Mixtape v0.23.0

Mixtape on OrbitOverlay's watch

In OrbitOverlay 1.16 (the SteamVR overlay), the watch's Now playing card shows Mixtape's song while Mixtape plays, and opens into a full player: what's playing, Up Next, your songs, albums and playlists, and synced lyrics. From VR you can play an album or a playlist, shuffle it, line songs up, skip, seek, set the volume and rate the song. Mixtape does the playing, so play counts, the Listening page, the Windows media flyout and Discord all see it as usual.

Mixtape talks to OrbitOverlay over a local named pipe that only your own Windows account can open. Settings › Safety › Control from other apps turns it off.

Also

• Up Next plays what it shows. If a song was queued from another list (or from VR) and the list on screen didn't contain it, it was silently dropped when its turn came. Now it plays, Prev goes back to it, and afterwards the list on screen continues after its own last song.

Downloads

• Mixtape.exe: Windows, self-contained, no install needed.
• Mixtape-0.23.0-win-x64.zip: a ~10 MB build that needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage: the Linux preview, rebuilt from this version's shared code. Its own screens are unchanged since v0.17.0.

Mixtape v0.22.0 — Cyber, faster, Encore OS

A Cyber look

A third look in Settings › Appearance › Look, next to Modern and Windows 95: a sci-fi HUD. Near-black panels on a faint grid, corners cut instead of rounded, yellow caption tags, cyan for whatever is on or playing, condensed type.

It moves like one, too: a scan line sweeps down each page and dialog as it opens, the tags type themselves in, the Listening figures count up, buttons light up and close in under the pointer, and a new song's title glitches in. All of it stays still when animations are off in Windows. Takes effect after a restart.

Faster

• Starts about twice as fast. The finished Home page is up in about half a second, covers right after it. The iPod is now read in the background, so a slow iPod no longer freezes the window while it loads, and covers are kept at the size shown instead of being decoded from every song file on each launch.
• Clicks answer in 12–30 ms. Switching pages (Songs used to take ~200 ms to react), hovering over the sidebar and scrolling the song list all do far less work. Page switches in the Cyber look no longer stutter.
• Fixed: sidebar rows could jump, or leave stripes and highlights behind, when the pointer moved over them quickly.

Rockbox and Encore OS

• The iPod's page and Settings › This iPod show what the iPod runs, e.g. Rockbox 4.0. For Encore OS, also how many of your songs it plays and which it skips, by format.
• Apple Lossless songs are labelled Apple Lossless. They used to be called "AAC audio file", on copy and on the iPod.
• Library Doctor is safe with Encore OS. Encore plays every song in the iPod's music folder, including files the iTunes database doesn't list. Mixtape now sorts those files into Extra copies: songs Encore hides because it keeps the same song elsewhere (as FLAC, say). Only these are offered for deletion. Everything else goes into Songs only Encore plays, which are listed and kept.
• Encore's play counts, last-played dates and star ratings show in the iPod's song list. Mixtape only reads Encore's files, never writes them, and doesn't copy the counts into the iTunes database.

Also

• Windows 95 look: Settings' group boxes and the sidebar's selected item no longer cut off their edges and text.
• Identify song: the Cancel and Write tags buttons no longer overlap.
• Hungarian: the smart playlist editor is translated.

Downloads

• Mixtape.exe: Windows, self-contained, no install.
• Mixtape-0.22.0-win-x64.zip: a ~10 MB build that needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage: the Linux preview, rebuilt from this version's shared code. Its own screens are unchanged since v0.17.0.

Mixtape v0.21.0 — something hidden

Something hidden 🥚

The first iPods hid a game. Windows 95 hid its credits. This version of Mixtape hides a few things of its own — they're not in any menu, and these notes won't tell you where they are.

A hint, for the curious: think like it's 2001 and you're holding a click wheel. Or like it's 1986 and you're holding a game controller.

Also

• Settings › About now shows the Mixtape icon next to the version.

Downloads

• Mixtape.exe — Windows, self-contained, no install.
• Mixtape-0.21.0-win-x64.zip — a ~7 MB build that needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• The Linux AppImage is unchanged since v0.17.0.

