Questions,answered

A native music player for macOS, written in Swift. It plays the music files you own, from MP3 to 24-bit FLAC and DSD, and adds things other players don’t: an AI assistant that builds playlists from your library, YouTube downloads for songs and playlists, listening stats, profiles, karaoke and synced lyrics.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Karaoke needs macOS 15 Sequoia or later because the vocal-separation model relies on something that doesn’t exist in macOS 14. On Sonoma, everything else works normally.

No. There’s no sign-up and no subscription. MacAMP opens straight into your library. The AI assistant can use a subscription you already have, like Claude or ChatGPT, or a free local model through Ollama, but that’s entirely optional.

Yes. No trial, no ads, no locked features. If you’d like to help keep it going, you can leave a tip. It’s entirely optional and doesn’t unlock anything.

Yes. The source code is on GitHub under the GNU GPL v3: you can read it, build it and change it, and anything you distribute that is built on it must stay open source and credit MacAMP. The MacAMP name and icon are not part of the license, so forks need their own.

No. It’s built for music you keep. Add your folders once and MacAMP watches them, so new files appear within seconds. If you want a song you don’t have, you can download it from YouTube and it becomes a real file in your library.

FLAC, ALAC, AAC and M4A, MP3, Opus, Ogg Vorbis, WavPack, Monkey’s Audio, Musepack, WAV, AIFF, DSD (DSF and DFF) and tracker modules (MOD, XM, IT, S3M). Playlists import and export as M3U, PLS, JSON and JSPF.

Yes, in beta. It shares the same audio engine and already handles playback, imports from Files and iCloud Drive, the EQ, lyrics and playlists. The assistant, downloads and karaoke are Mac-only for now. Read about the beta.

It searches your own library first: your genres, your tracks, your listening stats. Then it proposes a playlist. You review every track and press Apply before anything is saved. If you’ve turned on web suggestions, it also lists songs you don’t own, with checked YouTube links you can download in one click.

Claude (with your Claude Pro or Max plan or an Anthropic API key), ChatGPT (with your subscription or an OpenAI API key) or Ollama. Run Ollama locally and nothing leaves your Mac at all. You can switch at any time in Settings.

No. A model can ask about titles, artists, albums, genres, years and your playlists, and MacAMP shows you that list before the first chat. File paths, folder names, audio, artwork and lyrics are never sent, whichever provider you use.

Yes. Paste a playlist link and MacAMP tells you how many tracks it holds before anything is queued. Playlists can have up to 500 tracks, and you can mix single videos and playlists in one paste. Up to four downloads run at once.

M4A (AAC) by default, or MP3, Opus or lossless FLAC, at the quality you choose. Turn on “Add finished downloads to my library” and each file shows up in MacAMP the moment it’s saved.

Never. MacAMP runs a Mel-Band Roformer separation model on your Mac, renders an instrumental in the background and caches it. Switching a song to karaoke keeps its artwork, lyrics and gapless playback. Only the audio you hear changes.

Plays, listening time, completion and skip rate for 7 days, 30 days, 12 months or all time. Plus a listening clock, your top tracks, artists and genres, and a replay heatmap showing which part of each song you go back to most. It all stays on your Mac. More about stats.

Yes. Turn on Profiles and each person gets their own library folders, playlists, favourites, stats and playback position. Add a 4–6 character PIN to keep others out of yours. It’s child-proofing, not encryption.

Yes. Alongside the 10-band graphic EQ there’s a parametric EQ that imports AutoEq profiles, so you can load the correction curve for your exact model. Crossfeed, ReplayGain and a signal-path view are built in too.

If you allow it. MacAMP includes an MCP server that’s off by default. Switch it on and AI apps on your Mac, like Claude Desktop, can search your library and propose playlists. A separate switch lets them control playback. It only listens on your Mac. How MCP works.

No analytics, no crash reporting, no tracking, no account. Online extras like lyrics lookup and artist bios can be turned off with a single switch. AI features only talk to the provider you choose, and only after you agree.

The karaoke model and the YouTube download tools ship inside the app, so both work without fetching anything extra. The player itself is a fraction of that.

The quickest way is one line in Terminal: curl -fsSL https://downloads.macamp.si/install.sh | bash. It checks the download, puts MacAMP in Applications and opens it, with no security prompt. Prefer clicking? Download the disk image and drag MacAMP into Applications.

MacAMP updates itself with Sparkle from a signed release feed. No App Store and no account. When a new version is ready you’ll see the release notes and an Install Update button.

Installed with the Terminal command? You won’t see this. For the disk image, approve MacAMP once: open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll to Security and click Open Anyway. macOS remembers that choice for every future update. Step-by-step guide.