Questions

Ondu is a self-hosted music library that comes with native apps for iPhone and Mac, and Android coming soon.

Yes. The server is provided as a Docker image and the setup guide helps you get started.

Nothing at all. It’s even open-source!

Android is in development, Windows and Linux are not yet planned at this time.

The Ondu Server does include a basic web-based player as well, so you can still enjoy your music on these platforms using your web browser.

It depends. To stream your own music library on your devices definitely, but for music discovery, the social aspect and finding fun playlists and everything it is not.

Personally I see it as two separate things that you can use side by side.

Not yet, but it’s on the list.

DRM-free music files can be purchased at websites like:

• Bandcamp
• iTunes Store
• Qobuz
• Amazon
• other online stores..

Depending on local laws you could also copy your local CD collection.

The Ondu Server supports most audio files you have. The apps depend on the supported audio formats from the operating systems. When a device can’t play a format natively, like Ogg or Opus on iPhone, the server will transcode it on the fly.

Ondu reads the tags of your music files, and any embedded artwork or included images like cover.jpg/front.jpg etc. Ondu will never try to find any metadata or artwork online, so if something is incorrect or missing you’ll need to fix it yourself and Ondu will pick it up on the next scan.

Ondu only shows artwork that’s embedded in your music files, or in an image like cover.jpg in the same folder. Some online stores, like iTunes, don’t actually embed the artwork in the downloaded music files by default but only store it in their local database.

When artwork is missing you can use a tag editor application to embed artwork in your music files directly, or just save the artwork as a cover.jpg in the same directory as the album and Ondu should pick it up.

Music files never include artist photos and Ondu doesn’t fetch anything from external sources. You can add a photo to any artist in the iPhone or Mac app, or you can automate it yourself by writing a script and using the API.

Yes, by default it will. You can disable this in the apps.

Choose Download from the menu on any song, album, artist or playlist. You can also have new music download automatically as it’s added to the server.

Yes, unless you disabled this in your operating system. You can also change the download and/or streaming quality profiles in settings to save bandwidth.

Yes. Any changes you make are stored locally and will be sent to the server the next time it can connect.

Your music folder is most important, of course. But if you also want to back up your playlists, play history and artist photos you should also back up the server’s /data folder.

You can reset it from the server, for example:

docker exec <container> bin/reset-password <username>

There is a global login limiter to try and minimise brute force attempts. After 10 failed attempts in 15 minutes, sign-in is blocked for a while. Wait it out, or restart the container to reset the limit.

If a login is blocked by the limiter, any existing sessions should still work as normal.

No, that was not one of the goals of this project.

None. The apps only talk to your own self-hosted server. There are no analytics, no ads and no third-party services. The privacy policy has more details.

Your library and downloads are removed from that device. Nothing on the server changes.

No. If your session expired the app asks for your password again, but it keeps your library and downloads unless you decide to sign out.