iPodRocks

Appearance

Library ​

The Library panel manages your music catalog: folders, scans, shadow libraries, and the track list.

What it does ​

  • Add Folder — Add a root folder for music, podcasts, or audiobooks. iPodRocks scans it recursively.
  • Scan Library — Re-scan all folders to pick up new or changed files. Uses content hashes to skip unchanged files.
  • Clear scan cache — Reset content hashes so the next scan re-processes all files (use when tags or files changed externally).
  • Harmonic data banner — Shows how many tracks have key/BPM data. Links to Settings to enable extraction and Essentia analysis.
  • Library Folders — Compact list of added folders with remove option.
  • Shadow Libraries — Pre-transcoded mirrors (e.g. FLAC → MPC). Create, rebuild, or delete them.
  • Tracks / Playlists — Switch between the track list and library playlists. Search, sort, and filter by device, type, and sync status.
  • Preview tracks — double-click a track to play it in the persistent player bar at the bottom of the window.

How it works ​

  • Scan reads file tags (artist, album, title, genre, etc.) and optionally key/BPM via metadata or Essentia. It stores content hashes to skip unchanged files on the next scan.
  • Shadow libraries are built once; devices can use them as the source instead of the primary library for faster sync (no on-the-fly transcoding). A shadow library is a file-only mirror — it contains the transcoded audio files and copied album artwork, nothing else. Play counts, ratings, and listening history are not stored in or synced through shadow libraries; they live in the primary library database and are updated by ingesting playback.log from the device. When the primary library changes, shadow libraries are kept in sync automatically (adds, updates, and removes propagate).
  • The track list is virtualized for large libraries. Filters (device, type, on device) apply in memory.

How to work with it ​

  1. Before scanning: Enable "Extract harmonic data" and "Analyze with Essentia" in Settings if you want key/BPM for Savant and harmonic mixing. Then add folders and scan.
  2. After adding a folder: A scan runs automatically. Wait for it to finish before syncing.
  3. Shadow libraries: Create one if you sync to a device that needs a different codec (e.g. MPC). Point the device to the shadow in Devices.
  4. Clear cache: Only when you know files or tags changed outside iPodRocks and you want a full re-scan.

Music Preview Player ​

Double-click any track in the library list to start playback in the player bar that appears at the bottom of the window.

Queue — The panel's currently filtered track list becomes the playback queue. Next/Previous navigate within it; playback stops automatically after the last track.

Controls — Play/pause, previous (restarts the current track if more than 3 seconds in, otherwise jumps to the previous track), stop, next, seek slider (0.5 s granularity), volume slider, mute toggle, and close (✕) to dismiss the player.

Persistence — Volume and mute state are remembered across sessions via localStorage.

Format support — Native playback for MP3, AAC, FLAC, OGG, Opus, PCM, and ALAC. Musepack, APE, WAV, and AIFF are transcoded to Ogg Vorbis on demand via FFmpeg the first time you press play; the transcoded copy is stored in a temp directory and reused on subsequent plays.

Caveats — Missing or unreadable files fail silently in the player bar. Transcoding errors are logged to the console. There is no pre-cache; each transcode happens on demand at playback time.