Honeydew

A free, open-source music studio modelled on FL Studio Mobile, written in Rust.

Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and in the browser.

FL Studio Mobile demo projects, opened as .flm files.

Piano roll: Parrik - Initiated	Drums: Nucleon - Shogun
Mixer: Parrik - Initiated	Effects rack: Nucleon - Shogun
Instrument picker: Edwan - Permich - Tropical	Songs menu: the demo songs, over Parrik - Initiated
Automation: Parrik - Initiated	Chord editor: Edwan - Permich - Tropical
Audio editor: Goldhands - Elisa (Featuring Tevlo)

Get the latest build from Releases.

Extract the archive and run honeydew-native. The AppImage is a single file. Run chmod +x on it, then start it (add --appimage-extract-and-run if your system has no FUSE).

• -avx2 builds can be faster on CPUs from 2013 onward. If unsure, take the plain one.
• -no-sounds builds are just the app, 10 to 15 MB. Honeydew keeps its sounds in its own data folder, so run a full build once (or install honeydew-<version>-sounds.zip from Settings > Install sound library) and later updates can be the small download.
• Linux builds need glibc 2.35 or newer (Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12). Alpine needs apk add libstdc++ alsa-lib. FreeBSD needs pkg install alsa-lib alsa-plugins and has no MIDI input yet.
• Your songs, samples and exports go in Documents/Honeydew. Settings > Open user folder takes you there.

Open a file from SONGS → Import, with Ctrl+O, or by dropping it on the window. Audio files dropped on the playlist become clips.

• MIDI: each channel gets the closest bundled instrument for its General MIDI program. Channel 10 becomes a drum kit.
• Opening an FLP: you get the channels, patterns, playlist, audio clips, tempo, volume and pan. 3x Osc channels keep their sound, and Fruity Reeverb 2 and Fruity Limiter become Lemon Reverb and Lemon Limiter with their settings. Missing plugins and samples play the closest bundled sound, and a summary lists what was swapped. Locate samples... finds missing samples in a folder you pick.
• Saving an FLP: samples are included, and each channel's effects become FL Studio's own effects on its mixer insert (Lemon Reverb and Lemon Limiter with their settings). Turn on Include rendered audio to also add each channel as audio, so the project sounds the same in FL Studio.

The desktop app can use VST3, VST2 and CLAP plugins as instruments and effects.

1. Install your plugins in one of the folders below.
2. Open a channel's Modules browser. Plugins are listed under PLUGIN INSTRUMENTS and PLUGIN EFFECTS.
3. Adding a plugin opens its window. The pop-out button on its card opens it again.

Plugin settings are saved with the project, and their controls can be automated.

Built-in plugins, on every platform: Lemon Studio's Lemon Trio and Lemon Sampler are under SYNTH, and Lemon Parametric EQ under FILTER. Their own controls show right in the rack card, on the web and Android too. If you have them installed separately, Honeydew uses the built-in ones. On the web and Android, Lemon Sampler can't open sample files yet, and on the web its time stretching only resamples.

Where Honeydew looks:

• Linux: ~/.vst3, ~/.vst and ~/.clap, the same folders under /usr/lib and /usr/local/lib, and VST_PATH / CLAP_PATH.
• Windows and macOS: the standard plugin folders.
• Your own folders: add them in SETTINGS → Plugins. Rescan picks up new plugins.

Windows plugins on Linux: install yabridge or vstbridge with Wine. They put bridged copies in ~/.vst3/yabridge and ~/.vst/yabridge, which Honeydew already scans.

Notes:

• External plugin editor windows open on Linux, Windows and macOS. If a plugin cannot create its native editor, use the sliders on the plugin's card.
• FL Studio Mobile will still opens projects that use plugins, just without the plugins. The web and Android versions keep other plugins' settings but don't play them.
• Opening an FLP loads its plugins if you have them installed, and saving as FLP writes them back.

The desktop build has an opt-in local control bridge for editing the open song with an MCP assistant. It can reuse an already-configured plugin instrument without changing its preset, or create a built-in synth/drum track and add notes. See the MCP setup guide for security, configuration, commands and current limits.

Multi core processing: On Linux, macOS and Windows desktop builds, SETTINGS → Multi core processing can run independent channel racks on separate CPU cores. Sends still run before their target bus, and each rack's modules stay in order. The setting takes effect during playback without a restart. It is off by default and falls back to sequential processing for short segments, a single-core machine or a song with no independent channels. It does not split one plugin instance (including Vital) across cores; with one active instrument, leave it off. If enabling it increases underruns on your audio setup, turn it off again.

Honeydew doesn't include any FL Studio Mobile content. If you own the app, you can import its sounds, presets and demo songs from your own copy. They stay on your computer, aren't included in exported project ZIPs, and are still covered by your FL Studio Mobile licence, so don't share them.