Mixtape v0.20.0 — lyrics on the iPod

Lyrics on the iPod

Click-wheel iPods (Classic, nano, 5G) can show a song's lyrics while it plays — press the centre button. Mixtape now puts them there.

• While adding songs, lyrics you already have on this PC go onto the iPod with the song: a .lrc file beside it, lyrics Mixtape has shown you before, or lyrics already in the file's tags. No web lookups while copying. Settings › Library › Lyrics on the iPod (on by default).
• For songs already on the iPod, the iPod's page has a new Add lyrics… button. Songs without lyrics are looked up — in the public LRCLIB database too, when Online lyrics is on (only artist, title and length are sent) — and written onto the iPod. You can stop at any time; what's done is kept.
• Only the copies on the iPod change. Your own music files on the PC are never touched.

The iPod has no timed lyrics display, so synced lyrics go on as plain words, verse breaks kept. Works for MP3 and AAC/ALAC (.m4a) songs.

Downloads

• Mixtape.exe — Windows, self-contained, no install.
• Mixtape-0.20.0-win-x64.zip — a ~7 MB build that needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• The Linux AppImage is unchanged since v0.17.0.

Mixtape v0.19.0 — a Windows 95 look, Listening page, PC play counts

The headline is a whole second look for the app: Windows 95, switchable in Settings › Appearance › Look. Around it, a Listening page, play counts for your own files, and a motion pass for the modern look.

A Windows 95 look

Not a recolour — Mixtape as a 1995 program would have been. Switch it in Settings (it asks to restart, like the language).

• The window: navy caption, a menu bar (File · Edit · View · Play · Help), a status bar with a working size grip, the sidebar as an Explorer tree with folder nodes, square bevelled buttons everywhere.
• Pixel icons — 25 of them, 16×16 in the sixteen VGA colours — and optional 256-colour pictures: covers dithered onto the Windows halftone palette, at display time only (nothing dithered reaches your files or the iPod).
• Settings as a property sheet with tabs, group boxes, check boxes and the era's Description box; About is a real About box.
• Song info as “Properties” — a General tab (type, location, exact size, attributes) and a Details tab for editing.
• The player as the CD Player: a seven-segment LED display for the time; the speaker opens the tray's volume slider with a Mute box.
• The device page's capacity as the tilted drive-properties pie.
• Cover Flow as a page of its own in a sunken viewport, with a real 95 scrollbar.
• Lyrics as a 1995 document: the sung line highlighted like a selected list item; the full-window stage as a karaoke screen.
• The copy dialog's flying paper, the hourglass while busy, the arrow cursor, no hover glow and no animations — 1995 had none.
• A Welcome screen with “Did you know…” tips (also under Help).

The modern look is unchanged by all of this.

New

• Listening page — plays, listening time, top artists, songs and albums, and your rating spread, from the counters the iPod already keeps.
• Play counts for your PC library — a song counts once you've really listened (half of it, or four minutes), so Listening and Home work without an iPod plugged in.
• Identify — a local file with no tags can be looked up by its length; you pick the match, and only title / artist / album are written.
• Notes on the iPod — list, add, type or remove the texts under Extras › Notes (works even on iPods that are read-only for music).
• Save a playlist as an image — a shareable poster of its covers and songs.
• Tidy tags — finds stray spaces and the same artist or album spelled several ways, and fixes only what you tick.

Motion (modern look)

Gliding wheel scroll on every page, covers that lift under the pointer, the clicked cover flying into the page it opens, one dialog entrance for all dialogs, and a new frame pacer: ~126 fps instead of ~65, with no late frames.

Performance

The lyrics views repaint only when something visibly changes (the full-window stage, paused, dropped from ~56 % of a core to ~17 % in the modern look, and from ~40 % to ~1 % in Windows 95), and the song list scrolls about twice as fast per notch.

Fixes

• “Restart Mixtape now?” after changing the look or language did nothing.
• Photos page: the header buttons were clipped. Tidy tags: Cancel and Fix overlapped.
• Tidy tags could undo its own fix when a song needed both a spacing and a spelling fix.
• A freshly loaded page could jump on the first wheel notch; a hovered cover could keep its lift after the page changed.
• Tooltips now follow a theme change.
• Dialogs: rounded, themed text fields; song info sizes itself to its content; the primary button is always on the right.

