Cs: Music Player Reviews

I’ve been using this music player for a few years now. The #1 reason I bought Cs in the first place was because the album art filled the entire width of my phone. Apples music app used to do that too, but when they changed it a few iOS versions ago, I was annoyed. I like my album art to be as big as possible. And since they are always a square picture, having it full the entire width is the only way to maximize the viewing size of it. Now with Cesium, that IS the reason I bought Cs in the first place, because the developer brought back that UI element and it filled the entire width.

With the recent updates, however, I notice that there is how a border around my album art, effectively make it smaller. My phone is already small compared to the large Pro Max phones.... If the dev would simply change it to again fill the entire width of the phone, I would change my rating to 5 stars.

*edit* After using Cs for a few more days, I have come to really enjoy it. The interface is cleaner than the old version, and it seems to run extremely stably. Despite my comments above about the album art, after these few days, I now find that I don’t mind it as is. It’s very aesthetic with the way the background changes color based on album artwork colors. Very nice update after all.

I’ve been a long time user of this app Music Player (or Cesium as it used to be called). I’m not so old but it seems I’m a dinosaur when it comes to the way I like to listen to music since I’m a firm believer in OWNING music, having a music library that somehow reflects my own progressing tastes. Apple used to love music lovers and used to provide some very nice hardware and software to cater to guys and gals like me. Now these times are gone and streaming took over. Anyway.
I really would like to like this app and I lindner do since it allows me to listen to my synced iTunes library in a meaningful way. A huge library needs the right tools to handle it and this app still does that. So thanks for that. However, I don’t like the direction Cs is heading with constantly changing and seemingly erratic UI choices that try to reinvent the wheel. That’s really not necessary because if this app was just a copy of what Apple’s iTunes app used to be a few years ago, everything would be just fine. But for some unknown reason Mike seems to take pleasure in deconstructing well-proven features which is really a shame since the USP of this app is really simple: an app that allows you to easily navigate your (huge) music collection and so helps you to enjoy it.
Please, Mike, don’t try to improve things that are just fine the way they are.

Personal wish: please bring (back) the shuffle by album feature. Thanks.

I want to like Cs, but it's pretty buggy. Sometimes when you press the home button or modify the queue, the song that is currently playing starts over. Sometimes when you add a song to the top of the queue, it doesn't play (it gets removed from the queue). Sometimes when you try to modify the queue, the changes don't get saved. Sometimes it hangs (I'm not talking about the iOS 11.2 lag, this is different) and sometimes it even crashes. It doesn't seem to update song metadata (e.g. 'last played' and play count) in a timely fashion. Songs that have just played still appear in the queue. If you add a long playlist (a couple thousand songs) to the queue, it reduces it to about 500 songs, I have no idea how it selects which songs to play when it does this. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Cs and get the same results. I'm on iOS 11.3.

Update for version 4.3: Cs has gotten a lot better since the developer implemented workarounds for the Apple bugs. However, the Apple bugs still make it very difficult to modify the queue. Is there anything we can do to push Apple along? Post something on the feedback site perhaps? Shame on Apple for not fixing these bugs, they've known about them for a long long time.

Update: app doesn’t work as well as it used to. It might be updates by apple’s fault but daft it is freezes often, crashes, often becomes unresponsive. Sometimes you have to go into the Apple Music app to stop the music playing. Still like the layout but it needs to be more reliable

Original review: Good. Still some issues. Has become quite laggy though or just less responsive to finger presses. More so than the Apple player in a noticeable way. Needs better scrobbler. It's not precise when's moving and the hit box for your finger to activate it is way too small. The one thing the new Apple Music player does well is an improved scrobbler. Copy nothing from Apple Music but that scrobbler user experience.
Cs is What Apple Music was and should be. It's better for large collections. It prioritized usability over eye candy in the cluttered/poor interface Apple Music app. that is probably there for people that don't actually have Music collections. Otherwise they'd want better navigation in the Apple Music app. If you want the old Apple Music player's layout, look, and general function back this is an app you'll like. It's what you've been looking for. And there's other customization like colors, mines all black with blue lettering, night mode style. And other options.

