Strawberry Music Player

Overview

Strawberry began in 2018 as a fork of Clementine, the long-running Amarok-inspired music player, created by developer Jonas Kvinge to focus specifically on music collection management and high-quality local playback rather than Clementine’s broader scope. It’s aimed at people with large personal audio libraries — including high-resolution and lossless files — who want strong tagging, library organization, and playback controls rather than a streaming catalog.

Strawberry is released under GPL-3.0-or-later, with source on GitHub. While its core purpose is local playback, it can also connect to some external services, including Tidal, Qobuz, SomaFM, and Subsonic-compatible servers (which includes self-hosted options like Navidrome), so it can act as a client on top of a self-hosted or subscription source rather than only playing local files.

Key Features

• Local library management — Tagging, organizing, and browsing large personal music collections
• High-resolution audio support — Handles lossless and high-bitrate formats without quality loss
• Streaming service integration — Optional connections to Tidal, Qobuz, SomaFM, and Subsonic servers
• Smart playlists — Dynamic playlists based on rules and criteria
• Cross-platform — Native builds for Linux, Windows, and macOS
• Album cover and metadata fetching — Automatic artwork and tag lookup

Use Cases

• Audiophiles with local libraries — Managing and playing lossless or high-resolution collections
• Subsonic/Navidrome clients — Using Strawberry as a desktop front-end for a self-hosted music server
• Music collectors — Organizing large, tag-heavy libraries built up over years

Who It’s For

Strawberry is for people who already have (or are building) a personal music library and want a capable, no-cost desktop player to manage and play it, rather than a browse-and-discover streaming app. It’s a strong fit for audiophiles and Subsonic/Navidrome users; those without an existing library may prefer a full self-hosted server like Jellyfin or Navidrome instead.