In Operation
Here’s an image of Dusk Player in action.
The interface looks pretty good particularly with the Dark theme (there are two other themes available). There’s a volume slider, the usual playback buttons, and a shuffle mode. The hamburger icon pulls up the playlist. Playing an album just involves clicking Folders, and selecting the relevant folder.
The music player supports MP3, OPUS, OGG, WAV, and a few other formats. It reads ID3 tags, there’s a search facility, and keyboard shortcuts. It’s billed as a minimal music. And that’s what it is.
Summary
It’s impossible to recommend Dusk Player in its current state. The software doesn’t support the FLAC format which is probably the most important audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio.
If your music collection is in MP3 format (or the other supported formats), things are a little different. But if you’re looking for a minimalistic music player, Electron is the last framework that should be chosen.
The ps_mem utility reports that memory usage is around 250MB. Not bad for an Electron-based app, but still bloated for what it does.
Website: github.com/Aveek-Saha/DuskPlayer
Support:
Developer: Aveek Saha
License: MIT License
Dusk Player is written in JavaScript. Learn JavaScript with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction and Installation
Page 2 – In Operation and Summary
Calling anything that is Electron-based “minimalist” is just hilarious, they obviously have no idea what they’re talking about.
Thanks for the article! 🙂
I think the developer calls it minimalist because of the limited number of features his music player offers. He’s right in that sense.
In a way I admire the developer for his steadfast approach in not adding features he considers out of scope for the project.
Too many developers adopt the kitchen-sink approach adding feature after feature that are really only of interest for a tiny minority of people. Adding feature after feature just makes for a bloated app that is harder to maintain.
Of course the irony here is that the developer chose Electron, a hugely bloated framework that makes zero sense for a music player.
I’m an advocate of choosing the right tools for the job.
I’m often disappointed seeing a music player developed using Electron. They are not all terrible, but many are. The important thing is to keep an open mind when evaluating them. I’m also conscious that many music lovers don’t really care about memory usage.
I can understand why a developer wants to make a cross-platform player, it massively increases the potential user base. But I’m yet to be convinced Electron is a good starting block. Maybe that’s my problem.