Retro Cassette Player – your music on cassettes in a portable tape player

Applications Testing
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Hi all! I’d like to share Retro Cassette Player, a music player for muOS where your music lives on cassettes. Pick a tape from the box, drop it into the player and watch the reels turn.

Player
Player720×480 26 KB

Library
Library720×480 33.1 KB

How it works

  • Every album folder is a tape. The library is a box of cassettes stacked spine-out. Open an album to see its songs as tapes too.
  • Every tape looks different. Shell colour, label paper, stripes, handwriting and ink are picked from the album name, and the cassette in the player matches its spine.
  • No icons or numbers on screen. You can tell what’s happening the way you would with a real player: keys that stay down, turning reels, how much tape is on each reel, the head against the tape, and minute marks on the cassette window.
  • Real tape behaviour: songs sit on one side with short gaps, FF/REW actually wind the tape, a tap on FF/REW finds the next or previous song, and holding them plays the music fast (cue/review).
  • Big libraries: the box label shows the letter you’re in and “40 of 87”, and A–Z dividers stand between the tapes.
  • Two SD cards show up as SD1 and SD2.
  • Pocket mode: the screen goes dark after 30 s without a button press while the music keeps playing. Any button wakes it.
  • Kept cool: it only redraws when something moves, and songs load in the background.
  • MP3, OGG, FLAC and WAV.

Controls

The four keys on screen sit right above the shoulder buttons:

Button Player Library
L1 REW (tap: back a song, hold: review) Previous letter
L2 / B STOP, press again to eject Back up a folder
R2 / A PLAY / PAUSE Put the tape in and play
R1 FF (tap: next song, hold: cue) Next letter
D-pad :reverse_button: :play_button: Previous / next song :reverse_button: back, :play_button: open album
D-pad ▲ ▼ Choose a tape

Volume is the device’s own volume buttons. Select + Start or Menu quits.

Install

  1. Download RetroCassette-0.3.3.muxapp from the release page.
  2. Copy it to the ARCHIVE folder at the top of your SD card and install it with Applications → Archive Manager.
  3. Put your music in a MUSIC folder at the top of an SD card, one folder per album.

It uses the LÖVE runtime that ships with muOS (from 2048 Plus), so nothing else needs installing.

Tip: switch the device off before taking an SD card out to add music. A card swapped while the device is on isn’t picked up until you restart.

Tested on

  • Anbernic RG34XXSP (720×480), muOS 2606 Andromeda

The layout is made for 720×480. Other screen sizes should work with black bars, but I haven’t tried them. Reports from other devices are very welcome, especially whether L2/R2 respond and whether A and B are the right way round.

Feedback & source

Bugs and ideas are welcome here or on GitHub. Free software under GPL-3.0.

Source: GitHub - alesavin/muos-retro-cassette-player · GitHub

5 Likes
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aesthetically this looks amazing - I’ll give it a test on the gkd pixel 2

1 Like
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ok testing on pixel 2 - works great.

it fits on the screen as you described, with some bars.
You could fix it and gate for device but it’s probably a lot more effort than you’re willing to do / test.

I did note that:

  1. the draw on the screen seems to need ‘prompting’ with a D Pad or other button push; otherwise it’s just a dark screen.
  2. volume bar is not visible on the screen when adjusting.
1 Like
4

Thank you for the feedback and testing! I tried to fix some issues in 0.3.4 - hope with them the app feels a bit better. Feel free to make PR for github I can merge if you have time/desire (AI harness should be super-helpfull there, I use Claude Code to manage Lua).

Main challenge for me is to keep it simple as possible - even without settings section, but I’m not sure it is possible in a way to be compatible with all devices / users preferences