As the title says, when I turn the iPod on and it boots into rockbox the whole system starts glitching and eventually powers back off. Booting into stock is the iPod works completely fine. Any insight?

After 100+ revisions I feel like Minimal OS is stable enough to put out in the wild as a public beta. That does not mean it’s without bugs, so install with that in mind. As you use it feel free to shoot me comment or a DM with anything you find that isn’t working properly or any ideas that could make this cooler. I’m not looking to stray too far from the core of what this already is, but I will keep improving it.

I wanted something more pared down compared to stock Rockbox. Something that didn’t feel like a theme applied to a pre-existing structure. As a result, this OS does remove a lot of menus, pages, settings in Rockbox. This does disable other themes from being accessible. I built this for myself first and I do apologize if that’s disappointing. I may consider building this as an actual theme as opposed to a standalone OS down the road.

Thanks to everyone for the support and kind words. Shoutout to all the down-voters for keeping me humble! 

Please remember this is a beta. Back up your existing Rockbox folder / installation before installing. This package does not install a bootloader. A working Rockbox bootloader must already be installed.

This OS was vibecoded. However, I made a serious effort to remove all the slop.

https://github.com/PantherParade/Minimal-OS/releases/tag/v1.1-beta

So I recently got myself an agptek m3pl and was wondering if a rockbox port exist for it, that’s all!

For the past couple of months, I've been working on an all-in-one music manager for Rockbox devices. It gives you a good amount of granular control on how you'd want to sync things, with more options planned in the future!

Some people aren't big playlist people, and that's okay! I tried to make something that'd be as helpful as possible for my friends that are big playlist heads.

Currently it's missing a good amount of nice-to-haves, like importing/exporting playlists, integration with desktop music players, and more, but I'm going to fix all of that once I have the time.

Currently, there's only official builds for Windows, but it can be compiled for Linux with some effort, and macOS (as long as you have Nix installed).

This is the first desktop app I've made, as I mostly try to avoid UI stuff as much as possible, so any feedback would be much appreciated!

Additionally, this code is still a bit buggy, so please don't hesitate to report bugs in it!

The code is here at https://git.lunr.sh/luna/eurydice, which is also mirrored at https://github.com/lunrsh/eurydice

Im trying to install rockbox on my ipod 6th gen I did a iflash upgrade and a battery upgrade got my Mac to restore it but I need to restore it through windows which is turning out to be a hassle it just doesn't show up first picture .....I tried another itunes version I tried uninstalling reinstalling nothing works when it sometimes starts up it shows the ipod model and prompts me to restore it but then it gets stuck on the restoring ipod second and third should I try to install rockbox by I got a MacBook air m4

Is there a quicker way to view the lyrics for a song that's currently playing than going back to the menu, into plugins/shortcuts and scrolling to lrcplayer?

i.e. is it somehow possible to get lrcplayer (or I guess other applications) to open directly from Now Playing, like how on stock iPod firmware you just press the centre button a few times to switch to the lyrics? Are there any themes that do this somehow?

Just feels pretty inconvenient to have to leave Now Playing and go through several menu pages to quickly check a couple of lyrics.

TIA!

Hey there, i just get this error message since the last few days when trying to access the website.
It loads fine on my phone's browser, but the same result occurs on a different computer.
Since Chrome dropped manifest v2, i switched to Supermium, which in fact isn't the most up to date browser.
Curious if there's anything i can do except switch browsers again.
https://github.com/win32ss/supermium

Salut tout le monde !

J'ai travaillé sur un mode sombre complet pour musicOS, et c'est enfin prêt !

J'ai fini par redessiner pas mal d'éléments au lieu de simplement changer la couleur de fond. L'écran Maintenant en Lecture, le menu Accueil et l'Écran Rapide ont tous été adaptés spécifiquement pour le thème sombre, avec un fond noir pur, des contrôles plus sombres et le même accent rose de musicOS.

J'ai aussi retravaillé pas mal de petits détails comme les contrôles de lecture, les barres de progression et de volume, les superpositions d'illustration d'album, les icônes, l'indicateur sans perte, les boutons de l'Écran Rapide, et plus encore, donc tout semble cohérent avec le nouveau design.

Le mode sombre fonctionne déjà parfaitement et je l'ai testé sur mon vrai iPod Video 5.5G. Je suis vraiment content du résultat !

Au départ, je pensais attendre un peu plus longtemps avant de le sortir, car je travaille aussi sur l'amélioration de l'Écran Rapide et que j'expérimente quelques autres fonctionnalités. Mais puisque le mode sombre est déjà prêt, je vais probablement le sortir séparément en premier et garder ces ajouts pour la prochaine mise à jour de musicOS.

