STATIX

Statix streams music and video from your own servers. Hook it up to an SFTP or FTP server, point it at your files, and you're in business. Local files work too.

Home Screen

Key Features

• Stream from SFTP, FTP, or local storage
• Internet radio with station browser
• Detailed listening statistics and history
• Smart playlists that update on the fly
• Manual playlists you curate yourself
• Song Radio: auto-generated mixes from similar tracks
• Scrobble to Last.fm and ListenBrainz
• Butterchurn visualizations with hundreds of presets
• 10-band graphic equalizer
• Artist discovery via Last.fm
• Bookmarks to save your place
• CarPlay support
• Background playback with lock screen controls

The interface is styled after old CRT monitors. Phosphor glow, scanlines, the works. Every element has that arcade cabinet feel.

CRT Effects

• Scanlines - Horizontal lines like an old TV
• Phosphor glow - That soft bloom around bright elements
• Vignette - Darkened corners like a curved screen
• Bulbous distortion - Slight curvature at the edges

All of this can be adjusted or turned off. Head to the CRT Display panel to tweak the intensity of each effect.

CRT Effects

What You Need

• iPhone or iPad running iOS 18.0 or later
• Music or video files somewhere accessible
• For remote streaming: an SFTP or FTP server

Permissions

On first launch, the app asks for local network access. This is for finding servers on your network. You can deny it if you only plan to use remote servers or local files.

SFTP is the recommended choice for remote access. Your credentials travel encrypted, and the connection is authenticated with your server's SSH setup.

Source Types

If the connection works, the server appears on your home screen as a tile. Tap it to browse your files.

Add Server

Tap "Add Local Folder" on the home screen. Pick any folder your device has access to, including iCloud Drive locations.

Once added, local sources work exactly like remote ones. Browse, play, scan, favorite.

Common Issues

• Connection refused - Check the port number. SFTP is usually 22, FTP is 21.
• Authentication failed - Double-check your username and password.
• Timeout - Your server might be behind a firewall. Check that the port is open.
• Host key verification failed - The server's identity changed. If you trust this, clear saved hosts.

Connection Indicator

Tap a server tile to open the file browser. Folders appear at the top, files below. Tap a folder to go in, swipe from the left edge or tap back to go up.

File Icons

• ▣ Folder
• ♫ Audio file
• ▶ Video file

The browser remembers where you were. Close the app and come back, you'll be in the same folder.

File Browser

Tap any audio or video file to play it. The player opens full-screen. For audio, you get visualizations. For video, you get the video.

Every file you play gets recorded in your statistics. That's how smart playlists and the stats dashboard know what you've been listening to.

This is where you spend most of your time during playback. Album art or the visualizer fills the background.

Now Playing

What's On Screen

• Track title, artist, album
• Playback position and duration
• Play/pause, skip forward/back
• Volume slider
• Shuffle and repeat toggles
• Favorite button (heart)
• Queue button
• Equalizer button

Swipe down to minimize and keep browsing while music plays.

Basic Controls

• Play/Pause - The big button in the middle
• Skip forward - Next track in queue
• Skip back - Previous track, or restart current if past 3 seconds
• Scrubber - Drag to seek within the track

Lock Screen & Control Center

Standard iOS media controls work. Play, pause, skip from the lock screen or Control Center. Album art shows up there too.

Headphone Controls

Wired or Bluetooth headphones with media buttons work as expected. Center click plays/pauses, double-click skips forward, triple-click goes back.

The queue is your "up next" list. When you play a file from the browser, everything in that folder gets added to the queue.

Managing the Queue

• Tap the queue icon on the Now Playing screen
• Drag tracks to reorder
• Swipe left on a track to remove it
• Tap any track to jump to it

The queue persists between sessions. Close the app, open it tomorrow, your queue is still there.

The Queue

Shuffle

Tap the shuffle icon to randomize queue order. Tracks play in a random sequence. Tap again to go back to the original order.

