CogCog
Audio Player for Mac, iPhone and iPad

A free and open source audio player for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Published Nov 6, 2026, 11:07 PM · Requires macOS 12.0

Mono tracks now play from the front left and right speakers on multichannel audio interfaces. Lyrics lookups also follow LRCLIB's rate limits.

Fixed

  • Mono tracks now play on the front left and right outputs of multichannel devices. Before, they went to the third (center) output, which is often not connected on audio interfaces.

New

  • Added a "Send mono to center output" option in the Output preferences for surround speaker setups.

Improved

  • Lyrics lookups on LRCLIB now pause when the service asks apps to wait after too many requests or a server error. Tracks looked up in the meantime show the usual "couldn't reach the server" message.
  • LRCLIB is now listed in the acknowledgements.
Download on the App Store
Features

What Cog does

Everywhere

On the Mac

On iPhone and iPad

Supported Formats

Plays almost anything

  • MP3 (including free format, up to 640kbps; via minimp3)
  • WAV
  • MPEG-4 container, including chapter support
  • Matroska container, including chapter support
  • AAC
    • LC-AAC
    • HE-AAC
    • HE-AACv2
    • xHE-AAC (USAC)
  • Apple Lossless (ALAC)
  • FLAC (including OggFLAC)
  • Ogg Opus
  • Ogg Vorbis
  • AC3
  • Windows Media Audio
  • DTS
  • TrueHD
  • HDCD
  • TTA True Audio
  • TAK (Tom's Lossless Audio Kompressor)
  • Monkey's Audio (APE)
  • APL (APE Linking File)
  • TwinVQ
  • RealAudio
  • ATRAC3
  • Musepack
  • WavPack, including DSD support
  • Interchange File Format (IFF) including DSDIFF
  • DSD Stream File (DFF)
  • Wideband Single-bit Data (WSD)
  • MIDI
    • SoundFont, DLS, and embedded soundbank support via a native port of the SpessaSynth synthesizer
    • FM synthesis via Nuked OPL3
    • Sound Canvas emulation via Nuked SC55
    • Audio Unit synthesizer support, including Apple's DLSMusicDevice
  • Shorten
  • Tracker music
  • SID
  • Game music
    • GBS (Game Boy)
    • NSF (Nintendo)
    • SPC and SNSF (Super Nintendo)
    • VGM (Master System, Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Gear, etc)
    • VGZ (compressed variant of the above)
    • PSF (PlayStation)
    • SSF (Saturn)
    • DSF (Dreamcast)
    • QSF (Q-Sound)
    • USF (Nintendo 64)
    • NCSF and 2SF (Nintendo DS)
    • Organya (Cave Story)
    • Streamed music via vgmstream
  • Archive files
    • ZIP
    • RAR
    • GZip
    • 7Z
Archive

Older versions

These releases and their notes cover the Mac app only. Cog for iPhone and iPad updates through the App Store.

v3877Nov 5, 2026, 8:55 PMDownload 50.84 MB

Fixes a crash when customizing the toolbar in a wide window.

Fixed

  • Fixed a crash when choosing Customize Toolbar in a wide window, such as a zoomed one.
v3876Nov 5, 2026, 6:07 AMDownload 50.84 MB

Lyrics can now follow the music line by line when they're timed, and the waveform is available as a toolbar item. This update also adds support for more game audio formats.

New

  • Synced lyrics: when lyrics are timed (from the file's tags, a .lrc file next to the track, or LRCLIB), the Lyrics window highlights the line being sung and keeps it in view. Click a line to jump to that point, or use the Synced Lyrics toggle to go back to plain text.
  • Waveform toolbar item: add a small live waveform to the main or mini player toolbar from the toolbar customization palette. It's drawn while playing, and clicking it opens the waveform window.
  • New "Show info about" setting in General Preferences. It chooses whether the Info Inspector, Lyrics and the mini player show the playing track or the selected track.

Improved

  • The Info Inspector, Lyrics and the mini player now follow the playing track by default. They used to prefer the selected track.
  • Support for more game audio formats, including new KA Sound, .hvg and .xsnd files and additional older sound banks.
  • ATRAC9 and G.719 audio now use built-in decoders, which fixes some crashes and broken .xvag files.