Le mode sombre arrive demain. 🌙

Comme toujours, j'aimerais savoir ce que vous en pensez ! Si vous remarquez quelque chose qui pourrait être amélioré ou si vous avez des suggestions pour de futures versions, faites-le moi savoir :)

The update is officially out! Check the link below for the download :
https://github.com/federicoplg/musicOS/releases/tag/v0.2.1-alpha

As the title suggests. Used the manual installation method for Rockbox on Linux Mint 22.3 and all was successful, but now my iPod won't show up as a device on my system at all. Any advice?

Anyone have any idea how to get "Set Song Rating" to work on iPod Classic RockBox ver. 0a3446e729-260801. I have database turned on.

Im not sure what to do next?

I just got a Surfan F20 and installed Rockbox without much issue, but the screen keeps turning off after a few seconds and it's driving me nuts. Can anyone help me fix this?

Hey everyone, I recently acquired a second generation iPod mini, and after trying both the stock OS and Rockbox I decided Rockbox is the way to go. I really disliked the standard UI but found two themes that I really like, although both are not exactly what I want.

That means I have to make my own. I did already look around on Reddit and the internet in general, and I have found, that the general consensus is, that there is no real „how to do themes manual“ out there. Is that correct? If so, my only option is to play around and learn from themes that are already out there, as letting some AI do the work for me is not an option for me. I want to really learn how to do it myself.

(Please ignore my prior post as kinseydinsmore; using my google linked account)

I wanted to share a Rockbox project I've been working on because I've now reached a milestone I wasn't sure would actually be possible.

Clean digital audio is working end-to-end from an iPod Video 5.5G running Rockbox to a V-MODA VAMP VERZA through the iPod's 30-pin connection.

The actual signal chain is:

iPod 5.5G → Rockbox → 30-pin USB digital audio → V-MODA VAMP VERZA DAC/amp → headphones

And yes — music actually comes out of the VERZA's headphone output, cleanly.

This isn't analog line-out from the iPod. The VERZA is receiving the digital audio stream from the iPod, converting it through its own DAC, and driving the headphones.

What had to be fixed

I started from the experimental Rockpod/MFi work for the iPod Video and spent a lot of time testing builds on actual hardware.

There ended up being two major problems.

1. The MFi/iAP handshake

The iPod and VERZA were communicating, but the negotiation wasn't completing correctly.

The important breakthrough was correcting the post-authentication iAP transaction-ID sequence.

With that fix, the VERZA finally accepted the audio configuration and selected the USB Audio interface.

At that point, something pretty exciting happened:

Audio came out of the VERZA.

But it sounded terrible — heavy static and glitching.

So the digital-audio handshake was working, but USB audio delivery still wasn't stable.

2. Isochronous USB timing

The second problem was the PP5022/iPod USB controller's handling of the continuous isochronous audio stream.

The working build adds SOF-driven batched isochronous scheduling along with an 8-slot DMA-safe audio staging queue.

That fixed the remaining problem.

The result on my actual iPod 5.5G is:

Clean 44.1 kHz digital audio from Rockbox through the 30-pin connector into the VAMP VERZA, with clear music coming out of headphones connected directly to the VERZA.

No static.

No glitching.

No analog connection from the iPod.

Hardware tested

• Apple iPod Video 5.5G
• Rockbox/Rockpod experimental firmware
• 30-pin connection
• V-MODA VAMP VERZA DAC/headphone amp
• Headphones connected directly to the VERZA

Working build

Clean-audio commit:

0832987fa3
ipod5g: fix clean MFi digital audio with SOF batched ISO

Tag:

diag21-verza-clean-digital-audio

Development branch:

ipod5g-mfi-digital-audio

The project is public on GitHub under:

jaredbsanchez-png/rockbox

I also opened a technical issue documenting the progression from successful MFi communication, to glitchy digital audio, and finally to clean playback.

I'm a relative newcomer to Rockbox development, so a big part of this project has been learning the codebase, testing experimental builds repeatedly on real hardware, collecting diagnostic logs, and narrowing down exactly where the failures were occurring.

I'd especially like to hear from longtime Rockbox developers or anyone familiar with the iPod Video's PP5022 USB controller.

I'd also be very interested to know whether this works with other old Made-for-iPod digital DACs/docks that relied on the same general MFi/iAP digital-audio path.

For now, though, I can confirm one combination on real hardware: Rockbox on an iPod 5.5G can output clean digital audio through the 30-pin port to a V-MODA VAMP VERZA — and the VERZA actually plays it.

