Adaptive music, podcast and streaming player plus memo recorder for the Linux desktop and Phosh smartphones (Librem 5, PinePhone & co.) – one adaptive interface for both, with a built-in MCP server for remote control by an AI assistant (e.g. Claude).
Large parts of Emilia's code, its translations and the release notes were written
with the help of an AI assistant (Claude) and reviewed, tested and shipped by a
human maintainer. If that matters to you, now you know.
App ID:
de.cais.Emilia· License: GPL-3.0-or-later
 Library by artist — light & dark theme |
 Artist detail — photo, play options & properties |
 All albums with covers |
 Podcasts |
 Internet radio & recordings |
 YouTube as a music source |
 Voice memos |
 Listening statistics |
 10-band equalizer with cascade |
 Share between devices over the LAN |
 Preferences — appearance & design |
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Adaptive phone layout (portrait)
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Adaptive interface – works in narrow portrait (phone) and on the desktop; the navigation collapses automatically on mobile.
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Scan a music folder – recursive background scan, tags & covers via
lofty. Audio files are only ever read, never modified. -
Several views of the library:
- File system – reliable navigation even with patchy tags (important for audio dramas). Additional music sources (a second local folder or a Nextcloud/WebDAV remote) appear here as their own tabs.
- Artists – a single tap opens a subpage with the artist's albums (with covers) and, below them, the single tracks (guest/feature tracks and tracks without an album). An album opens its track list.
- Albums – all full albums with covers.
- Singles & Compilations – one-artist singles/EPs and various-artists compilations are split off into their own sections, classified automatically from the tags (and overridable per album).
- Concerts – mark and collect live/unplugged recordings; an import suggests likely candidates.
- Favorites, Audiobooks, Statistics.
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Cover & photo galleries – open an album's or artist's detail view to pick among several cover/photo candidates (swipe the carousel or tap the dots to jump straight to one), or upload your own image. Choosing an artist photo never changes the album covers.
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Playback – play/pause, next/previous, shuffle, a whole-queue repeat toggle (at the end of the queue it starts over), a queue, and a bottom mini-player with a seek bar (scrub through long tracks).
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Gapless & crossfade – seamless transitions for sequential local queues (albums, concerts, audiobooks); an optional, configurable crossfade overlaps the end of one track with the start of the next. Streams, podcasts, YouTube, Nextcloud and shuffle keep the normal end-of-track path.
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Sleep timer – the header "zzz" button starts a countdown from a preset; the volume gently fades out over the final two minutes before playback stops.
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Quick filter – a funnel button reveals an inline search bar that filters the list you're looking at (Files / Artists / Albums …) live, separate from the global search dialog.
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Appearance – an optional blurred background (the built-in concert photo, your own image, or the now-playing cover) with several blur styles, custom chrome & text colors stored separately for the light and dark theme, whole-app UI scaling, and a system-tray icon with close-/start-to-tray.
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Lock screen & media keys – control via MPRIS (play/pause, next/previous, seek) including title/album display.
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Playlists – create your own playlists, add tracks/albums/folders via the options, play, rename and remove individual tracks.
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Lyrics & karaoke – lyrics are read from the file's tags, then the local cache, then looked up online at LRCLIB. A pulldown on the file-info page shows them; for time-synced lyrics a karaoke view highlights and scrolls the active line. Fetched lyrics are only cached in the database, never written back into the audio files.
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Podcasts – subscribe to feeds by RSS address or search the iTunes directory; episodes are streamed directly, with show notes, chapter marks and resume.
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Streaming / Internet radio – add a stream URL or search stations worldwide (Radio-Browser API). Live now-playing title from the ICY metadata, plus a timeshift recorder:
- a rolling ring buffer (configurable up to 60 minutes) lets you record a song even after it has played – press record at the end of a song and the whole song is saved;
- automatic split at song boundaries, online cover/metadata embedded into the saved file;
- saved songs live in a dedicated Recordings section. From there you can edit a recording in a built-in waveform editor – mark a region, cut it out with the scissors, zoom (+/− or scroll) and pan, scrub a timeline and play from the playhead (Save re-encodes and overwrites the file) – or add a recording to your music library as a regular track.
