An iPod-style music player for your iPhone, click wheel included

There are two things people mean when they say they miss the iPod. One is the object: the wheel under the thumb, the click, the green-grey LCD. The other is the way of listening: a library you owned, browsed by menu, with no feed, no ads and no signal required. A good iPod-style player for iPhone has to deliver both.

The wheel has to be a wheel

A ring with four icons drawn on it is a picture. A wheel is something you run your thumb around: the list scrolls with your finger, it clicks as it passes each item, and it keeps momentum when you let go. On MP95's Classic Wheel the ring scrolls the list and scrubs the track, with haptics on every step. The four points of the ring are menu, previous, next and play/pause; the centre selects. Hold the centre to love a track.

This is an original design. It has the feel of the pocket players of the 2000s without copying one, and MP95 is not affiliated with Apple.

Menus, not a search box

The pocket players were browsed one list at a time: Songs, Albums, Artists. That constraint is half the pleasure. MP95's wheel player has its own menu-driven library with Songs, Albums, Artists, Folders, Lists, Loved and Recent, and the wheel does the scrolling. Search is there when you need it, but you can go a whole evening without touching it.

An LCD that tells you things

The display shows album art, the track, artist and album, the format and bitrate of the file (so you know when it is FLAC), what plays next, a bar equalizer that reacts to the music, and a heart when the track is loved. It is drawn as a backlit LCD, greenish, with the faint grid of the panel visible, because that is what the thing looked like.

Owning the music, again

MP95 plays audio files you supply. Folder access through Files can keep a reference to the original folder; opening an individual shared file can copy it into the app. Cloud files must be downloaded before offline listening. Keep an independent backup.

Use the import guide to prepare the library, then test it without a network connection.

The wheel on your home screen and your wrist

The click-wheel widget puts the wheel on the home screen: the left, right and bottom zones of the ring are previous, next and play/pause, the elapsed time is a live system timer, and the menu and centre open the app. On Apple Watch, the same wheel is the remote for the phone. Read about widgets and the watch remote.

The audio path

The wheel is an interface choice. It uses the same MP95 playback engine and optional sound tools as the other designs: EQ, crossfeed, speed changes and 8D. Its appearance is not evidence that it sounds better than an old iPod or another app.

A lossless source describes the recording, not the whole output chain. For unprocessed playback, disable effects, EQ, ReplayGain, crossfeed and headphone correction. Check the actual output rate as well as the source rate. A matching rate alone does not prove bit-for-bit delivery through the operating system, volume control and output device.

Getting it

MP95 is free on the App Store with the cassette deck and turntable; the Classic Wheel plays for a free preview at any time and is part of MP95 Pro. See the Classic Wheel.