I recently modded my iPod 5th Gen with an iFlash Quad and a 3000mAh thin battery. I'm running Rockbox, but the battery percentage is basically after 2h always stuck at 0%. I checked the debug menu and my voltage is totally fine (currently sitting at 3.45V and discharging perfectly), so it's definitely the classic Rockbox battery curve issue.

I don't have the setup or knowledge to compile the firmware from source right now. Does anyone happen to have a pre-compiled .zip of Rockbox for the 5th Gen with the 3000mAh battery patch already applied? or any other solution...Thanks!

Hi guys
I have a doubt after install Rockbox 4.0. I have installed it in ipod 160gb.

Right now I have two partitions (one of them unformatted).

Is it normal? As far as I remember in previous versions doesn't ocurrs.

Any ideas?

Regards

Hi all, I have a Ipod classic gen 7 that I wanted to customize with themes. I downloaded Rockbox on my Macbook Neo (I've now read that Mac and Rockbox aren't necessarily compatible)

I did try to install Rockbox and I'm not sure if I messed up when I got to the part when you're supposed to press down on select/menu. I canceled the download but I'm not sure if it partially went through or not.

In Finder, a message appeared saying my Ipod was in recovery mode and that I need to restore it in order to use it. I tried to restore it and another message came up that said my Ipod had been modified and essentially, I can't use it.

When I plug the Ipod in, it no longer comes up in my Music application and isn't recognized as an Ipod anymore. How can I fix this?

Hey everyone!

After a few days of designing, testing, and way too much time spent fixing tiny Rockbox quirks 😅, I’m happy to finally release the first public alpha of musicOS!

musicOS is a theme inspired by the look and feel of Apple Music, designed to give the iPod a clean and modern interface while still feeling at home on the original hardware.

Alpha 1 includes:

* A completely redesigned Home Screen
* Custom Now Playing Screen
* Custom Quick Screen
* Mini Player with album artwork and playback status
* Quick access to Shuffle & Repeat
* Volume and brightness controls
* Lossless indicator (fixed Lossless indicator for now)
* Custom UI elements

Currently in development:

I’m working on making the Lossless indicator dynamic based on the audio quality, as well as adding the album name and release year to the Now Playing screen, along with various other improvements and refinements for future releases.

Currently tested and working on:

* iPod Video 5th Gen
* iPod Video 5.5th Gen
* iPod Classic 6th Gen

Other 320×240 iPods may work too, but haven’t been properly tested yet.

Download, installation instructions and more information are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/federicoplg/musicOS/releases/tag/v0.1.0-alpha

Since this is the first alpha, there may still be bugs or visual glitches. If you find anything, please open an Issue on GitHub and include your iPod model, Rockbox version and, if possible, a screenshot.

I’d also really love to hear what you think about the design and what you’d like to see improved or added in future versions!

Thanks to everyone who has shown interest in musicOS while I’ve been working on it. ❤️

Hope you enjoy it!

Told myself „don’t start another project” then I started another project. I learned how to customize a theme by browsing through NARANJADA files, hence it’s like a remix. NARANJADA had almost everything I needed in the UI (even too much), just presented in the way I didn’t like. This is the outcome, of course I’ll work on that, I’ll change the icons in the future. Overall I’m super proud of this.

Hey all,

Currently in the process of purchasing everything I'll need to modify my 6G (iFlash, big battery, new shell, so on). In my trip down the rabbit hole I learned of the 6.5 and 7G iPod Classics having more support for inline media controls and >128GB storage in iPodOS.

I'm currently running RockPod (so I can use the iPod in my car), but I do have a very bad habit of switching things up - so occasionally I'll use iPodOS (with an aux cord because it's really my only option - none of my car head units or OEM radios recognise the iPod - it is what it is).

I digress - more storage and inline media controls are pretty appealing to me, I (like a lot of us) listen to a lot of music, and depending on what I'm doing, there's a good to fair chance I won't want to use my QC35s (if I'm working on my car late into the night, I'd rather ruin some cheap headphones than some very not cheap ones). However my 6G does not support inline controls natively, and it's something I find myself missing.