Downloads

• Mixtape.exe — Windows, self-contained, no install.
• Mixtape-0.19.0-win-x64.zip — new: a ~7 MB build that needs the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime.
• The Linux AppImage is unchanged since v0.17.0.

Both Windows files are now built by GitHub Actions from this tag.

Mixtape v0.18.0 — deck, Home page, live lyrics, new Cover Flow

The window is reorganised around a deck: the player moved into the top strip — transport, the now-playing card, and the utilities — with the song list below it. The card is one shared drawer, so the detached mini player is literally the same card.

New

• Home page — recently added, continue listening, most played, rediscover.
• Side card on wide windows — Up Next · History · Lyrics, docked beside the list.
• Live lyrics — a word-timed sheet in the side card, in a popover, or in a full-window stage with the cover's own colours washed behind it.
• Mini player — the deck detached into a small always-on-top strip.
• Row hover actions in the song list (play / more) and a permanent time column.
• Selection bar — from two selected songs the list makes room for a bar: Add to playlist · Play next · Add to queue · Delete.
• Themed tooltips on the deck, the window buttons and the header.
• The app's own window chrome for dialogs — a title strip with a round close button instead of the Windows caption (new playlist, song info, cover picker, wallpaper picker, Library Doctor, smart playlist, copy progress).
• Format chip (codec / bitrate / sample rate) on the lyrics stage and the song info sheet.
• The now-playing card's artist and album are links, hovering the seek line shows the time under the pointer, and clicking the total time counts down instead.

Cover Flow, rewritten

Sharp 420 px sources, analytic corner and edge antialiasing inside the projective warp, a horizontal mip chain with trilinear sampling, and covers warped live each frame instead of baked angle buckets. Spring landing, flick momentum, a theme-correct reflection floor.

Fixes

• The lyrics stage could freeze the UI: its vsync repaint pump starved the message queue on a high-refresh display. The clock now paints synchronously and rate-limits itself.
• A theme change repaints every baked surface.
• Song list: no dark left column or dark row tops, and the divider line follows the theme.
• Untimed lyrics no longer slide back to the first line a few seconds after scrolling.
• Songs are added to a playlist in list order (a dragged selection used to arrive reversed).
• About reads the version from the build itself.

Downloads

Mixtape.exe — Windows, self-contained, no install. The Linux AppImage is unchanged since v0.17.0.

Mixtape v0.17.0 - Get Info tag editor, eject reminder, playlist fix

Full Get Info tag editor, an eject reminder, a fix for playlists showing up twice on Linux, and smoother animations everywhere.

New

Get Info is a real tag editor. Composer, Comment, "Track # of total" and "Disc # of total" are now editable and written straight into the iPod's database — they used to be read but never writable. Single-song info also gains a read-only stats panel: play count, last played, date added, format/bitrate/size, and the file path.

Eject reminder. If you wrote to the iPod and close Mixtape without ejecting, it offers Eject & close. Unplug without ejecting and the status line reminds you next time. It is tracked per iPod, so switching devices never forgets one that still needs ejecting — and Mixtape now refuses to close while a background write is still running.

Drag songs onto playlists on Linux. Grab songs in the list and drop them on a playlist in the sidebar: a floating count badge follows the cursor and the target playlist lights up. Previously only the right-click menu worked (the drag showed a "not allowed" cursor).

--dupescan diagnostic. A read-only report that finds duplicate songs by tags, by looser keys (title only, title+artist, identical size+length), files referenced twice, dead rows whose file is gone, stray files not in the database, playlist-level duplicates and mhsd mirror desync.

Fixed

• Playlists appeared twice on Linux. iTunes mirrors the whole playlist list into two datasets; Mixtape now lists each playlist once (both copies are still written and kept in sync). This also clears a bogus "expected one master playlist" warning.
• The post-write safety check got stronger. The master playlist is now verified at the raw level, so a write that dropped it from only one of the two mirrored copies is caught instead of passing silently.
• The sidebar eject button now ejects the iPod whose row you clicked, not whichever one is open.
• Eject is refused for "Open folder" mounts that share a drive with other data — ejecting by drive letter would have dismounted the whole volume.
• "Unplugged without ejecting" is now proven from the filesystem instead of guessed from a device scan, so an iPod opened via "Open folder" keeps its reminder.
• Smart playlists are no longer offered as manual "Add to playlist" targets — their contents come from rules, so a manual add would disappear on the next refresh.

