One Player to Rule Them All.

Open-source music player & library manager. Local-first. Bit-perfect. Built to scale.

Chilpa's main window: Home with recently added and recently played albums, the sidebar and the player with an album playingChilpa's main window: Home with recently added and recently played albums, the sidebar and the player with an album playing

01

Bit-perfect and HiFi Wizard

The output shows the actual format reaching the DAC and whether any processing happened. Exclusive mode, direct ALSA, PipeWire, PulseAudio and JACK. Native DSD and DoP.

The player's output indicator: a local DSD256 file going natively to a Fosi Audio ZH3 DAC over direct ALSA, marked bit-perfectThe player's output indicator: a local DSD256 file going natively to a Fosi Audio ZH3 DAC over direct ALSA, marked bit-perfectHiFi Wizard at the Review & Apply step, with the PipeWire commands for the detected DAC, which Chilpa never writes on its ownHiFi Wizard at the Review & Apply step, with the PipeWire commands for the detected DAC, which Chilpa never writes on its own

Formats: FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, DSD (DSF, DFF without DST compression, SACD ISO) and audio CD.

02

Library

Built from the database up for tens of thousands of tracks. Editions of the same album, multi-disc releases, classical works and composers, labels and a metadata editor.

Artist page with popular tracks, the latest release and the Network panel with labels and similar artistsArtist page with popular tracks, the latest release and the Network panel with labels and similar artists
  • Jellyfin
  • Plex
  • Navidrome
  • (Open)Subsonic
  • Chromecast
  • DLNA/UPnP

Multiple queues, playlists, smart playlists and search. Listening stats with history and export. Scrobbling to Last.fm and ListenBrainz.

Refine

One query, three ways to edit it. In Columns, a click includes a value and − excludes it. The panel shows each condition as a readable row, with "all" or "any" groups. The console takes the same query as text. All three write the same query.

"Read as" shows what the engine decided on its own, such as a name resolved to a composer or an alias, and you can remove it.

Library with Refine open: a condition on a library field and the albums that meet itLibrary with Refine open: a condition on a library field and the albums that meet it

03

Lyrics and immersive view

Lyrics synced by line and by word, translated into your language.

Visualizers that react to the audio, a background taken from the cover art, and a mini player.

36 themes, an automatic one and a theme editor. Eight languages. Command line and configurable shortcuts; fully usable without a mouse.

Immersive view: the current lyric line beside the cover, over a background taken from it

04

Plugins and SDK

Every external integration lives in its own plugin. WebAssembly plugins and sandboxed native plugins (bubblewrap on Linux, Seatbelt on macOS); each declares permissions you approve.

Write a plugin

The public SDK documents the API and contracts, and gives access to the playback engine.

chilpa-plugins-sdk

Official plugin catalog →

05

Privacy and offline mode

Zero telemetry. The Chilpa proxy, lyrics API, MusicBrainz, Last.fm and ListenBrainz are optional, each with its own switch. Offline mode blocks all network access for Chilpa and its plugins; local playback keeps working.

Settings with offline mode on: the Chilpa proxy and scrobbling are disabled

06

Platforms and downloads

The packages are on the releases page on GitHub.

Releases on GitHub

Changes between versions

07

Community

Chilpa is the spiritual successor to QBZ.