Mordent

Mordent

A native, fast Apple Music client.

Instant startup, minimal resource use, and the shortest path from wanting to hear music to hearing it — in a single Rust binary with an egui interface.

Download How to install Report a bug

What it is

Mordent is a lightweight, native Apple Music client for Linux, macOS and Windows, built in Rust with egui.

Native & fast

One small Rust binary and an immediate-mode UI. Catalog search and 90-second previews work anonymously — no login required to browse.

Full-quality playback

ALAC up to 24-bit / hi-res, decrypted in-flight by wrapper-lite — the FairPlay SAMPLE-AES backend. Requires an active Apple Music subscription logged into the helper.

Your music, organized

Search with Songs and Albums views, your library albums, playlists, favorites, word-synced lyrics, and a real queue with reorder, shuffle and repeat.

Private by design

Only encrypted (FairPlay) audio is ever written to the cache — decryption happens in memory at play time, so the cached files stay inert without your device's license material.

Install

Download, double-click, done. The first run opens a guided setup wizard — every later run is the same windowed app, no terminal at any point.

Linux — AppImage
  • Works on any distro; installs nothing by itself.
  • Allow executing the file in your file manager once.
  • Double-click to start.
Download for Linux
macOS — Mordent.app
  • Apple Silicon and Intel builds.
  • Unzip, drag into Applications.
  • First launch: right-click → Open → Open.
Download for macOS
Windows — zip
  • Unzip anywhere, run mordent.exe.
  • First run: SmartScreen → More info → Run anyway.
Download for Windows

All downloads live on the latest release page — plain tarballs and checksums included.

Or one line in a terminal

Installs into a user directory (~/.local) — no sudo, ever.

curl -fsSL https://github.com/mordentplayer/mordent/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Prefer to look before you run? Download install.sh, read it, then run bash install.sh yourself. It takes --prefix, --tag and --uninstall.

The helper

Full-quality playback needs wrapper-lite, the FairPlay SAMPLE-AES decryption backend.

Apple serves lossless audio encrypted; wrapper-lite does the licensed decryption and hands Mordent the manifest, keys and lyrics over plain HTTP on your own machine or LAN. It is a small Linux/x86-64 binary — Mordent talks to it over HTTP, so it can live anywhere reachable.

Graphical install

The setup wizard installs the helper bundled with the app as a system service under /opt/mordent-wrapper — the one step that asks for your password, through a graphical dialog. Pick Install the helper on this computer and it streams the installer output live.

Remote or home server

On a Mac the helper runs in Docker (or on an always-on Linux box) and the wizard's Connect to a music helper path just points at its URL — on this computer, a friend's server, or your own VPS. Compose file and a step-by-step guide ship with each release.

Download the helper container pieces directly

Stable URLs, always the latest release:

https://github.com/mordentplayer/mordent/releases/latest/download/wrapper-lite-amd64.tar.gz
https://github.com/mordentplayer/mordent/releases/latest/download/compose.yaml

Already installed and want to update? A helper under /opt/mordent-wrapper (or a legacy /opt/amc-wrapper) keeps working unchanged — nothing needs re-authenticating.

Feedback

Report a bug or request a feature — no GitHub account needed.

Submissions go to an anonymous form and are triaged into public issues on the repository. You can also open an issue directly if you prefer.

Open the feedback form Browse issues