I love this music player! I can't say enough good things about the excellent UI, the dark mode, the player controls. This is the UI I wish the default Music app had. If you have been using iOS since the original iPhone came out you will remember the much simpler Music app or iPod app as it was called in the beginning back when we still had iPod's Cs feels like a modern take on that style of Music app and to put it simply "it just works"

My only minor complaints are sometimes there is a significant delay when I pause or resume or skip a track. I've encountered this in a few other music player apps that use the Apple Music library and I get the feeling it has something to do with the DRM protection in Apple Music files and the fact that some songs need to be buffered to stream while other tracks are already downloaded. Still sometimes the freezing crashes Cessium. Also I kinda wish the night mode had a pure black option for the iPhone X.

I have used Cs for a year or two now, which I prefer over the iPhone music app, primarily for the ability to have favorite playlists listed, greatly reducing the number of taps necessary to start playing.

The negative is that for some reason the star rating within Cs is no longer properly updating to my iTunes library. I rate all my music using the 5 star rating, and began using Cesium when Apple pulled (temporarily) it from iTunes and the iPhone music app. Although Apple brought it back, it is much quicker to rate via the Cesium/C’s Music app. What I recently discovered was that my iTunes library on my MacBook was not updating with all those ratings made via C’s music. After some troubleshooting, I discovered that any ratings made within C’s music will update my iPhone music app only temporarily and will not make it’s way into my iTunes/iCloud library. I will sit at my MacBook and see this happen in real time: if I make a rating using the iPhone music app, those would update immediately onto my MacBook iTunes library. If I make a rating using C’s Music, I would then switch over to the iPhone music app and see the new rating there, but it will not show up on my MacBook. Sometime later those C’s Music ratings will disappear.

I originally went with Cesium because it was the closest thing I could find to the old Apple Music app before it went belly up with everything I didn’t want in a music app. I loved Cesium and especially enjoyed and got used to some of the added features; especially the queue management. As time went on, and Apple continued to make changes to how iOS handled music, I could see it was a real balancing act for the developer to try to balance app stability along with keeping features that users were accustomed to having, but at the same time features which were making Cs unstable. The developer tried to balance it as long as he could, but in the end chose to have a stable app at the cost of losing some features. Although I enjoyed the old queue management and will miss it, I am thrilled and will gladly exchange it for an app that is now totally stable, not “buggy” and is lightning quick. Many thanks to the developer who truly loves his app and is working diligently to make it the very best it can be.

I’ll try to keep it simple, since there is so much one can say about an app that contains so much power and flexibility within such a simple and elegant interface. It does all the basics very well, but for me it’s a few of the deeper features that make all the difference. The three things I value most in Cesium are: 1) The ability to specify a genre (or genres) to sort by composer - a wonderful approach for viewing classical music; 2) The ability to view detailed info about songs, such as composer(s) and comments - one tap tells me who wrote the song I’m listening to; and 3) The ability to tag multiple genres in iTunes that sort out in Cesium as separate genres - artists or albums or songs can at last appear in two or more genres. No other app I’ve seen has even one of these features. Now that I am using Cesium, I am inspired to go back to my desktop iTunes library and tweak my tagging knowing it will enhance my listening enjoyment on my iPhone. What a great job - well done!

I originally downloaded Cs because I didn’t like how the normal music app looked after Apple Music got introduced. One of my favorite options, view all music by artist, had been removed. So I found Cs to be my replacement and I’ve loved it since. It has all the features I want in a music app and it has a good UI too. Hands down my favorite part though is the developer support. This dev really knows what to work on first and is really good about communicating how Cs is coming along. I have no clue what’s being changed about half my apps when I update them because they stopped including anything besides “Make sure to keep us updated and thanks for using our app!” Which doesn’t tell me at all if I should care whether or not there’s an update. This developer puts all the notes in the updates and I always get excited when there is an update since I’ll know exactly how Cs is coming along and what is changing. 5/5