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Voice memos – record from the microphone with the player-bar record button; memos collect in their own Memo section with Recent and Category tabs (organise them into freely named categories). A memo can be trimmed in the same waveform editor as a recording (saved as Ogg/Opus).
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YouTube – search for tracks and play them in-app, or add a track to your library. The section can be hidden in the navigation if you don't need it.
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Nextcloud – connect a Nextcloud (login QR code or manual), then index its music into the library so the tracks behave 1:1 like local songs (Artists, Albums, queue, resume). Audio streams on demand; duration, covers and photos are cached locally for performance.
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Device sync – share library/resume data between devices over the LAN with a QR-code pairing handshake.
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MCP server (optional) – expose the library and playback to an MCP host (e.g. Claude) over a local, token-protected endpoint, to browse and control Emilia by natural language: library, playlists, podcasts, radio stations, tag editing, downloads and device sync (offer, send and accept transfers). Off by default; enable it under Settings.
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Equalizer with cascade – 10-band EQ (
equalizer-10bands), live during playback. Settings apply in the order Global → Artist → Album → Track (the most specific level wins), additionally per output device/headphones (PipeWire sink). -
Fetch online metadata (optional) – from open sources:
- album covers via MusicBrainz + Cover Art Archive
- artist photos via Deezer (no key required)
- track recognition via AcoustID/Chromaprint (needs
fpcalc+ a free AcoustID key) for files with patchy tags - extra image galleries via fanart.tv (optional key)
Everything is stored only in the local database and the XDG cache – never in the audio files.
Pre-built, GPG-signed bundle for x86_64 and aarch64 – ideal for the phone, no build tools needed. From the project repo (GitHub Pages):
flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists emilia https://misc-de.github.io/emilia/de.cais.Emilia.flatpakrepo
flatpak install emilia de.cais.Emilia
flatpak run de.cais.EmiliaUpdate later with flatpak update de.cais.Emilia. The signing key is already
embedded in the .flatpakrepo file – nothing needs to be imported separately.
Prefer to compile it yourself? See Building from source & project layout.
- Start Emilia and open Settings (the ⋮ button) – at the bottom of the sidebar on the desktop, in the title bar on mobile.
- Pick the music folder – Emilia scans the library in the background.
- Browse and play via Artists / Albums / File system.
- Optional: under Search, enable "Fetch automatically" to fill in covers,
artist photos and (with
fpcalc+ an AcoustID key) missing tracks. - Equalizer: long-press a track/album/artist → Equalizer, or the global EQ in the settings.
- Open the Streaming section, tap + to add a stream URL or search for a station worldwide.
- Tap a station to play; the player bar shows a red record button next to play/pause. Set the recording buffer under Settings → Cache & recordings (0 turns it off). Recorded songs appear under Recordings.
- Long-press a recording for its detail page: Play, Add to library, Edit (open the waveform editor to trim it) or delete it.
- Settings → Library → Connect to Nextcloud: scan the login QR code (the camera starts immediately) or expand the manual entry, then set the music folder. On connect the cloud library is indexed in the background and shows up under Artists/Albums.
- An AcoustID key (free, for fingerprint track recognition) and a fanart.tv key (for extra images) can be stored under Settings → Search. Without keys those phases are simply skipped.
- Covers (MusicBrainz/Cover Art Archive) and artist photos (Deezer) work without a key.
| Content | Path |
|---|---|
| Library & settings | ~/.local/share/emilia/library.db |
| Cover cache | ~/.cache/emilia/covers/ |
| Artist photo cache | ~/.cache/emilia/artists/ |
| Remote (Nextcloud) cache | ~/.local/share/emilia/cache/<source-id>/ |
All settings (music folder, API keys, window state …) live in the SQLite database.
Want to compile Emilia yourself or hack on it? The full build instructions (dependencies for Arch, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora), how to run, install and build the Flatpak, plus the source-tree layout, live in a separate page:
➡️ Building from source & project layout
For normal use you don't need any of that – the Flatpak above is all you need.
Emilia builds on many open-source projects, libraries and free data services – see CREDITS.md for the full list.
GPL-3.0-or-later. Online metadata comes from open sources (MusicBrainz/Cover Art Archive: CC0; Deezer search API; AcoustID/Chromaprint; fanart.tv; Radio-Browser).