Repeat Modes

Cycle through by tapping the repeat icon:

• Off - Stop after the last track
• All - Loop the entire queue
• One - Loop the current track forever

Shuffle & Repeat

Bookmarks save your exact playback position and queue state. If you're deep into a long album and need to stop, bookmark it and pick up right where you left off later.

Creating a Bookmark

While something is playing, tap the bookmark icon in the player controls. Statix saves the current track, position, and the entire queue along with it.

Resuming a Bookmark

Bookmarks appear as tiles on the home screen. Tap one to restore the full playback state: same track, same position, same queue. It's like you never left.

Managing Bookmarks

• Rename bookmarks with a custom label
• Swipe to delete ones you don't need
• Bookmarks are tied to the server they were created on

Bookmarks

Raw file browsing works fine, but the real power comes after you scan. Scanning reads metadata from your files and builds a proper library database.

How to Scan

Scan Modes

• Everything - The whole server, top to bottom
• Selected folders only - Just the ones you check
• Everything except selected - Skip folders you don't need

During the Scan

Minimize the scan and keep using the app. A purple banner at the bottom shows progress: track count, artist count, animated dots. Tap the banner to expand back to the full scan view.

Scan Progress

After scanning, switch from "Files" to "Library" mode. Now you can browse by:

Library View

• Artists - Alphabetical list of every artist in your collection
• Albums - All albums, sortable by name or year
• Genres - Everything tagged with Rock, Jazz, Electronic, etc.

Each view shows track counts so you can see how much material you have from each artist or in each genre.

The library has a natural drill-down flow. Start broad, tap to go deeper.

Artist View

Tap an artist to see all their albums. The header shows album and track totals. Hit "Play All" to hear their entire catalog in one go. There's a search bar for filtering.

Album View

Tap an album to see its tracks in order. You get title, artist, year, and track count. Play All starts from track one. Shuffle mixes it up. Tap any track to start from that point.

Genre View

Genres pull together all tracks with that tag, regardless of artist or album. The icon changes based on genre type—guitars for rock, waveforms for electronic. Same controls: Play All, Shuffle, search.

Artist & Album View

There's a search bar at the bottom of the library view. Type anything and results appear instantly.

Result Categories

• Artists (purple icon) - Shows track count
• Albums (blue icon) - Shows artist and year
• Genres (orange icon) - Shows track count
• Tracks (green icon) - Shows artist and album

Each category shows the first five matches. Tap "See all" to expand the full list.

Actions

• Tap a track to play it right away
• Tap an artist to see their albums
• Tap an album to see its track listing
• Tap a genre to browse all matching tracks

Library Search

Tap the heart icon on the Now Playing screen to favorite a track. Your favorites show up in their own list, accessible from the home screen.

What Happens When You Favorite

Behind the scenes, Statix calls out to Last.fm and fetches similar artists based on the track's artist. These get stored with the favorite for later discovery.

The Favorites List

Your favorites appear in a list, most recent at top. Each row shows:

• Track title and artist
• Album name
• When you favorited it

Tap a favorite to expand it. The expanded view shows more details and any similar artists that were found.

Favorites

When you expand a favorite, you'll see a row of similar artists if any were found. These come from Last.fm's database.

What You Can Do

Tap any similar artist name and Statix opens YouTube Music with a search for that artist. Useful for checking out music you don't have yet.

Similar Artists

Tap the main artist name (not a similar artist) in an expanded favorite to pull up detailed info from MusicBrainz and Last.fm.

Artist Info

What You'll See

• Photo - Artist image from Last.fm
• Biography - Background and history
• Type - Person, group, orchestra, etc.
• Country - Where they're from
• Years active - Formation and dissolution dates
• Tags - Genre labels and styles
• Aliases - Other names they go by
• Related artists - Members, collaborators
• External links - Wikipedia, Spotify, YouTube, official sites
• Discography - Albums, EPs, singles from MusicBrainz

Requires internet. Links open in your browser.