Look, I have no problem saying I don’t want a new version of iTunes every week. I can’t stand the incessant fiddling that programmers feel is their right with all your favorite apps and programs...Yes, I’m not ashamed to say I’m old enough to remember them being called PROGRAMS!!! I could program the Apple ][e, and it JUST WORKED!!! So I don’t appreciate a new “updated” iTunes every three seconds, and it has a million problems every time. Never can they just fix all the problems, and leave it alone. That’s all I want. So HERE is an app that Steve Wozniak would have designed. It’s user friendly and it has good solid programming, like in the olden days...when computers started with a crank!!! Use this iPhone program application like you might put a record on an old Victrola or a wax cylinder on your Edison, and let it just WORK. Cs does what Apple forgot was their best quality. It just works. Keep it up, this app!!

Been using Cs for a couple years now. The developer is so dedicated and puts so much into making it great. I love that I can use a widget for Cs to give star ratings to songs while I’m on the go that I can sync with my iTunes on my computer when I get home. I love being able to customize the colors of the background and the controls. And I love that I can once again click an artist name and see the list of their albums instead of a cluster mess of songs to have to scroll through like the more recent versions of apple’s stock music app. Cesium is basically just a “skin” for the stock music app, so anything you do with that automatically works backs and forth on Cesium. You can even play a song in the stock app and the switch over to Cesium and take it from there. Cesium is just a drastically improved and customizable user interface for the stock music app. So it works seamlessly with iTunes because it’s really just controlling the stock app.

This is the music player I’ve been looking for since Apple destroyed their stock player in iOS 10. Cesium is a beautiful player and has even more features than Apple ever had. Simple interface, with plenty of customization options. I can see my album artwork again! It also gives you the view to see metadata on each song that Apple never exposes. I love the option for disabling auto-lock when you want to have the album artwork on display at all times. This works well with the gestures built in to Cs that let you skip, re-play and pause. Playlist folders are displayed the way you organize them in iTunes; other players don’t display that way. Landscape mode was a nice surprise too. I’m not much of a streaming music user but it can also play your Apple Music. However, if you have a lot of local music you’ve carefully collected over the years, this is a must have app.

First started using Cs two years ago and loved it. There have always been some glitches but they’ve been rather minor. After upgrading to iOS 11 the glitches have gotten more major. The most annoying glitch is Cs controls will randomly freeze - music will still be playing but you can’t control anything. The only way I’ve been able to fix it is to force close Cs and then reopen it. A couple of times I’ve had to restart my phone. Super annoying.

The other really odd thing Cs does is if I haven’t been playing music for a while, say a few hours, whatever song I play next will restart at some point in time during its playback. It’s only the first song, and it’s only once. After that playback resumes as normal.

Even with those glitches this app is far and away better than iOS’s music app.

First off, this is an app that shouldn’t be needed, but does because a developer took the initiative to fix a problem that Apple created to promote Apple Music: the native Music app is a shadow of its former self when it comes to playing through the music library you’ve been investing time and money in for years. I went looking for an alternative to the native app and found this labor of love by a small developer who loves music and misses the glory days of the music/iPod app.

Cs for the most part looks and feels familiar and provides a great way to navigate your library and a great music player. The developer works hard to keep this updated and when there’s a bug (as with the current version) he communicates it clearly. He’s reachable by email and Reddit which is something that can’t be said for most apps. So download it and try it out, and send him some money to show your love.

Cesium gives the user control over the metadata in their library in a deeper way than the other apps I’ve used and researched, and it’s amazing to finally be able to access the metadata of all the music I’ve purchased over the last 20 years.

‘Classical Mode’ is my favorite feature, as it allows users to organize a given genre by Composer. For users with large digital collections of classical music who have been ignored by mainstream music apps, Cs is for you!

I have one suggestion that would help users access their metadata even more effectively: the option to sort by Groupings instead of Albums. Currently, Cs allows you to ‘randomize groupings’, so the ability to harness this metadata is already built-in. The organization process is currently structured as: Genre>Composer>Album>Song.
I suggest an option be given to structure the organization like this:
Genre>Composer>Grouping>Album>Song.

