What Cog does

Everywhere

• Gapless playback
• Scrobbling with Last.fm and ListenBrainz
• Shuffle, both albums and tracks
• Repeat single track, album, or whole playlist
• Playback from HTTP(S) sources, both livestreams and static files
  • Apple's HTTP Live Streaming (HLS)
  • Live metadata from Shoutcast, Icecast, Ogg Vorbis comments, and timed ID3v2 packets
• CUE Sheet support, including embedded CUE Sheets in several formats
• Album artwork per track — embedded and external, cached per unique image. JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, HEIC, or AVIF.
• Track info: tags, format, ReplayGain values, and play counts, as the Mac's Info Inspector shows them
• Synced lyrics from the file's own tags, or looked up on LRCLIB when the file has none
• ReplayGain by album or track, with clipping prevention, falling back to Sound Check
• Graphic equalizer with presets
• Spectrum visualization
• Waveform seek bar
• Spatial audio: surround tracks are spatialized on headphones and speakers with Apple's renderer and your personalized HRTF, with head tracking on AirPods
• Speed control: plain varispeed like a record player, or tempo and pitch shifting with either the Rubber Band or the Signalsmith Stretch libraries

On the Mac

• Automatic updates in the direct download edition
• Global hotkeys, notifications, and AppleScript support
• A file tree browser with search, Spotlight search, and a mini player
• Stereo upmixed to surround with FreeSurround
• Exclusive mode, which takes the output device for Cog and runs it at each track's sample rate
• Signal Inspector, showing every stage from the decoder to the device with live peak and RMS meters
• Remote Control (opt-in, macOS 13 or later): once you turn it on, the bundled cog-mcp tool lets MCP clients such as AI assistants control playback and the playlist

On iPhone and iPad

• Plays files and folders from the Files app where they are, without importing copies
  • Files shared from other apps go into Cog's own Music folder, which Files and Finder show
• Now Playing themed from the album art, with a mini player in Liquid Glass
• Fast forward and rewind by holding Next and Previous, and lock screen controls
• Search the playlist by title, artist, or album
• MIDI with your own SoundFonts, or Sound Canvas emulation from an SC-55 ROM set you import
• An iPad layout with menus and keyboard shortcuts