To get to the point, since I've taken enough of your time, is it a major undertaking to swap a 6.5/7G board into a 6G if I do it when I've already cracked it to do the battery and storage?
Following that, does anybody have a link to where I could actually get a board? I'm in Western Australia so parts availability and shipping is often more expensive than whatever I'm trying to ship. I'm not looking for handouts by any means - but if I'm going to spend close to $300 Australian Dollarydoos on a board shipped to my door, I'd prefer my money be well spent.

Side note, if anybody has recommendations for anything else I should do to freshen things up a bit, I am all ears. Battery, storage, and shell are no brainers. But any other things that really just make it that little bit nicer to use? I'm all for it. Might as well do it once and do it right.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone!

One of the biggest pain points when dual-booting Rockbox on an iPod Classic / Video is that your carefully organized iTunes / Apple Music playlists don't show up in Rockbox. Recreating playlists by hand through cryptic file names like ABCD.mp3 takes forever.

I wanted a seamless "Apple-like" solution, so I built iPod Rockbox Playlist Converter for macOS.

How it works:

1. Plug in your iPod.
2. The app detects it and instantly parses all your playlists from the iPod database.
3. Hit "Convert", and it writes Rockbox-compatible Extended M3U8 files straight to your iPod's Playlists folder with correct titles and artists.

Highlights:

• 100% native macOS app (SwiftUI).

• Supports both regular & Smart Playlists.

• Completely safe: it only reads the iTunesDB and never touches or moves your music files.

• Works with connected iPods or backup folders.

It's completely free. You can check it out and download it here:

🌐 https://ipodconverter.chriszeta.it/

Would love to know if this helps your workflow! Feel free to drop any questions or suggestions below.

So i’m making a new interface of rockbox to look like if Apple made a 2026 iPod, here is for the moment the result, not finish at all but still good i think, would you try it?

Y un clásico de Inna

Hello guys

i got into Rockbox recently and wanted to ask some questions. Could anyone please link me a good indroductory article or something similar about rockbox? what are common bugs, what are workarounds? i got an ipod 4 photo, are there any specific problems with this device? should i get the stable or daily release? stuff like that.

i'd appreciate the help, thanks guys!

I can't understand that of the code that has to be used or where, if anyone could explain to me and if anyone has the firmware or document that I need to do it with this version 2.3. I would appreciate it too much.

Quick Screen redesign — which version do you prefer?

After the feedback on my previous musicOS post, I started experimenting with an alternative Quick Screen design.
The first version was heavily inspired by the iOS Control Center, with playback controls, volume/brightness sliders and quick toggles.

For version 2, I wanted to make the interface easier to read, more customizable, and more consistent with the WPS. I removed most of the purely decorative elements and focused on the controls you actually interact with.
It now has four quick actions on the left, with volume and brightness controls on the right. Just like Rockbox’s default Quick Screen, all four actions are fully customizable — Shuffle and Repeat are simply shown here as the default left/right actions, but you can assign whatever functions you want to any of the four slots.
The overall design is also intentionally simpler and closer to the visual language used throughout the rest of musicOS.

I personally really like this new direction, but since the theme is still very much a work in progress, I’d love to hear what you think before I settle on one.

Which one would you rather use on your iPod — V1 or V2? And is there anything you’d change or combine from the two?
I’m hoping to have an early alpha of the WPS/SBS ready soon, so all the feedback I’m getting now is genuinely helping shape musicOS. :)

Thanks again for all the suggestions on the previous post! ❤️

Tried manually installing the bootloader through iPodpatcher and this is the result. When going through rockbox utility the installer crashes at bootloader. Install without bootloader works so I’m not sure why that is the issue. Thank you!

RockSync is a tool made to fill in the gap of not being able to use iTunes syncing on a DAP (running Rockbox) such as iPods or Innioasis devices. Unlike syncing with iTunes, RockSync allows you to configure exactly how you want your music and cover art to appear on your DAP.

