I wasn’t looking for another project. I just wanted a music player I could leave running while gaming or streaming without wondering how much memory and CPU it was using.
I’d used Spotify and Apple Music’s Windows apps, but their resource usage bothered me often enough that I started looking elsewhere. Not every player uses Electron, and Electron alone doesn’t make an app inefficient. Still, I kept wishing for something that felt like a focused desktop application.
YouTube Music had the catalogue I wanted, but no official native Windows desktop player. The browser and installable web app were options, just not quite the experience I was looking for.
So I tried open-source alternatives.
Some came close. But I kept running into a different compromise: an interface I didn’t enjoy, a missing feature, or a workflow that never quite felt comfortable. Nothing made me want to stop searching and settle in.
Eventually, “there must be something that fits” turned into “maybe I should try building it.”
Starting With a Small Wish List
That became Auricle, a Windows music player built with Rust and Slint.
My goals were straightforward: low resource usage, a good interface, solid autoplay and enough practical features to use it regularly. I chose a native UI rather than an Electron or embedded-webview approach.
That choice isn’t a performance result, though. “Built with Rust” doesn’t automatically mean lightweight. Efficiency still needs to be measured, especially while something else demanding is running.
The Complicated Part Is Everything Around Play
A music player sounds simple until you start thinking about the whole experience.
Search results need to be useful. The queue needs to behave predictably. Playback controls need to respond without freezing the interface. A local library needs to remember what matters.
Then there are the parts outside the UI: stream extraction, optional add-ons, upstream service changes, packaging, and updates. Using native frameworks doesn’t make those problems disappear.
Even distributing an early build brought another complication. The unsigned installer received antivirus detections, while separate scans of the installed and portable application executables reported none.
It’s a reminder that building the application and making it trustworthy to download are separate responsibilities.
Still an Early Project
Auricle isn’t my claim that I’ve solved desktop music players. It’s my attempt to build the experience I kept looking for.
It’s Windows-only for now. I’d like to explore Linux eventually, but first I need to understand how the Windows version behaves beyond my own setup.
The original frustration was simple: I wanted to spend less time thinking about the player and more time listening to music. Now I’m learning how much work goes into making that possible.
Check it out here: Auricle GitHub