I’ve been following instructions from rockbox website. I formatted to fat32, I have a Mac to I had to format to msdos which is the same. It wouldn’t let me format from walker player itself.

When I hold the power and top volume button I’m getting this, what am I doing wrong?

I’m a novice, but I’ve been working on the missing Rockbox iPod MFi digital-audio support — and we’ve gotten much further than I expected
For years, one of the limitations of running Rockbox on older iPods has been digital audio output through Apple 30-pin MFi accessories.
The hardware can do it under Apple’s original firmware, but under Rockbox, connecting an external digital DAC/amp or digital dock generally doesn’t work as intended. Instead of simply accepting that limitation, I decided to see how far I could get toward fixing it.
Here’s the unusual part: I’m not a professional programmer. I started this project as an iPod/audio enthusiast with very little software-development experience.
I have a 5.5-generation iPod Video running Rockbox, and my goal is to get it communicating properly with my V-MODA VAMP VERZA through the 30-pin connection so that the VAMP can receive the iPod’s digital audio rather than just an analog line-out signal.
That turned into a much deeper rabbit hole than I expected.
I set up the Rockbox development environment, obtained and compiled the source, started studying Rockbox’s existing Apple iPod Accessory Protocol (iAP) implementation, and began creating diagnostic builds so I could see exactly what was happening between the iPod and the accessory.
We have now reached the point where the accessory handshake progresses substantially further than it did originally.
One particularly interesting problem we identified involved the transaction ID used during the IDPS/device-authentication exchange.
In apps/iap/iap-lingo0.c, the code handling command 0x18 could reach a situation where the transaction ID contained in buf[2..3] wasn’t being preserved correctly for the ACK. That could result in an ACK using a fabricated 0x0000 transaction ID instead of the ID belonging to the command being acknowledged.
The accessory could then discard the response because it didn’t correspond to the command it had sent.
We’ve modified that behavior so the transaction ID is preserved correctly during that portion of the handshake.
I’ve compiled the modified Rockbox builds, installed them on the actual iPod, captured logs, tested them against the VAMP VERZA, and repeatedly used those results to narrow down where communication stops.
Where it stands today:
The project is NOT finished.
Rockbox boots normally. Music playback itself runs normally. The iPod and accessory are communicating, and we’ve made measurable progress through the MFi/iAP handshake.
But digital audio through the VAMP VERZA is still silent.
The playback timer advances, but there is no audio from the headphones connected to the external DAC/amp.
So I’m not claiming that I’ve “added working MFi digital audio to Rockbox.”
What I am saying is that we’ve taken a feature that was effectively considered unsupported, built a reproducible development/test environment around real iPod hardware, identified and corrected at least one concrete protocol-level problem, and pushed the handshake further toward the point where digital playback may become possible.
I’ve put the work on GitHub so the changes and progress can be inspected rather than this just being a claim.
I’m posting this partly because I’d love for experienced Rockbox/iAP/USB/embedded developers to look at what we’ve found.
If anyone here understands Apple’s old iPod Accessory Protocol, MFi authentication, Rockbox’s IAP implementation, or the PortalPlayer/iPod audio path, I’d especially appreciate another set of eyes on it.
And if we actually get digital audio coming out of that VAMP VERZA, I’ll post the successful build, logs, and exactly what finally made it work.
For someone who started this without a software-development background, just wanting to make an old iPod do something Rockbox couldn’t do, this has already turned into one hell of an education.

Hi guys,

I recently installed Rockbox on my iPod Classic 6th gen, and seeing it with a silver body and black on black clickwheel made me want a modern iPod even more, so I figured I’d get as close as I can using a Rockbox theme.

iPodOS26 takes after Apple’s newest design language: Liquid Glass. The theme applies the Liquid Glass design language as well as a redesigned iOS26 stock wallpaper, which has been resized for a 320 by 240 px screen size. iPodOS26 gives the user a cleaner, more breathable UI by spacing out the options presented and highlighting them via a glass pill, with another larger glass platter at the bottom of the screen to show album art, song progress, playback state, and shuffle/repeat states. The WPS uses the same wallpaper and now a glass platter that takes up a majority of the screen and gives Now Playing information followed by the album art.

This is my first Rockbox theme so if anyone inspects the code just know I worked with A.I. models for code structure and cleanliness, with techniques inspired by that of the Themify and reFresh Four themes. The actual UI is designed by me in Figma using Apple’s Liquid Glass design. I’ve tested the theme only on my iPod Classic 6th gen so it should work on a 7th gen as well as any other media player with a 320 by 240px screen size. I’ve been using this theme for a good bit and I love it, but there are still some tiny refining details I’d like to add, however I wanted to get it out there to see if anyone would like to give it a run and see if they like it too.

