Introducing PAPWALK!

An audio player with a slick and modern look for Windows!

PAPWALK's Albums screen with the player fully opened.

A bit of a backstory...

This summer I have become obsessed with music again. For me obsessions come and go and vary in staying power. However, when I hyper-fixate on something, it tends to become my personality for however long it lasts.

I reacquainted myself with the library of music that I have collected over the years. The bulk of which was from a Xbox Music promotion a while back where they gave away hundred of albums in an effort to get more users (spoilers alert: they didn't and the rebrand didn't help). And so I got a bunch of MP3s that I never listen to lying around on my hard drive, begging me to try them even once.

So I did, I sorted them all into neat little folders and browse through them with MPC-HC. Then it dawns on me... I no longer have a music app on My PC. Back in the days, I'd use Itunes, or Xbox Music (RIP!), or even foobar2000. Now, it's either through Spotify, YouTube, or some sort of streaming service. Local music is no longer a thing. And so I went looking for an app to manage my music collection. All it needs to do is fetch the music files, sort them into neat little categories, then allow me to play and make my own playlists; all the while looking decently modern. You wouldn't believe how hard of a task this actually is. Sure foobar2000 can do everything, but it's ugly (no offense) and very few people bother with making a Windows app for local music these days. The apps I found are either fully functionaly but have a dated interface, or looking slick but lacking features.

That's when I wanted to make my own. But I don't want to use the platforms I had used before. I want it to be slick, and modern, and extensible, and so I chose to go with Flutter. So began 2 weeks of me learning Flutter and Dart, all the while reacquainting myself with strongly typed language again. The result of those 2 weeks is PAPWALK. After an extra week of tweaking and polishing, I now consider it ready for a beta release.

The app is free and I have no desire to ever monetise it. But I also only plan to maintain it mainly for my own usage. As such, I'd stick to my own roadmap for the features to be implemented for the time being.

If you are interested, you can download the installer or portable build below. The source code is on GitHub, however, I plan to only make the repository public once it gets out of beta (if ever). If you're interested in taking a look, please contact me!