1. Copy your app's .apk or .obb into the Original Content folder. SETTINGS has an Open folder button.

   OS	Folder
   Linux	~/Documents/Honeydew/Original Content
   macOS	~/Documents/Honeydew/Original Content
   Windows	Documents\Honeydew\Original Content

2. Open SETTINGS and choose Import.

Or from the command line:

cargo run --release --bin honeydew-import -- path/to/your.apk

The sounds and presets then show up in the pickers, and demo songs that use them play correctly. The icons are always Honeydew's own. Each file is imported once; delete the hidden .imported-… file next to it to import it again. The web version can't import.

Getting the files from your phone. Use only your own copy. With USB debugging on and Android's platform tools installed:

adb shell pm list packages | grep -i studio   # find the package name
adb shell pm path <package>                   # find the APK (pull base.apk first if there are several)
adb pull <path>
adb pull /sdcard/Android/obb/<package>/       # the OBB, if the app has one

cargo run --release

Linux desktop icon: Wayland only shows an app's icon if a desktop entry is installed. Run tools/install-desktop-entry.sh after cargo build --release (add --uninstall to remove it). Run it again if you move the repository.

The sound library lives in sounds/, split into 90 MB parts to stay under GitHub's file size limit. To rebuild it from the raw sources in ../content-sources (or $HONEYDEW_SOURCES):

tools/release-content.sh 0.4.2

Commit the updated sounds/honeydew-sounds.zip.* parts and sounds/release.txt (the library's version: the app warns when an installed library is older) with your changes. Add --web to also build the web ZIP. Tagged releases include the sounds automatically.

For development:

rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown
cargo install trunk
trunk serve

To test with the bundled sounds, also run python3 -m http.server 8081 --bind 127.0.0.1 --directory content-out.

For a release build:

tools/web-dist.sh          # build the site into dist/
tools/web-dist.sh --check  # check an existing build
tools/web-dist.sh --zip    # also write target/honeydew-web-<version>.zip

• Requirements: Trunk, binaryen's wasm-opt (or set WASM_OPT) and unzip.
• Hosting: serve dist/. Example configs for nginx, Caddy and Cloudflare are in deploy/.
• Browsers: Chrome 96, Firefox 113 or Safari 16.4 and later. Older browsers see a notice.
• Compression: files are pre-gzipped and none is over 25 MiB. Hosts that don't send Content-Encoding: gzip, like Cloudflare, still work: the browser unpacks the files itself.
• Shortcuts: in the browser, Honeydew's shortcuts win over the browser's, except Ctrl+C, V and X. Chrome keeps Ctrl+Shift+T.

The Android version plays songs and saves them inside the app. Microphone recording, MIDI devices and importing or exporting files aren't supported yet, and uninstalling the app deletes its songs.

You need Java 21, Android SDK platform 36, Build Tools 36.0.0, NDK 28.0.13004108, Python 3 and unzip. Set ANDROID_HOME to your SDK, then:

rustup target add aarch64-linux-android
cargo install cargo-ndk --version 4.1.2 --locked
tools/android-dist.sh

This writes target/honeydew-android-<version>-arm64-debug.apk. The debug app is called Honeydew Debug and installs alongside the release app. Its signing key is kept in android/debug.keystore; keep that file so debug builds can update each other.

Release signing: use the same key for every release, or Android won't install updates over the old version. Back up the keystore and passwords outside the repository.

• Local release: set ANDROID_KEYSTORE_FILE, ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, ANDROID_KEY_ALIAS and ANDROID_KEY_PASSWORD, then run tools/android-dist.sh --release.
• GitHub releases: add the repository secrets ANDROID_KEYSTORE_BASE64 (the keystore as base64), ANDROID_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD, ANDROID_KEY_ALIAS and ANDROID_KEY_PASSWORD. Without them the Android job fails rather than publishing an unsigned APK.

See Android's app-signing guide for creating a key.

Honeydew is a clean-room reimplementation. FL Studio Mobile's behaviour, file formats and look were written down as a specification, and Honeydew's code was written only from that. It contains no code, samples, presets or artwork from FL Studio Mobile. The icons are Honeydew's own as well: every one is drawn from scratch in code, not taken from the app.

Honeydew is an independent project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Image-Line. FL Studio is a trademark of Image-Line.

• Code: GPL-3.0-or-later. Copyright (c) 2026 The Honeydew contributors.
• Plugin hosting, FLP support, Lemon Reverb, Lemon Limiter, Lemon Trio, Lemon Sampler and Lemon Parametric EQ: from Lemon Studio by ItsAlphaNeon; see Code from Lemon Studio below.
• Font: Open Sans SemiCondensed SemiBold, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (assets/fonts/OFL.txt).
• Icon: a derivative of "Melon" by afitrose, licensed as Free for commercial use WITH ATTRIBUTION.
• Sounds: the bundled instruments, drum kits, one-shots, effects, loops and waveforms come from the sources below. Full notices are in the app under SETTINGS → Sound credits.

Honeydew brings FL Studio desktop features like plugins and flp file support into the app by including code from Lemon Studio by ItsAlphaNeon, used under the GPL-3.0-or-later. Each file keeps its original copyright and license header, and the changes are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.