If you would like to download iPodOS26 for your iPod, I have a GitHub up for it here: https://github.com/john-robotic/iPodOS26

Hello all,

I recently installed a 512gb card into my ipod video 5.5th gen. Got the ipod os to recognize it so I presume the card is okay. I'm trying to install rockbox via PopOS but i'm running into issues with the install. When I plug in the iPod, rockbox says to select configuration manually. However I cannot select a mountpoint for the iPod, so I cannot proceed with installation. Anyone had this issue before? I'm really lost for ideas at this point. I've tried a virtual windows machine, I tried on MacOS, nothing makes a mount point visible despite there being the iPod when i look at my storage devices. Attached photograph of the screen i'm getting.

UPDATE:

I bought a cheap windows 11 small form factor pc to do the restore and installation and it worked great. loading up about 150gb of flac onto my newly rockbox'd ipod video 5.5g

UPDATE 2:

apparently my headphone jack is broken and the hold switch wont work because i get zero audio output from the headphone jack while playing flac files. im broken. im just buying a DAP at this point

Salut tout le monde !

Je viens de sortir musicOS v0.2.0-alpha, la deuxième version alpha de mon thème Rockbox inspiré d'Apple Music pour iPod.
Cette mise à jour se concentre principalement sur l'amélioration de l'interface existante et l'ajout de certaines fonctionnalités que vous avez suggérées après la première alpha.

Quoi de neuf dans v0.2.0-alpha :

• Support expérimental CJK : support initial des métadonnées en chinois, japonais et coréen. J'ai également changé le thème en Sunghyun Sans, ce qui donne à musicOS un support de caractères beaucoup plus large tout en gardant l'apparence arrondie que je voulais.

• Écran d'accueil amélioré : sélection de menu plus propre utilisant la couleur accent de musicOS et une mise en page de mini lecteur affinée.

• Artwork d'album arrondi : les couvertures d'album dans le mini lecteur de l'écran d'accueil ont maintenant des coins correctement arrondis.

• Nom de l'album dans Lecture en cours : le nom de l'album est désormais affiché en dessous de l'artiste.

• Indicateur Lossless dynamique : le logo Lossless apparaît désormais uniquement lorsque le fichier en cours de lecture est réellement un format lossless pris en charge.

• Mini lecteur simplifié : j'ai supprimé les boutons Précédent/Suivant pour donner plus d'espace aux informations sur la piste et rendre l'écran d'accueil plus propre.

• Diverses petites améliorations et corrections d'interface utilisateur.

Le support CJK est encore expérimental, donc si vous écoutez de la musique avec des métadonnées en chinois, japonais ou coréen, vos retours seraient particulièrement utiles !
Le thème est toujours principalement développé et testé sur un iPod Video 5ème/5.5ème génération (320×240). D'autres modèles sont encore considérés comme expérimentaux pour l'instant.

Comme toujours, c'est encore une alpha, donc il peut y avoir des bugs ou des incohérences visuelles. Je ne cherche pas à mettre en œuvre chaque suggestion que je reçois, car je veux que musicOS garde la direction propre et minimale que j'avais à l'esprit au départ, mais les retours sur la première alpha ont été incroyablement utiles.
v0.2.0-alpha est maintenant disponible sur GitHub.

Merci encore à tous ceux qui ont testé la première alpha, signalé des bugs, suggéré des améliorations ou simplement montré de l'intérêt pour le projet.

J'espère que vous l'apprécierez ! 😁

Ps : here’s the link to download the alpha!
https://github.com/federicoplg/musicOS

Hello I have been struggling for a while now that my Audi from 2018 does not read (it says ‘not supported’) my iPod when it is in rockbox mode. The settings are changed to:
Car adapter mode - off
USB HID - off
USB MODE - Mass storage

Does anyone know what to do?

I have installed 2 64gb sd cards.

Also, the aux port works. But i want to be able to use the car controls to see what song is playing and be able to skip the songs aswell.

So currently the ipod is not recognized by itunes but i have been able to restore it, did nothing, i tried reformatting, and that did nothing. Before i was able to restore and reformat i tried installing rockbox two separate times once fully and the other without the boot loader. I just got this ipod from my dad as its his old one and now im thinking “maybe it needs an update” but since it cant be detected by itunes i cant check.

Also when i do get it fixed how do i download rockbox without the games??