Fernplay 0.9.0

Fernplay 0.9.0 crossfades and plays gapless, updates itself from About, can be controlled from your phone, and evens out loudness with ReplayGain tags.

New

• Crossfade and gapless. XFADE next to REPEAT (also in the app menu with classic skins) fades the end of a song into the next, 1 to 12 seconds (Settings → ADVANCED, default 5). Only when a song ends by itself: skipping by hand, stations and repeat track never fade. Songs now follow each other without a gap, and repeat track loops without one.
• Update from About. When CHECK FOR UPDATE finds a newer release, the installed Fernplay offers UPDATE: it downloads the MSI, checks it against the checksum GitHub lists, installs it and starts Fernplay again. This works from 0.9.0 on, so this update you still install by hand. Portable copies keep DOWNLOAD.
• Phone remote. Settings → ADVANCED → PHONE REMOTE lets the Fernplay app on your Android phone control this player over the home Wi-Fi: play, pause, skip, seek, volume, shuffle, repeat, crossfade and the playlist. Off by default; pair with a 6-digit code. The link is encrypted and only served on the local network. Windows Firewall asks once.
• Volume levelling. Settings → ADVANCED → VOLUME LEVELLING plays every song (TRACK) or album (ALBUM) at the same loudness from ReplayGain tags in MP3, FLAC and M4A. Off by default. Fernplay reads the tags; a tagger such as foobar2000, MusicBee or rsgain writes them.
• Settings in two tabs, GENERAL and ADVANCED; the window is about 40 % shorter.
• Visualizer. The app menu's Visualizer (MilkDrop3)… starts MilkDrop3, a separate free program, for full-screen visuals.
• Files with more than two channels (5.1) are mixed down to stereo.

Fixed

• Names with an underscore (library folders, your own equalizer presets) lost it and showed an underlined letter instead.

Download. Pick one:

• Fernplay-0.9.0-win-x64.msi (about 56 MB): the installer. Recommended. Run it over an older version to update; your settings stay.
• Fernplay-0.9.0-win-x64-standalone.zip (about 57 MB): portable, .NET inside.
• Fernplay-0.9.0-win-x64.zip (under 1 MB): portable, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11, x64. Fernplay is not code-signed yet: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Fernplay 0.8.0

Fernplay 0.8.0 stops songs starting paused, gives the playlist a neater edge and a width you can set, and adds repeat on/off and your own equalizer presets.

Fixed

• Songs no longer start paused. On some Windows 11 PCs the next song started paused, and a double-click in the playlist sometimes paused the song it started. Windows sent a media-button Pause just after the song started, with nothing pressed. A media-button Pause in the first 3 seconds of a song is now ignored (and noted in the diagnostics log).

New

• Playlist edge and width. In Fernplay's look, dragging the playlist's bottom edge snaps it level with the bottom of the equalizer or another panel, and the list still shows whole rows. Resizing can reach the whole desktop (other screens included), and the corner grip also changes the width, which is remembered.
• Repeat on/off. A click turns repeating the whole list on or off; a right-click (or the menu key, or Shift+F10) turns repeating this track on or off. The tooltip says which is on.
• Your own equalizer presets. Presets has Save current as… and Delete preset ›, kept with your settings.
• Classic skin sizes are now 1x, 1.5x and 1.75x (were 1x, 2x and 3x). At 1x on 100–125 % displays the playlist text is larger and easier to read.

Download. Pick one:

• Fernplay-0.8.0-win-x64.msi (about 56 MB): the installer. Recommended. Run it over an older version to update; your settings stay.
• Fernplay-0.8.0-win-x64-standalone.zip (about 57 MB): portable, .NET inside.
• Fernplay-0.8.0-win-x64.zip (under 1 MB): portable, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11, x64. Fernplay is not code-signed yet: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Fernplay 0.7.0

Fernplay 0.7.0 comes with an installer, can run fully portable, and lets you seek with the mouse wheel.

New

• Installer. Fernplay-0.7.0-win-x64.msi installs Fernplay in a few seconds, for your Windows account only, with no admin prompt and nothing else to install (.NET is inside). Fernplay appears in the Start menu and under Open with for music files and playlists; folders get Play in Fernplay and Add to Fernplay playlist. To update later, run the newer MSI: it replaces the old version and keeps your settings. Uninstall from Windows Settings > Apps, which also removes the Explorer entries.
• Portable zips. The zips now carry a portable.txt file, so Fernplay keeps its settings, library and skins in a Data folder next to Fernplay.exe, ready for a USB stick. On its first start a portable Fernplay copies your settings from an installed one. Delete portable.txt to keep using %APPDATA%\CodeKunde\Fernplay as before.
• Seek with the mouse wheel. Scroll over the position bar to move through the track, 5 seconds per notch (up = forward), just like the wheel over the volume bar. It works on the rolled-up strip and with classic skins too. A radio station has no position, so the wheel does nothing there.