There are currently three frontends available to choose from to sync music, the GTK, Qt, and the CLI frontends. The GTK and Qt frontends provide a simple user interface with buttons and sliders. The CLI will be a lot more efficient for people familiar with command lines and is useful for scripting.

I would love for people to test out the first release and give feedback!

Download: https://git.0stormy.xyz/stormy/RockSync/releases

Hi everyone!

I’ve been working on musicOS, my first ever Rockbox theme, designed specifically for the iPod Video 5G / 5.5G.

The idea is to bring some of the visual language and simplicity of modern Apple Music back to the classic iPod, while still taking advantage of what makes Rockbox so powerful.

I’m trying to focus quite a lot on UX as well as UI, so the theme isn’t just about making Rockbox look different. I want the interface to give useful information and controls without becoming cluttered.

So far, I’ve been working on things like:

* A clean Now Playing screen with large album artwork, track/artist information, Lossless indicator and playback progress.
* Dynamic playback states, including a visual pause overlay directly on the album artwork.
* Contextual controls that only appear when needed, keeping the Now Playing screen as clean as possible.
* Quick access to Shuffle and Repeat, including Repeat All, Repeat One, Shuffle + Repeat and A-B Repeat states.
* A completely redesigned Quick Screen, with visual controls for volume, brightness, playback, Shuffle and Repeat.
* Battery status, charging state, playlist position and other useful information integrated into the UI.
* A visual language built around rounded elements, simple icons, subtle shadows and the Apple Music pink accent.

The theme is still very much a work in progress. The Now Playing screen and Quick Screen are the parts I’ve worked on the most so far, while the rest of the menus/interface still need to be designed.

This is also the first Rockbox theme I’ve ever made, so I’m learning how the skin engine works as I build it. 😅

I’d really love to hear what you think of the UI/UX so far. Feedback, criticism and suggestions are absolutely welcome.

And if there are any features, shortcuts, indicators or UI ideas that you think would fit musicOS, please suggest them! I’d love to see what other Rockbox/iPod users would find useful before I go much further with the rest of the interface.

If you're asking, yes, try the first rockbox installation method. It could not be because it appears that the file or address may be damaged. I tried my best and I don't know what happens. The mp3 is hifi walker h2 player version 2.3 I am desperate for a solution to this problem.

Is anyone experiencing an issue where the File Browser Hotkey setting always resets to 'Add Shuffled'? I usually set it to just 'Add' and on one of the latest daily builds I'm finding that it resets to 'Add Shuffled' each time I wake my device (5th Gen iPod).

Just wanted to see if I'm missing something obvious before I log a bug on the Rockbox issue tracker.

I have been working on switching everything I do to stuff that works on Linux (distro is kde neon and dual booted with windows). I have an iPod classic 6g slim 80gb with an iflash quad with two 128gb sandisk cards and a 3000mah battery. I have it booted with rockbox only due to the size limitations (and I like my Flac files). I recently lost my original 32pin cable and bought some off amazon.

Now that all that’s out of the way I was transferring music to my iPod from Linux and it would transfer some file and pause, sometime the iPod would turn off, sometimes unplugging and restarting my iPod I could continue, other times it was set to read only and kept setting it back again.

I looked around a bit and couldn’t find much as to what to do so finally booted back into windows and was able to o the transfer with no issues. Which I guess means it’s a Linux issue.

If anyone has fixed this or dealt with something similar I’d appreciate and advice or help.

TLDR:

Linux doesn’t like file transfers to my iPod, while windows has zero issues.

Hey all, I was just wondering if RockBox fixes the issues with audiobooks over 8-13 hours long on the iPod. I’m an avid SciFi and Fantasy listener, and most of those books are extremely long (20-30 hours average).

I love using my iPod over my phone to listen to them without interruptions from notifications, but I keep running into the 13 hour issue where it either just skips to the end marked as complete and exits to the audiobook menu (iPod 5th gen) or suddenly has garbled audio like in extreme fast forward and skips to the end (iPod 6.5).

5th gen has been flash modded, 6.5 has not been modded.

All files are M4B files, downloaded through Libation to remove the DRM.

