Using Funkwhale from other apps

The only official client for using Funkwhale is the web client, the one you use in your browser.

As of 0.21, the web client has seen major improvements as a standalone app with changes to player design to make it a more mobile-first experience as well as the introduction of PWA functionality. Using Funkwhale as a PWA gives the following benefits:

  • Allows users to install the web player as a standalone app on mobile and desktop

  • Greatly improves background performance on mobile devices

  • Allows you to interact with the player using media keys on desktop

  • Allows users to perform updates as soon as they roll out on the server at the click of a button

In addition to the web player, this page lists alternative clients you can use to connect to your Funkwhale instance and enjoy your music.

Subsonic-compatible clients

Since version 0.12, Funkwhale implements a subset of the Subsonic API. This API is a de-facto standard for a lot of projects out there, and many clients are available that works with this API.

These Subsonic features are supported in Funkwhale:

  • Search (artists, albums, tracks)

  • Common library browsing using ID3 tags (list artists, albums, etc.)

  • Playlist management

  • Stars (which is mapped to Funkwhale’s favorites)

These features are missing:

  • Transcoding/streaming with different bitrates

  • Album covers

  • Artist info (this data is not available in Funkwhale)

  • Library browsing that relies music directories

  • Bookmarks

  • Admin

  • Chat

  • Shares

Note

If you know or use some recent, well-maintained Subsonic clients, please get in touch so we can add them to this list.

In particular we’re still lacking an iOS client!

Enabling Subsonic on your Funkwhale account

Note

Accessing Funkwhale from third party apps requires the instance administrator to enable the Subsonic API setting. If you are unable to use Subsonic, please contact your administrator.

To log-in on your Funkwhale account from Subsonic clients, you will need to set a separate Subsonic API password by visiting your settings page.

Then, when using a client, you’ll have to input some information about your server:

  1. Your Funkwhale instance URL (e.g. https://demo.funkwhale.audio)

  2. Your Funkwhale username (e.g. demo)

  3. Your Subsonic API password (the one you set earlier in this section)

In your client configuration, please double check the “ID3” or “Browse with tags” setting is enabled.

Ultrasonic (Android)

Ultrasonic is a full-featured Subsonic client with Playlists, Stars, Search, Offline mode, etc.

It’s one of the recommended Android client to use with Funkwhale, as we are doing our Android tests on this one.

To enable playback from Funkwhale, enter the following information in the server settings:

  • Server address: the root URL of your instance

  • Username: your username on the instance

  • Password: this will be your subsonic password

Then in the general settings select “Browse Using ID3 Tags”

DSub (Android)

DSub is a full-featured Subsonic client that works great, and has a lot of features:

  • Playlists

  • Stars

  • Search

  • Offline cache (with configurable size, playlist download, queue prefetching, etc.)

It’s one of the recommended Android client to use with Funkwhale, as we are doing our Android tests on this one.

To enable playback from Funkwhale, enter the following information in the server settings:

  • Server address: the root URL of your instance

  • Username: your username on the instance

  • Password: this will be your subsonic password

  • Browse By Tags: enabled

play:Sub (iOS)

Although paid, this app is known to work great with Funkwhale as the maintainer, Michael Bech Hansen, implements Funkwhale-specific logic and checks.

Substreamer (iOS)

Clementine (Desktop)

This desktop client works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and is able to stream music from your Funkwhale instance. However, it does not implement advanced features such as playlist management, search or stars.

This is the client we use for our desktop tests.

To enable playback from Funkwhale, enter the following information in the Internet -> subsonic settings:

  • Server address: the root URL of your instance

  • Username: your username on the instance

  • Password: this will be your subsonic password

Mopidy (CLI)

Mopidy is a Python-based music server which you can run on your machine in order to access your music through a CLI such as ncmpcpp.

In order to use Mopidy to stream from the CLI, you will need to install the following dependencies:

Once installed, add the following to your /etc/mopidy/mopidy.conf:

[subidy]
enabled=True
url=https://path.to/your/funkwhale/server
username=your_funkwhale_username
password=your_subsonic_password
#legacy_auth=(optional - setting to yes may solve some connection errors)
#api_version=(optional - specify which API version to use. Subsonic 6.2 uses 1.14.0)

Then in your .config/ncmpcpp/config, change the startup_screen value so that it doesn’t default to the built-in media library:

startup_screen = browser

This will show your artists, albums, and playlists when you start ncmpcpp.

[Optional]: enable and start mopidy as a service to start the server at boot.

Note

This also works with the mopidy-funkwhale plugin

Mobydick (Desktop)

Mobydick is a free and open-source desktop application for linux (based on GTK+) to easily download tracks, albums and discography from a Funkwhale instance.