple's own Music app with a
> purpose-built interface for macOS and iOS: the same catalog and the same library you already
> have, reimagined with more speed, more elegance, and a layer of features Apple does not ship.
## Overview
Daft Music is "Apple Music, done over." It is not a streaming service of its own and it has no
catalog of its own; it connects to your existing Apple Music account and library (playlists,
favorites, and stations) and gives you a better daily-driver client for it. The premise is taste
plus performance: strip the experience down to its cleanest form, a grid of artwork with playback
at the bottom and search at the top, then go further than Apple on visual polish, animation, and
capability.
It is built from the ground up for Liquid Glass and native performance, so it feels at home on
Apple platforms and stays fast. On top of the core listening experience it adds things Apple's own
app does not: hand-curated Mixtapes, AI detection, internet radio that names the song playing,
parallax cover art on iPhone, cross-service import from Spotify and Tidal, Last.fm scrobbling,
Private Mode, deep Siri and Shortcuts integration, and cross-service share links.
It is made for the discerning Apple Music listener who cares how their software looks and feels,
and who will pay a little extra for a client that is more elegant and more capable than the
default. That focus is reflected in recognition from Apple, MacStories, and Product Hunt.
- Platforms: macOS (Mac App Store) and iOS / iPhone (App Store)
- Price: Free to download; full playback requires a Daft Music subscription
($1.99/month or $17.99/year), with 30-second song previews otherwise.
- Requirement: An active Apple Music subscription
- Developer: OBRHOFF Software Labs GmbH, an independent studio building native Mac music
clients since 2017 (see Developer, below).
## Design & Experience
- Beautifully designed, native interface that feels at home on macOS and iOS.
- Built from the ground up for Liquid Glass, with a frosted-glass treatment on playback controls
for readability; the Outfit font by default, switchable to the system font in settings.
- Native performance: built natively for lightning-fast playback and smooth navigation.
- Now Playing, beautifully animated: album art comes alive with fluid native animations.
- Animated (motion) cover art support for a living Now Playing screen.
- Parallax Artwork (Experimental, iPhone only): estimates depth for the album cover on device so
the art gains real depth and shifts as you tilt. Needs an Apple silicon iPhone on iOS 27, and
stands down under Low Power Mode or Reduce Motion.
- Personalization: light/dark themes, custom accent colors, font selection, cover-tint UI that
colors the interface from the current artwork, and alternate app icons.
- One-thumb navigation on iPhone: Home, Library, and Search in a floating bar; pull down to
reach pinned playlists, stations, and favorites.
## Playback
- Full-screen player with artwork, seek slider, and a tabbed player/queue view.
- Full queue management with reorderable items, shuffle, and repeat modes.
- Apple Music playback plus radio and station support (Apple Music stations and artist stations).
- Custom curated radio: personalized, continuously generated stations tailored to your taste.
- Radio: a searchable catalog of internet radio stations you can save and filter by country.
Distinct from Apple Music stations and from artist/song radio.
- Shazam Radio Detection: while an internet radio station plays, it identifies each song and
shows the real track. On by default; applies to radio playback only.
- System lock-screen / media controls.
## Mixtapes
- Mixtapes: editorially hand-curated tracklists, each put together by a *Selector* with their own
page, country and tags, and resolved track by track to Apple Music.
- Browse and search mixtapes and selectors, play from any track, copy a mixtape as a real playlist
in your library, pin one, or open the original source episode.
- Mixtapes are curated editorially; you cannot author one in the app.
- On iPhone, Mixtapes is one of the four main tabs.
## AI
- Check for AI: on any track, album or artist, checks for signs it was machine-generated,
returning "Made by AI", "Might be AI" or "No AI found". macOS and iOS, with no extra
requirements.
- AI Detection: a live listener that checks what is actually playing and raises a card only when a
track reads as generated. macOS only, and needs Daft Backstage.
- Both are honest about their limits: they can flag a track but cannot clear one, and some AI
tracks still read as human. A verdict is an estimate, not a guarantee.