Download. Pick one:

• Fernplay-0.7.0-win-x64.msi (about 56 MB): the installer. Recommended.
• Fernplay-0.7.0-win-x64-standalone.zip (about 57 MB): portable, .NET inside.
• Fernplay-0.7.0-win-x64.zip (under 1 MB): portable, needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Make Fernplay your music player: right-click a music file, choose Open with > Choose another app, pick Fernplay and Always. Windows lets only you make that choice.

Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11, x64. Fernplay is not code-signed yet: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Fernplay 0.6.0

Fernplay 0.6.0 can check for updates, resets sliders with a double-click and tells you why a radio station won't play. It also fixes two window problems.

New

• Check for update. About Fernplay has a CHECK FOR UPDATE button: it asks GitHub for the newest release and says whether there is one, and DOWNLOAD opens its page. Nothing is checked unless you press it.
• Double-click to reset. A double-click on an equalizer slider (a band or the preamp) sets it back to 0 dB; a double-click on the balance centres it. This works with classic skins too.
• Clearer radio errors. A station that can't be reached used to say "the station is offline" whatever went wrong. Now it says why: no answer, connection refused or blocked, secure (https) connection failed, address not found, a proxy, or the station's own answer (for example 404 when its address has changed). If a station plays in your browser but not in Fernplay, a firewall or security program is usually blocking Fernplay.exe: allow it there.
• Diagnostics log. diagnostics.log next to the settings (%APPDATA%\CodeKunde\Fernplay, at most about 512 KB, never sent anywhere) notes play and pause and what asked for them, media buttons, stations that could not be opened, and lock, unlock and display changes. It helps trace faults that happen only now and then.

Fixed

• On Windows 11, clicking Fernplay's taskbar button did not minimise it.
• After Windows was locked, or a screen slept or was unplugged, the player, equalizer and playlist could come back apart. Fernplay now puts them back where they were.
• A station whose https address hands on to a plain http server now plays, as it does in a browser.

Download. Pick one zip, unzip it anywhere and run Fernplay.exe:

• Fernplay-0.6.0-win-x64.zip (about 1 MB) needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).
• Fernplay-0.6.0-win-x64-standalone.zip (about 60 MB) has .NET inside: nothing else to install.

Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11, x64. Fernplay is not code-signed yet: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Fernplay 0.5.0

Fernplay 0.5.0 adds file info: edit a track's tags right in the player. It also fixes two things in the playlist.

New: file info (Alt+3). As on the classic player, Alt+3 opens a track's tags: title, artist, album, album artist, track number, year, genre, composer and comment. In the playlist and the media library it is the selected track (also on the right-click menu, and on a classic skin's MISC button); on the player it is the track that is playing. SAVE writes only the fields you changed, and the playlist, the player and the library show the new tags at once. Several artists go in one field with a semicolon (A; B).

Tags are written by Windows itself, the same way Explorer's Details pane edits them: MP3, M4A and WMA, and other formats where Windows can write their tags. Editing the track that is playing is fine: Fernplay lets go of the file for a moment and plays on from the same place. WAV files, read-only files and files open in another program are left as they were, with the reason shown. Ratings are still kept in the library only and never written to files.

Fixed.

• Pressing Delete in the playlist no longer jumps the list to the top (or to the playing track). The list stays where it was, and the next track is selected, so Delete or the arrow keys carry on from there.
• The playing track's length in the playlist is white like its title; it stayed green in Fernplay's own look.

Download. Pick one zip, unzip it anywhere and run Fernplay.exe:

• Fernplay-0.5.0-win-x64.zip (about 1 MB) needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).
• Fernplay-0.5.0-win-x64-standalone.zip (about 60 MB) has .NET inside: nothing else to install.

Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11, x64. Fernplay is not code-signed yet: if Windows shows "Windows protected your PC", choose More info, then Run anyway.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Fernplay 0.4.1

Fernplay 0.4.1 fixes how the player comes back after Windows is locked.

Fixed. If Windows was locked (Win+L) while Fernplay was minimised, the player came back larger than its picture: black areas beside and below it, and the player shifted away from the equalizer and playlist. Rolling it into the windowshade and back was the only cure. The panels now fit themselves again when they are restored, after unlocking, after the PC wakes from sleep and when the display settings change.

Download: Fernplay.exe (needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime, x64) or the zip with the file icon next to it. Windows 10 (1607 or later) and 11.

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md.