Bringing Rockbox's Legendary Audio Engine to the Modern Desktop: A Native Port for Linux and macOS

Remember the iPod Classic era? Back in 2010, I installed Rockbox on mine and was completely blown away. The default Apple firmware was fine, but Rockbox unlocked a whole new level of audio goodness:

High-quality parametric equalizer

Seamless crossfading

Advanced audio filters and DSP effects

Gapless playback, replay gain, and so much more

It turned my iPod into an audiophile's dream.

Fast forward to today: I no longer own an iPod, but my music library is bigger than ever, living on my Linux desktop and MacBook. I've tried pretty much every desktop music player out there—Clementine, Strawberry, Rhythmbox, even the big commercial ones—and none of them quite match that Rockbox audio quality. I missed it badly.

So, I decided to do something about it: port Rockbox to run natively on desktop Linux and macOS.

The Core Idea: Keep the Engine, Ditch the Old UI

Rockbox's audio processing core is incredible—it's lightweight, highly efficient, and packed with pro-level DSP features. The good news? All of that works perfectly when ported.

The challenge? Rockbox's UI was designed for low-res embedded screens (e.g., the iPod Classic's 320x240 pixels). It looks tiny and outdated on a modern 1080p+ desktop display.

My solution:

Run Rockbox in headless mode (completely disable the default SDL-- based GUI).

Build a brand-new, native graphical interface on top:

GTK+ for Linux (integrates beautifully with GNOME, KDE, etc.)

SwiftUI for macOS (modern, responsive, and feels right at home)

This way, you get the unbeatable Rockbox audio engine with a clean, modern UI that scales properly on big screens.

Current Status & What's Coming

The project is actively under development, and the core audio features are already there and sounding amazing. Playlist handling, library scanning, and playback work great.

On the roadmap:

Enhanced playlist management and search

Cross-device music library sync

Built-in scrobbling support ( Rocksky )

Cross-platform sync improvements

It's 100% open source, and contributions are very welcome—whether it's code, testing, UI ideas, or packaging help.

Check it out, star the repo, try it, and let me know what you think!

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/tsirysndr/rockbox-zig

Tangled Repo: https://tangled.org/tsiry-sandratraina.com/rockbox-zig

Why This Matters to Me (and Maybe to You)

If you're an audio enthusiast running Linux or macOS and tired of compromising on sound quality, this could be the player you've been waiting for. Rockbox has been around forever for a reason—its DSP is still unmatched in many ways.

What about you? What's your current desktop music player? Do you miss any specific Rockbox features? Drop a comment—I'd love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, or even war stories from the iPod modding days!