Smoother

• Windows animations hold a 1 ms timer resolution while animating, so frames land on schedule instead of on Windows' 15.6 ms tick.
• Linux Cover Flow now coasts on the compositor's frame callback with stopwatch-based timing, and can no longer run two animation loops at once.

Downloads

• Windows: Mixtape.exe — self-contained, no install, no .NET needed.
• Linux: Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage — chmod +x and run. Audio needs system VLC (sudo apt install vlc).

Verified on a real 185-track iPod library: roundtrip, mutate, add, smart-playlist, track-edit (25 checks), playlist, reorder and duplicate suites all pass.

Mixtape v0.16.0

Mixtape v0.16.0

A polish + reliability release for the Linux app, from an adversarial code audit.

New

• Reorder playlists — right-click a song in a playlist → Move up / Move down.
• Delete confirmation — deleting songs from the iPod now asks first (it permanently removes the files).

Fixes

• "New playlist… & add" no longer puts your songs in an older playlist that happens to share the name.
• Deleting a playlist you weren't looking at keeps you where you are.
• "Add to playlist" reports the real number added (skipping songs already in the list).
• The Cover Flow button now appears once you add music; switching modes mid-scroll no longer sticks the deck.
• Playback: no more skipped song when you hit Next right as a track ends; the transport bar stops polling while paused (battery); the now-playing cover fills in once it decodes.
• Hungarian: song/folder counts and durations now translate ("12 dal · 24 mp", "+ Mappa").
• Local Music header buttons now match the view; column sorting (which was half-broken) is disabled for now.

Downloads

• Windows: Mixtape.exe (self-contained)
• Linux: Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage

Mixtape v0.15.0

Mixtape v0.15.0

The Linux app gains real playlist editing and speaks Hungarian.

Playlist editing (Linux)

• Create a playlist with the + next to PLAYLISTS in the sidebar.
• Rename or delete a playlist by right-clicking it (deleting keeps the songs in your library).
• Add songs to a playlist: right-click a selection → Add to playlist (or New playlist… to make one on the spot).
• Remove songs from the playlist you're viewing.
• Every change is written through the same safe path as the Windows app (backup → verify → rollback).

Magyar nyelv / Hungarian

• The Linux app is now available in Hungarian — sidebar, headers, search, playback and menus. Missing bits fall back to English.
• Pick it in Settings → Language (English / Magyar). Restart to apply. On a Hungarian Windows/Linux it auto-selects Hungarian on first run.

Downloads

• Windows: Mixtape.exe (self-contained, no install)
• Linux: Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage

Mixtape v0.14.0

Mixtape v0.14.0

The Linux app grows up: it now matches the Windows build's look and gains a full player and Cover Flow.

Linux / cross-platform app

• Colour parity — the Linux app now renders the exact same palette as Windows for every theme (Graphite, Midnight, Carbon, Mocha, Forest, Plum). Chips, search field, list selections, seeded artwork tiles, and the wallpaper gradient + glows all match pixel-for-pixel.
• Full player bar — shuffle, previous, play/pause (with a smooth morph), next, and repeat (off / all / one), plus seek, mute, volume, an Up Next queue, and a 10-band equalizer. Shuffle and repeat are remembered between runs.
  • Right-click a song for Play, Play next, or Add to queue.
  • Songs auto-advance when they finish.
• Cover Flow — the album browser is now on Linux too: Songs / Albums / Artists, fanned covers with a reflection, and mouse-wheel / drag / click navigation.

Notes

• On Linux, pick your background (e.g. Forest) once in Settings — the theme picker now lists all six.
• Audio playback needs VLC installed (the AppImage bundles it).

Downloads

• Windows: Mixtape.exe (self-contained, no install)
• Linux: Mixtape-x86_64.AppImage