## Library
- Browse your library by tracks, albums, artists, and playlists.
- Create and edit playlists.
- Home / discovery feed with featured carousels and grids.
- Fast search across tracks, albums, artists, and playlists.
- Pin favorite library items for quick access.
## Import & Migration
- Import your playlists and library from Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal.
- Per-playlist selection when importing, and subscribed playlists keep syncing afterwards.
## Integrations
- Last.fm scrobbling with account connection.
- Private Mode: while on, what you play is not scrobbled to Last.fm, not saved to your history, and
not used to shape your Apple Music recommendations.
- Share links resolved by musiccloud (https://musiccloud.io): send a song, album or artist and the
recipient opens it on their own service, across about twenty streaming services and stores.
- Siri and Shortcuts via App Intents: play a track, album, artist, playlist, or station;
play/pause, next/previous, skip, and search, all by voice or shortcut.
- Share songs as video or image to Instagram Stories, Reels, and square video.
- Handoff / Continuity to move playback between your Apple devices.
- AirPlay support for streaming to compatible speakers and devices (requires Daft Backstage,
the free companion app; see below).
## Sync & Backup
- iCloud sync (CloudKit) to keep your setup consistent across devices.
- Library backup and restore via exportable/importable backup files.
## Daft Backstage (macOS companion)
Daft Backstage is a small, free helper app for Daft Music on macOS. macOS does not let a sandboxed
App Store app reach the audio it plays, so Backstage runs outside that sandbox, captures Daft
Music's decoded audio and hands it back to the app for processing. It is a menu-bar background
agent with no window of its own.
Installing it is entirely optional; Daft Music works fully without it. It unlocks three features:
- Streaming to AirPlay speakers, headphones and other output devices.
- The equalizer, applied to Daft Music's own audio rather than the whole system.
- Instrument isolation, separating vocals, drums and instruments in real time.
Details:
- Platform: macOS 26.4 or later
- Price: Free
- Distribution: Developer ID signed and notarized by Apple, distributed outside the Mac App Store
because the App Store sandbox does not permit audio capture.
- Download and instructions: https://daftmusic.app/backstage
## Daft Slop
Daft Slop is a separate, free iPhone app from the same developer. It listens to music playing
nearby, identifies the track, and checks whether a machine made it, then shows a verdict: Human,
Unsure or AI.
- Platform: iPhone
- Price: Free
- No account or Apple Music subscription needed
- AI detection is an estimate, not a guarantee, and it does not catch every AI track.
- Page: https://daftmusic.app/daftslop
## Developer
Daft Music is built by OBRHOFF Software Labs GmbH, an independent studio that has been shipping
native music clients for the Mac since 2017.
- DaftCloud (2017–present): the studio's native macOS client for SoundCloud, rated 4.5 out of 5
from more than 20,000 ratings worldwide, and still actively maintained after eight years.
- Daft Music applies the same approach to Apple Music that DaftCloud applied to SoundCloud: a
design-led, native third-party client for a streaming service you already subscribe to, with
Shazam recognition, AirPlay, and a free download with a subscription for full playback.
## Recognition
- Featured by Apple
- Featured by MacStories: https://www.macstories.net/reviews/a-fresh-spin-on-apple-music-exploring-daft-musics-liquid-glass-design/
- Featured on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/products/daft-music
## Links
- Home: https://daftmusic.app/
- Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daft-music-radio-mixtapes/id6748985865
- iPhone / App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daft-music-radio-mixtapes/id6748985865
- DaftCloud (by the same developer): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daftcloud/id1320450034
- Daft Backstage (macOS companion app): https://daftmusic.app/backstage
- Daft Slop (AI music checker for iPhone): https://daftmusic.app/daftslop
- Privacy Policy: https://daftmusic.app/privacy
- Terms & Conditions: https://daftmusic.app/terms
- Imprint / Impressum: https://daftmusic.app/imprint
