Playback

Bit-perfect playback

Needle uses mpv ↗ as its playback engine via JSON IPC. Audio is passed to mpv without any resampling, volume normalisation, or DSP — what’s encoded in your file is exactly what gets sent to your DAC.

This matters most for lossless formats like FLAC and ALAC, where any processing would defeat the purpose.

Playback bar

The bar at the bottom of the window shows:

• Cover art, track title, artist, and album — click the album to open the Album page with full metadata, track listing, and Wikipedia notes
• Seek / progress scrubbing
• Playback controls (previous, play/pause, next)
• Shuffle and repeat mode toggles
• Volume and mute
• Output device selector
• Format info — for example FLAC · 44.1 kHz · 16-bit

Repeat can be set to off, repeat one, or repeat all.

Up Next queue

The queue shows your upcoming tracks with album covers and track counts. You can:

• Reorder tracks by dragging
• Remove individual tracks
• Clear upcoming tracks
• Jump directly to any queued track

Queue actions are available throughout the app — on tracks, albums, and playlist pages — as Play next and Add to queue.

Playback persistence

Needle restores your queue, selected track, repeat mode, shuffle state, and last position when you relaunch the app. The session is restored in a stopped state — Needle never autoplays on launch.

Equalizer

Six built-in presets are available: Flat, Bass Boost, Bass/Treble Boost, Vocal, Treble Boost, and Lounge. You can also dial in a manual 10-band EQ. Both are wired through mpv audio filters.

To open the equalizer, go to Settings → Equalizer.

Manual slider edits are applied on release to avoid playback interruption while adjusting.

Volume

The default startup volume is 80% to avoid surprise-loud playback on first launch.