For example: This would be useful for Classical Music libraries where the user wants to see multiple recordings of ‘Swan Lake’. The current organization requires the user to hunt and peck through album titles to find ‘Swan Lake’, if it is not in an album title.

Other than that minor feature request, thanks for a great app!

After trying 30 or so music apps, I decided (based on the many positive reviews) to make a blind purchase. I’m glad that I did. The program actually does live up to the hype.

There is however one bug, which I hope will be addressed. Let’s say that you are adding several albums by (to give an example) The Beatles. If some albums are listed as “The Beatles” while others are listed as “Beatles”. It’s understandable to have two separate listings. Unfortunately, after correcting the metadata, we get to separate listings for the same group. In other words, instead of Cs showing “The Beatles” and “Beatles” ... after making corrections, it’s two separate headings of “Beatles” and “Beatles” (rather than the corrected metadata residing within the same heading).

The big aside, this is a great app and I have no regrets.

I have been on Cesium now for about six months and am extremely pleased. I have over 4,000 songs on my iPhone 7+. The main reason I bought Cesium was to be able to control my music by "Artist" instead of "Album Artist" (which seems to be the only way Apple supports). Album Artist is typically something like "Various artists" when you have a compilation album like "Best of the 60s". On Apple if you try to scroll by artist for songs by Cream they will not show up if they all come from a compilation album.

As many other Cesium reviews have pointed out, the interface is simple and efficient. Try shifting between artist, album and song on Cesium Vs Apple. Enough said...

I love Cs enough that I just gave the author the largest tip his app allows. I hope other users support him as well.

Ever since Apple ruined their much beloved music app in recent iOS releases, I’ve been searching for something to replace it. I heard about Cesium but never tried it; I finally made the purchase yesterday. It’s much better than Apple’s music app. Square album thumbnails (so sick of this round/circle photo fad), less white space between album and song entries make this a great design, close to the original Apple app. Lots of customizations. HOWEVER: Cs stops responding to button presses.. like hesitation. If you keep hitting the next song button or pausing/playing frequently I’ve found that Cs pauses (music doesn’t stop). Try pressing the repeat button over and over.. after several presses it gets stuck. If the dev can resolve this then it would be an A+++ app.

It’s great. You have to keep the original Music app for it to work, but just hide it in a folder. Instead of having radio take up a third of the bottom bar, it’s just artists, albums, songs and more (essentially setting).

You only see the important things, none of apples filler. All your artists have a picture too, just an album, but better than a gray placeholder.. Also it’s much easier to arrange what’s playing up next or later. Just swipe left on a song and it’s one of two choices, up next or later. No need to scroll past delete this song or any of the other options. (Seriously why does Apple prioritize deleting your music over playing a song next)

Anyways I’m really happy with Cs.

Besides the comments some reviewers have posted below about feedback concerning navigation, look and feel, I do like Cs . Particularly because it stays basic and doesn’t try to compete with Apple Music. That App is NOT what you should be looking to emulate! It has taken so much out of users hands and forced a different way to think about your music. If you are like me and own your music versus stream, forget it. Apple doesn’t care about us, only streamers. That said I use Dark Mode on my phone and when I do whatever view I have selected on the bottom (Artist, Album, etc.) that one disappears and you only know you have selected it because you can’t see it. I suggest a light grey so it’s still visible or something.

I first found this app when I was looking for a way to fix the stock music app not displaying my painstakingly-entered lyrics on my tracks, and tucking them away when it did recognize there were, in fact, lyrics in the file. this app gave me a music app that worked like I expected, the way I liked it, without constantly promoting streaming services or soon-forgotten social networking features.

The latest release goes a step further, supplementing the standard color scheme (including true-black backgrounds that look great on OLED iPhones) with subtle accent colors derived from the album art of the current track. I loved when iTunes had that feature, and mourned it’s loss, and I’m glad to get it back on my phone.

It’s a music app that plays your music, the way you want, without a lot of extra cruft, and looks great doing it. What more is there to want?