Fixed

  • Fixed playback or duration problems with some files, including .mp4 with xHE-AAC, high-sample-rate .ueba, .brwav, and some .aud, .gcm, .bao, .awb, .szd and .ckd files.
  • .usm files now read their .hcakey keys.
v3633Aug 14, 2026, 9:05 AMDownload 49.9 MB
  • view commit • MIDI: Last minute SpessaSynth bug fix for drums
v3632Aug 14, 2026, 6:20 AMDownload 49.9 MB
  • view commit • MIDI: Updated SpessaSynth with major changes
  • view commit • Normalize file reference URLs before opening or storing them
  • view commit • MIDI: Filter all SpessaSynth banks through player
  • view commit • MIDI: Use SpessaSynth for files with external bank
  • view commit • Preferences: Move Resampling to Synthesis
  • view commit • MIDI: Fix a serious looping bug with Sinc mode
  • view commit • MIDI: Fixed SpessaSynth handling weird DLS banks
v3625Aug 11, 2026, 11:09 PMDownload 49.82 MB
  • view commit • MIDI: Release the audio unit when the player that made it goes
v3405Mar 14, 2026, 9:44 PMDownload 46.03 MB
  • view commit • TagLib: Updated TagLib to version 2.2.1
v3404Mar 10, 2026, 5:51 AMDownload 45.95 MB
  • view commit • Debugging: Add more verbose bad URL logging
  • view commit • Highly Complete: Update lazyusf2
  • view commit • Audio Playback: One more safety check
  • view commit • VGMStream: Updated libvgmstream code base
v3400Mar 5, 2026, 4:28 AMDownload 45.95 MB
  • view commit • Output: Attempt to fix possible race condition
  • view commit • DSP Chain: Implement Signalsmith Stretch as option
  • view commit • Touched by Xcode
  • view commit • VGMStream: Updated libvgmstream code base
  • view commit • DSP Chain: Last remaining fixes for Signalsmith
  • view commit • App Delegate: Silence warning on macOS 12+
  • view commit • DSP Chain: Correct Signalsmith Stretch engine name
v3349Dec 13, 2025, 2:59 AMDownload 46 MB
  • view commit • Highly Complete: Move silence seconds declaration
  • view commit • Highly Complete: Move GSF sample rate reporting
  • view commit • TagLib: Don't collide with inputs' own chapters
  • view commit • FFmpeg: Signal tag updates for normal files
v3345Dec 7, 2025, 7:17 AMDownload 46 MB
  • view commit • FFmpeg: Fix unmapped tags' name case matching
  • view commit • Audio Player: Work around some potential crashes
v3343Oct 9, 2025, 5:33 AMDownload 46.41 MB
  • view commit • Bug Fix: Resize album art for info button
v2405Jun 23, 2022, 2:55 AMDownload 39.86 MB
  • view commit • [Playlist Info Loader] Do not clear if loading
  • view commit • Serialize persistent store update to main thread
  • view commit • Updated VGMStream to r1745-37-g776c4d8c
v2402Jun 22, 2022, 11:57 PMDownload 39.86 MB
  • view commit • Changed updater script to handle new version strings
  • view commit • AboutWindow adjustments
  • view commit • Merge pull request #280 from losnoco/nevack/about-window
  • view commit • Fix runtime warnings in Window/AboutWindowController.xib
  • view commit • [About Window] Reorganized credits and added @nevack and myself in them
  • view commit • [About Window] Fix
  • view commit • Sync version number with main branch
v2395Jun 22, 2022, 8:12 AMDownload 39.86 MB
  • view commit • Add Sandbox notice to README
  • view commit • Removed Sparkle
  • view commit • Change version numbering system
  • view commit • Change the product install path to /Applications
  • view commit • [Sandbox] Update Info.plist generator
  • view commit • Update Info.plist
  • view commit • Remove stray entitlement from Sparkle
  • view commit • Update Patreon credits
  • view commit • [Core Audio Output] Guard against nil pointer
  • view commit • [Sandbox Configuration] Fix nil pointer issues
  • view commit • [Sandbox Configuration] Do not delete path on fail
  • view commit • [Sandbox Configuration] Delete from storage later
  • view commit • [Sandbox Configuration] Do more checks on test
  • view commit • Revert "Remove stray entitlement from Sparkle"
  • view commit • Revert "Removed Sparkle"
  • view commit • [Info Plist] Auto format XML escapes
  • view commit • [Crashlytics] Require asking user consent
  • view commit • [About Dialog] Switched to WebView for credits
  • view commit • [Main Menu] Added Privacy Policy link in App Menu
  • view commit • Remove deep forced code signing option
  • view commit • Completely overhaul code signing practices
  • view commit • [Volume Control] Only initialize view once
  • view commit • Remove developer supplied configuration file
  • view commit • Assign blank development team in project files
  • view commit • One last attempt to fix CI
Legacy

Very old builds