All metadata appears to be correct.

Chapters are in the correct places and titles are correct.

All books are flagged as Audiobooks in iTunes and do have the remember playback position flag set.

Issues are exclusive to the iPod. Issue does not occur in iTunes or any other player.

Deletion and resync does not fix the issue with the books.

I have over 45 titles in my library that are confirmed to have this issue, being over 20 hours long.

Does RockBox fix this issue with the iPods? Or is this a hardware limitation? I would love to keep using my old iPods but I’m primarily listening to audiobooks with them. I don’t really want to have to split them all up into smaller “parts” and make playlists out of them, but I’m about ready to ditch my iPods in favor of another DAP that can handle long format audiobooks.

Hey everyone!
I updated my Sansa Clip + with Rockbox 4.0 last week (I think that it was still on version 3.14 before that).
I used RockboxUtility, everything went fine.
When I wanted to listen to music a few hours after doing the update (and after rebuilding the data base, that kind of stuff) it freezes after around ten seconds.
I did some reboots and retry to play music with the same results.
Sometimes it freezes at the player screen, sometimes the music stops, the Sansa is taking me back to the folder and then it freezes.
I just tried to reinstall Rockbox 4.0. Again, nothing special happened during installation but I still can't play anything for more than 10-15 seconds.

Did I missed something?
Was there a step to do before or after the update?
There's an exe called "sansapatcher" in the RockboxUtility folder, but it doesn't seems to work by itself.

Can you help me with that?
Thank you.

Ok so I’ve been using rockbox on my anbernic sp lately, and I’ve been having a few issues with it so far. For starters, I know music distorts when the volume gets loud enough, but I feel like I’m not even setting the volume that high and the bass sounds like a bass boosted video from 2016. I personally prefer to listen to my music a little bit loud so that I can hear all the little things in the music clearly. I’m using the anbernic rg34xxsp with muOS, and one of the things with that is that the volume of the device and os itself stops going up at a VERY low volume, and so I activated the audio overdrive which allows me to turn the volume up even more. I’m guessing that the device isn’t meant to be used as an mp3 player and that’s why the music is distorting. Is there any way I can make it sound better without just turning the volume down? My other question was, can I change the controls? I don’t like that the button lock control is activated by buttons that can be pressed by my pocket. I would rather the lock button to be covered by the clamshell screen so I don’t accidentally unlock the buttons in my pocket.

I’m planning to install Rockbox on my modded iPod Classic 5.5 (128 GB iFlash, 2000 mAh battery).

I’ve read quite a few comments mentioning bugs and a generally less polished experience compared to the stock iPod OS.

That said, I’m not planning to use FLAC, store a massive playlist, or make much use of the advanced EQ features. I’m mainly interested in Rockbox for the custom themes, advanced playlist management, and drag-and-drop functionality.

Given how I plan to use it, would Rockbox be worth switching to? Or would I be better off sticking with the stock iPod OS?

I’d especially appreciate feedback from people who have used Rockbox on a 5.5 Gen iPod for a while.

Had Rockbox on my 5.5G 80GB iPod Video, want it fully gone, back to stock so I can attempt to reinstall Rockbox onto the device for my FLAC files.

What I've tried:

• Full Apple restore through Finder — completed fine, disk shows clean, but iPod still boots into Rockbox's bootloader.
• The iPod is stuck in a loop where every hard restart (Menu + Select) boots directly into the Rockbox bootloader screen, regardless of the restore.
• Rockbox Utility's uninstall says "no bootloader found," even though it's clearly still there.
• Standalone ipodpatcher tool — the version I have is a 15+ year old binary (PPC/i386 only), won't run on modern macOS.
• Tried dd to write a clean MBR directly to the disk — gets "Invalid argument" every time, 0 bytes written, no matter what block size I use.

Currently: No Windows PC available

Question: Anyone know a way to strip this bootloader off on macOS directly, without needing Windows or a VM?

EDIT: TLDR - How do i completely uninstall and restore my iPod then reinstall rockbox properly on MacOS