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Gramophone is a free, open-source, offline Android music player built with Media3/ExoPlayer and Material Design 3. It plays your local music library without cloud accounts, subscriptions, or ads — and follows Android platform standards strictly. The project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 and its source code is available on GitHub.

Design philosophy

Gramophone exists to be a music player that stays out of your way. Its three guiding principles are:
  • Lightweight — minimal resource usage, no background telemetry, no bundled streaming features.
  • Stable — relies on Media3/ExoPlayer and Android’s own MediaStore rather than custom media parsing code.
  • Standards-compliant — follows Android platform conventions for navigation, permissions, notifications, and audio focus so the app behaves predictably alongside the rest of the OS.

Tech stack

ComponentTechnology
Playback engineMedia3/ExoPlayer
Media sessionAndroidX Media3 session
Music discoveryAndroid MediaStore
UI toolkitMaterial Design 3 (Material You)
LanguageKotlin
Minimum Android5.0 (API 21)
Gramophone uses MediaStore to read on-device audio files — it does not scan the filesystem directly or implement its own audio parser. Playback is handled entirely by ExoPlayer, with one exception: ALAC files are decoded by a lightweight bundled Java decoder so they play even when the system lacks an ALAC codec.

Where to get it

Gramophone is available through three distribution channels:

F-Droid

Fully open-source build, verified by the F-Droid reproducible-build infrastructure.

IzzyOnDroid

Alternative F-Droid-compatible repository with faster release cadence.

Google Play

Signed with a separate Play Store certificate; see installation for signature details.
Beta releases and development previews are announced in the Telegram channel.

Supported Android versions

Gramophone runs on Android 5.0 (API level 21) and later. A small number of audio formats require newer Android versions — see the FAQ for the full compatibility matrix.

Feature overview

Music library

Browse by song, album, artist, genre, folder, or playlist. List and grid views with natural sorting.

Synced lyrics

LRC, TTML, and SRT formats with word- and syllable-level karaoke synchronization.

Material Design 3

Dynamic Monet color theming, adaptive player UI, and themed icon on Android 12 and later.

ReplayGain 2.0

Full ReplayGain 2.0 support for consistent loudness across your library.

Equalizer

Works with any system or third-party equalizer app via the standard Android audio effects API.

Build from source

Step-by-step guide to building Gramophone locally with Android Studio.

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love