miniPlayer

Introduction

miniPlayer is a small audio player for Windows whose look is based on a picture of the Apple iPod Shuffle. The window shows the round control pad of the device: the plus and minus buttons change the volume, the side buttons jump to the previous or next song, and the center button starts and pauses playback. The program is a hobby project by the SourceForge user bigdragon123456, written in Visual Basic .NET and published together with its source code under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 3. It keeps a list of songs, remembers its settings between sessions and is available in English and Spanish. The author notes that the project has no relation to Apple and that iPod and iPod Shuffle are Apple trademarks. Because the window is so small, it can stay in a corner of the screen while you work in other programs.

The miniPlayer lets you listen to music and control playback from a tiny window that takes almost no space on the desktop.

Features

• iPod Shuffle style: the player window copies the look of the small clip-on music player, and the SourceForge project describes versions in five colors: white, gray, azure, green and pink.

• Audio playback: miniPlayer plays MP3 and WAV files. It is an audio player only, so it does not play video, and it has no built-in equalizer; for sound tuning a system-wide tool such as Equalizer APO can be used next to it.

• Song list: the program keeps a list of songs to play, so you can go through your music with the previous and next buttons without opening a large media library.

• Saved settings: miniPlayer saves its settings automatically, so the player comes back in the same state the next time you open it.

• Local files only: the player works with music stored on your computer. It does not sync with cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Drive, and it cannot stream music from online services such as SoundCloud.

• Simple setup: a standard setup wizard installs version 1.0.1.1 of the program and shows the LGPL license agreement before the installation starts.

• Open source: the installer and the Visual Basic .NET source code are published on SourceForge, so anyone can study or change the program.

• Small size: the whole download is well under one megabyte, and the player needs very little memory while it runs in the background.

Conclusion

miniPlayer is a simple, free player for people who want basic MP3 and WAV playback in a compact window that looks like an iPod Shuffle. It is still marked as beta, its last files on SourceForge date from August 2015, and it is no longer developed. Users who need a media library, video playback, playlists with tags or streaming should choose a full media player instead, while miniPlayer suits a quick background music session.