Song Radio generates a playlist of tracks from your own library based on what you're currently listening to. Think of it as a "radio station" seeded by a single song, but every track it picks is something you actually own.

How It Works

Tap the Song Radio button in the player controls. Statix takes the current track's artist and title, looks up similar tracks via Last.fm, then fuzzy-matches those suggestions against your scanned library. The result is a ranked queue of tracks that sound like what you're playing.

What Goes Into the Mix

• Last.fm similarity data - Similar tracks and similar artists from Last.fm's database
• Local library matching - Fuzzy search to find the closest matches in your collection
• Listening history - Your play counts and patterns help rank candidates
• Similarity caching - Results are cached so subsequent Song Radio runs are fast

Song Radio

Smart playlists build themselves based on rules you define. They combine your scanned library data with your listening statistics.

Smart Playlist Editor

Built-in Playlists

• Heavy Rotation - Tracks you've played the most
• Deep Cuts - Tracks you rarely play
• Recent Discoveries - Stuff you played for the first time lately

Making Your Own

Tap "New Smart Playlist" and set up rules. Each rule has three parts:

• Field - What to check (artist, genre, play count, etc.)
• Operator - How to compare (is, contains, greater than, etc.)
• Value - What to match

Add multiple rules and combine them with AND or OR logic. Set limits if you want. Pick an icon and color to make it yours.

Tap a smart playlist to see its matching tracks. The header shows the playlist icon, name, and a summary of the rules.

Playback Options

• Shuffle toggle - Turn on before playing to randomize
• Play All - Starts playback with the current shuffle setting

Tap any track to start from that point instead.

Track List

Each track shows title, artist, and album. Tracks you've played before have a green badge with the play count.

Menu Options

• Edit Playlist - Change the rules
• Refresh - Re-run the rules now
• Delete - Remove it (only for your custom playlists)

Smart Playlist Detail

Manual playlists are the traditional kind: you pick the tracks yourself. Unlike smart playlists that auto-populate, these contain exactly what you put in them.

Creating a Manual Playlist

Adding Tracks

You can add tracks from almost anywhere in the app. Long-press a track or use the action menu and pick "Add to Playlist." A picker sheet appears showing all your manual playlists. Tap one to add the track.

• Add from the file browser
• Add from the library (artist, album, or genre views)
• Add from favorites
• Add from search results
• Add multiple tracks at once with bulk selection

Managing Tracks

• Drag to reorder tracks within the playlist
• Swipe to remove individual tracks
• Rename, change icon, or change accent color any time
• Delete the whole playlist when you're done with it

Manual Playlist

Statix can stream internet radio stations alongside your own music. The radio browser connects to the Radio Browser directory, one of the largest open databases of internet radio stations.

Finding Stations

Tap the radio tile on the home screen to open the browser. You'll find three tabs:

• Top Voted - The most popular stations in the directory
• Trending - Stations gaining listeners right now
• Search - Type a name, genre, or country to find something specific

Each station shows its name, genre tags, bitrate, and country. Station favicons load in the background to give you a visual preview.

Playing a Station

Tap any station in the list to start playing immediately. The radio player opens with the stream.

Saving Stations

Like a station? Tap the save icon. Saved stations appear as tiles on your home screen so you can jump right in next time without searching.

Radio Browser

The radio player is a full-screen experience, similar to the music player but tailored for live streams.

What's On Screen

• Station name and genre - What you're listening to
• ICY metadata - Live track info from the stream (artist and title if the station broadcasts it)
• Visualizer - Butterchurn reacts to the radio audio in real time
• Play/stop control - Radio streams don't have skip or seek
• Signal strength indicator - Shows connection quality

Extra Controls

You get the equalizer, visualizer preset browser, and sleep timer, just like with regular music playback. The radio player also has a dice button to shuffle to a random visualizer preset.

