Streaming services are great at recommending you something new. They're much less interested in helping you manage the music you already own — the CD rips, the Bandcamp downloads, the vinyl transfers, the files that don't live in anyone's catalog but yours. CrateDigger exists for that library: a native macOS app built to scan, tag, convert, and actually enjoy browsing the music you've already collected. It's free and open source on GitHub.

What's in 0.9

This first beta build is intentionally full-featured rather than a bare-bones preview:

  • Carbon / Linen hardware interface — a skeuomorphic design with an OLED-style status display, physical-feeling transport controls, and dark/light chassis themes, instead of a standard flat list.
  • Batch FFmpeg conversion + collision-safe path planner — queue whole directories for multi-threaded conversion with three folder-organization modes and guaranteed non-overwriting output names.
  • Prep Crate staging — new imports land in a review area before joining your permanent library, and crates are portable .cdlib JSON files, not a locked database.
  • CD ripping + Subsonic/Navidrome sync — rip physical discs straight to FLAC or MP3, or connect to a remote streaming library alongside your local files.
  • Radio — stream YouTube live sets, videos, mixes, and playlists as a source right next to your offline tracks.
  • Record Divider — split a continuous vinyl-side rip into clean per-track exports, with auto-detection and manual marker editing.
  • Artwork inspector — a full-size artwork viewer that resolves embedded art, folder images, and remote covers into one shared cache.
  • Last.fm scrobbling and external device transfer (⌘⇧T to an iPod, USB drive, or phone) round out the day-to-day workflow.

What's next

The beta period is about hardening all of the above against real-world libraries — messy tag data, huge crates, and folder structures nobody planned for on purpose. Expect continued stability work and more flexibility in the folder-template options based on what beta users actually run into. No promises on dates; we'd rather ship it right than ship it by a deadline.

Try it

CrateDigger is free and open source under the MIT license. If you've got a music folder you've been meaning to deal with, this is a good excuse.