I am using AIMP. I was specifically looking for apps with downloadable APKs for sideloading. I can't use the Play Store because I don't have a google account. Looks like PowerAmp also has an APK.
I'd also very strongly recommend F-Droid. TBH I can't really speak to the quality of music apps on it - I just use VLC - but it doesn't require an account and it has lots of good apps.
I use Auxio from F-Droid. It's quite simple (which to me is a benefit) and my only real complaint is how similar shuffle on and off look on Android Auto. It handles non ASCII titles correctly where some others didn't (from what I remember due to weirdness with the Android media store) and it picks up new media/edited quickly and reliably which can be a sore spot with others. I don't know how Android's media store is apparently so incompetent that most music apps don't work correctly using it.
No album shuffle (like on iPods, like taking random CDs from your shelf; https://github.com/OxygenCobalt/Auxio/issues/221) and no way to correct headphone's frequency response (either AutoEQ presets like PowerAmp or at least a good enough parametric equalizer) makes it a no-go for me.
PowerAmp is paid, and Aurora Store can't do paid apps or in-app purchases without a Google Account. It's better to download the APK and buy a license key on the official website, which doesn't require Google Play Services if you do it that way.
Looks like they also allow you to buy with a credit card on their website, and they say Google Services aren't required if you buy that way. Very cool!
PowerAmp is an incredible app, used it and loved it before. I have a self-hosted streaming setup, so I've personally found Symfonium (1) to be my go-to. I'm glad things worked out for the author with this setup, and honestly the headphone jack is a sight for sore eyes.
>"for the debloating i used xda forums. they have a lot of forum posts about what is safe to remove from any device but as always be careful. don't try to remove gpu drivers or something"
Kinda bizarre to see much ado over what's ultimately just installing a music app. The concept of an edge to edge screen with a notch being an "old android phone" is also very bizarre. (that's before even getting into specs and the fact that this was a flagship phone so this is not "slumming it up" by any means, cause it's not a situation with a truly old or weak phone either. like, there's genuinely no hardship there to overcome, besides shitty rom situation)
It's like a preview of some future generations idea of "old tech" and "accomplishing something". Ooh installing some apks. Using two phones, groundbreaking. (with such revelations as, using another phone with a 3500 mAh battery would save battery on some other phone likely with its own 4-5k mAh battery. great stuff)
That's an uncharitable take. Blog posts can and should exist at every level of expertise and depth. What's trivially easy and hardly worth blogging about to you might be the gateway/lightbulb moment to someone else, no?
It is a bit, yeah, but mostly towards this perfectly fine personal blog post being posted here like it's something, with quite a general title too that'd almost suggest there's something more to it that'd be worth reading, when it's not so much actually. Most of that post is just photos of phone and app screens. The "lightbulb moment" is pretty much wholly encapsulated in that short title. "Yeah, you could use an old phone as a music player". That's pretty much it right there in entirety. Even whatever you might imagine an article about that topic to be, after reading that title and having that "moment", might be more worthwhile imagining and thinking about than actually clicking and reading.
My point was you can take an e-waste phone and make it functionally an MP3 player, and an MP3 player only, with the features already built into the device.
File copy is standard Windows portable drive interaction, and probably is a portable drive on Linux as well, with a standard Windows-style file system organization, making copying music mind-numbingly easy.
Then you open settings and set the app vault to be no homescreen, no notification drawer, no status bar, no home buttons, with only the Music app approved, and voila! You have an MP3 player with bluetooth and Qi wireless charging.
Not very interesting, complex or far from intended purpose, but using a thing you have at hand to do a thing you don't have something at hand for is the literal meaning of hacking. This is probably the only on-topic post on the front page for a very long time.
I wonder does anyone here do the whole music piracy pipeline (e.g. downloading torrent -> cue splitting -> converting to lossy) entirely on their phone?
I personally find it more convenient to do that on my computer and then
`adb push --sync` the PC music directory to the phone, but I'm curious what are other people's setups
I do Lidarr for the downloads, MusicBrainz Picard for the data cleanup, then use the Synology DS Audio app to selectively add music to my phone (since it doesn't all fit). I wouldn't want to do all this on my phone, it's capable enough I guess since it's just lightweight torrent downloads but then I would have the reverse problem: how to get the music onto my computer.
I use Spotizerr to download all newly liked songs on my Spotify to my Navidrome server and then just stream it with Symfonium which has the option to auto cache specific albums.
I also have a HiBy R1, and have had it for the majority of 2026. Would definitely recommend it to others.
Once you get past the need for a microSD card (and once you've bought a good quality one), it becomes a fantastic flac player. And, like OP said, it's great for (scroll based) distraction free listening.
I haven't looked into the modding community for it, yet. Thanks for the tip-off on that.
43 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 6.5 ms ] threadI am using AIMP. I was specifically looking for apps with downloadable APKs for sideloading. I can't use the Play Store because I don't have a google account. Looks like PowerAmp also has an APK.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.y20k.transistor/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
https://auroraoss.com/aurora-store
(1) https://www.symfonium.app/
Suggestion: Use the Universal Android Debloater
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
Now if Winamp was available for Android so I could use the Enhancer plugin...
https://winampplugins.co.uk/enhancer/enhancer.html
I've never found a sound processor that can make music sound so amazing somehow
Even the latest versions of macOS support them perfectly, down to the icons.
It's like a preview of some future generations idea of "old tech" and "accomplishing something". Ooh installing some apks. Using two phones, groundbreaking. (with such revelations as, using another phone with a 3500 mAh battery would save battery on some other phone likely with its own 4-5k mAh battery. great stuff)
File copy is standard Windows portable drive interaction, and probably is a portable drive on Linux as well, with a standard Windows-style file system organization, making copying music mind-numbingly easy.
Then you open settings and set the app vault to be no homescreen, no notification drawer, no status bar, no home buttons, with only the Music app approved, and voila! You have an MP3 player with bluetooth and Qi wireless charging.
1. Root 2. Install 2 modules: Audio misc settings and audio sample rate changer by zyhk
This was giving multiple other hacks to get "quality". Author was a madman, advising disabling services to minimize jitter. But hey, it worked.
Or just USB DAC.
I personally find it more convenient to do that on my computer and then `adb push --sync` the PC music directory to the phone, but I'm curious what are other people's setups
Once you get past the need for a microSD card (and once you've bought a good quality one), it becomes a fantastic flac player. And, like OP said, it's great for (scroll based) distraction free listening.
I haven't looked into the modding community for it, yet. Thanks for the tip-off on that.
https://github.com/bidhata/Hiby-R1-Mod
https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod
The latter also has great documentation in the repo. You can enable developer mode / adb by (this may differ in non 1.6 firmware versions):
After this you can The root partition is readonly, so to store something, you need access to the micro sd card or use /tmp. As a starting point you could take a look at I managed to compile my WIP Rust / Slint music player app [1] to run on the HiBy framebuffer, but since it is WIP, I did not manage to go further yet.1: https://github.com/yetisoldier/Hiby-R1-Audiobook-Mod/issues/...