Radio Player

Saved radio stations appear as tiles on your home screen, right alongside your server connections. Each tile shows the station's favicon and name.

Managing Stations

• Tap a station tile to start playing immediately
• Long-press to enter edit mode
• Delete stations you no longer want
• Stations remember their last play position in the session

Resume Radio

If you were listening to a radio station when you closed the app, a resume banner appears at the top of the home screen offering to reconnect to that station.

Saved Stations

Every track you play gets recorded. The stats dashboard shows patterns in your listening.

Statistics Dashboard

Date Range Filter

• All Time - Everything since you started
• Last 7 Days - Just the past week
• Last 30 Days - The past month
• Last 3 Months - Recent quarter
• Custom Range - Pick exact dates

Dashboard Sections

• Total plays and unique tracks
• Total listening time
• Top tracks, artists, and genres
• Recently played
• New discoveries

Tap any track or artist in these lists to see more detail.

The calendar shows your listening day by day. Days with activity are colored by the dominant genre you listened to.

Calendar View

Genre Colors

• Cyan = Rock
• Magenta = Electronic
• Gold = Jazz
• Green = Classical
• Purple = Hip Hop

Navigate between months with the arrow buttons. Days without any listening stay dark.

Day Details

Tap any colored day for a breakdown:

• Total plays that day
• Total listening time
• Genre breakdown with colored bars
• Top 5 tracks
• Top 5 artists

Tap any track or artist in the statistics views to drill down.

Track Details

• Play count - Total times played
• Average completion - How much you typically listen to
• Longest streak - Most consecutive days played
• First played - When you discovered it
• Last played - Most recent play
• Time of day - Heatmap showing when you typically play it
• Play history - Every play with timestamp

Artist Details

• Total plays across all tracks
• First and last played dates
• All their tracks ranked by play count

Track Details

Statix can automatically log every track you listen to on Last.fm. If you've been tracking your listening habits there for years, your Statix plays show up alongside everything else.

Connecting Your Account

The Last.fm tile on the home screen handles authentication. Tap it to log in via Last.fm's OAuth flow. Once connected, the tile glows red and shows your username and scrobble queue status.

How Scrobbling Works

After you listen to a track for at least half its duration (or 4 minutes, whichever comes first), Statix sends a scrobble to Last.fm. The current track is also sent as a "now playing" update in real time.

Offline Queue

No internet? No problem. Scrobbles get queued locally in a Core Data store. When you're back online, the queue flushes automatically and sends everything in batch.

Last.fm Dashboard

Tap the Last.fm tile when connected to open the stats dashboard. It pulls your data from Last.fm and displays:

• Top artists - Your most-played artists for a selected time period
• Top tracks - Most-listened tracks
• Top albums - Albums you've spent the most time with
• Recent scrobbles - Your latest listening activity
• Suggestions - Similar artists and tracks based on your history

Time periods include: 7 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, and overall.

Last.fm Dashboard

ListenBrainz is an open-source music listening tracker from the MetaBrainz Foundation. Like Last.fm, it records what you listen to, but it's free and open.

Connecting Your Account

The ListenBrainz tile on the home screen starts the connection process. You'll need your ListenBrainz user token, which you can find in your ListenBrainz profile settings. Paste it in and Statix validates it.

Scrobbling

Once connected, Statix submits listens to ListenBrainz automatically using the same rules as Last.fm. "Now playing" updates go out in real time, and completed listens get submitted when you finish a track. An offline queue handles connectivity gaps.

ListenBrainz Dashboard

The ListenBrainz view is a full-featured dashboard with more depth than Last.fm. You can explore:

• Now playing - What's currently playing on your account
• Listening activity - Charts of your listening over time
• Top artists, tracks & albums - Ranked by various time periods
• Recent listens - Your latest scrobbles
• Playlists - Auto-generated playlists from ListenBrainz, matched against your local library
• Recommendations - Track recommendations based on your data
• Similar users - People with overlapping taste
• Pinned recording - Your currently pinned track
• User profile - Detailed profile stats and activity

Local Library Matching

ListenBrainz playlists and recommendations show tracks from their global database. Statix fuzzy-matches these against your scanned library. Tracks that match show a play button so you can listen immediately from your own collection.

