Doppi

Doppi is a sheer delight; thanks to its silky-smooth animations, gorgeous custom interface, and healthy number of customization options despite the old “simple player” tagline, no other player held a candle to Doppi’s user experience last year. I’m pleased to report that remains the case this year as well thanks to the introduction of marvelous new features and a brand new player view design; Doppi remains one of the finest general-purpose players available.

While Doppi enjoyed plenty of fixes and improvements this year, I’m going to briefly touch on what I feel are the highlights, starting with the ability to “hide” music from Doppi. Doing so won’t delete the music (assuming you manage your library with iOS, it will still be viewable in Music.app), it will simply hide it from Doppi. This is a useful way for users with a massive library to use Doppi as a supplemental “favorites” or “album-focused” player for their collection. Another, similar feature introduced this year is the ability to exclude music from “Shuffle All”, which as far as I’m aware is exclusive to Doppi. Christmas music collectors rejoice, you can now “Shuffle All” in the summertime with confidence.

Sick of using iTunes or Music.app to manage and sync your library? This year, you can now avoid it entirely with Doppi’s new independent library management support. You may import your library using one of the many Apple-specific options Doppi supports, including:

• AirDrop
• Files.app, which includes either piecemeal importing from any arbitrary folder or automatic syncing with Doppi’s own app folder
• iOS’s Share Sheet from any other app that supports sending audio

Each of these methods are beautifully documented under the new “Add Music” button in the “More” tab, though users on Windows or Linux are unfortunately stuck without platform-agnostic import options that other players like Doppler 2 support.

Finally, there’s the entrancing new player view design. The new design is quite similar to Albums’ in principle; the album art and player controls are treated as discrete components, but unlike Albums they gracefully animate with a pleasing parallax effect that follows your gesture the entire time. The animation is so delightful to play with I frequently catch myself fidgetting with it while listening. Best of all—like Picky—the effect is silky-smooth and jank-free.

The lyrics view also received a substantial upgrade with this redesign; instead of utilizing the tired, teeny scroll view album art overlay like many players do, full-height lyrics may now be accessed below the player controls with a simple button press or swipe-up gesture. That’s not all, Doppi is now the first and only player I’ve found that provides the ability to edit lyrics right in the app. That’s right, with Doppi you’re no longer forced to use your computer anytime you want to add or edit lyrics, you can simply make your changes right in Doppi itself.

There’s few other players this year that thrilled me as much as Doppi did. While Marvis Pro, Picky, and others enjoyed plenty of enhancements this year, I can’t really claim that their improvements delighted me as much as Doppi’s player view redesign. Doppi is even more elegant than it was last year, and now thanks to its additional feature enhancements it’s now more capable than ever before.

Widgets

None.

Personal Score Card

• Next App: “Doppler 2”