Artist & Track Details

Tap any artist or track in the ListenBrainz views to see detailed stats, similar artists, and whether it exists in your library.

ListenBrainz Dashboard

A 10-band graphic EQ for shaping your sound. Tap the EQ icon on the Now Playing screen.

10-Band Equalizer

Frequency Bands

• 31Hz, 63Hz - Sub-bass and bass. Kick drums, bass guitars.
• 125Hz, 250Hz - Low-mids. Body and warmth.
• 500Hz, 1kHz - Midrange. Vocals, most instruments.
• 2kHz, 4kHz - Upper-mids. Presence, clarity.
• 8kHz, 16kHz - Treble. Air, shimmer, cymbals.

Controls

• Preamp - Master volume before EQ. Lower it if you're boosting bands.
• Power toggle - Enable or disable the EQ
• Reset - Flatten all bands to 0dB
• DAS U - A signature preset that creates a smile curve

Each band glows in a different neon color. Settings save automatically.

The visualizer uses Butterchurn, a WebGL implementation of the classic Milkdrop presets. Hundreds of trippy patterns that react to your music.

Butterchurn Visualizer

How It Works

Audio feeds into a frequency analyzer. The visualizer reads those frequencies and animates accordingly. Bass hits pulse. Treble sparkles. Mids swirl.

Tap the screen during playback to show/hide the controls. Double-tap to go full screen.

Tap the preset browser icon to see all available visualizer presets.

Finding Presets

Search by name or creator. Presets are grouped by author, with the most prolific at top. Tap a group to expand, tap a preset to switch immediately.

Auto-Change Settings

• Random Mode - Next preset picked randomly
• Auto-change - Switch presets on a timer
• Interval - 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, or 2 minutes

Preset Browser

Set a timer to stop playback automatically. Good for falling asleep to music.

Options

• 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes
• End of current track
• Custom duration

When the timer runs out, playback stops and the app goes quiet.

Sleep Timer

Fine-tune the retro CRT look or turn it off.

Adjustable Effects

• Bulbous Distortion - Screen curvature at edges (0.00–1.00)
• Scan Lines - Horizontal line intensity (0.00–1.00)
• Vignette - Corner darkening (0.00–1.00)
• Text Glow - Phosphor bloom around text (0.00–1.00)

There's a "Reset to Defaults" button if you want to start over.

CRT Settings

Statix supports CarPlay for controlling playback from your car's display. When you connect your iPhone to a CarPlay-compatible vehicle, the Statix icon appears on the car screen.

What's Available

CarPlay uses the Now Playing template, which means you get:

• Current track info (title, artist, album)
• Album artwork on the car display
• Play, pause, skip forward, skip back
• Scrubber for seeking within a track

Start playback on your phone, then it continues seamlessly on the car screen. All standard media controls on your steering wheel work too.

CarPlay

Statix uses VLC's playback engine, so format support is wide.

Audio

Video

If VLC plays it on desktop, it'll probably work here too.

Credential Storage

Server passwords are stored in the iOS Keychain, the same secure enclave that stores your other app passwords and Face ID data.

SFTP vs FTP

SFTP encrypts everything: your password, the file list, the actual data. FTP sends everything in plain text. If you're connecting over the internet, use SFTP.

Statistics

All your listening data stays on-device. Nothing gets sent to any server unless you explicitly connect Last.fm or ListenBrainz. The MusicBrainz and Last.fm lookups for artist info are the only other network calls beyond your own media server.

Scrobbling Services

Last.fm and ListenBrainz credentials are stored in the iOS Keychain. Scrobble data is only sent when you're authenticated. You can disconnect either service at any time from its settings sheet.

If you run into problems: