Trackhop
Which Trackhop? Versions, plugins and community
Trackhop comes in two builds for phones, with the same code and the same look. What changes is which services they can reach, and how.
| GitHub and F-Droid | Google Play | |
|---|---|---|
| Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music through their web players | built in: sign in and go | through an optional connector plugin |
| Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, TIDAL, Deezer through their official APIs | yes | yes |
| Navidrome/Subsonic, Jellyfin, Plex, Last.fm, ListenBrainz, files | yes | yes |
| SoundCloud public links | yes | no |
| Ads | none | a small banner |
| Updates | F-Droid, Obtainium or the GitHub release page | Google Play |
Which one to choose. If you want to move playlists between the big streaming services without setting anything up, take the GitHub or F-Droid build: everything is inside. The Play build suits people who sync with their own music server, with files, or through the services’ official APIs, and who prefer installing from Google Play.
The official APIs have limits that are not Trackhop’s choice: Spotify accepts five users per developer app unless you register your own (the app guides you, and Spotify requires Premium for it), YouTube’s daily quota is shared by everyone using the same key, Apple Music cannot remove tracks and needs a developer token, Amazon Music has no open API at all.
Switching from Play to the GitHub build
The two builds are signed by different keys, so one cannot update the other. Before switching, export a backup (Settings › Backups), uninstall, install the other build and restore the backup. Syncs, settings and history come back; services have to be signed in again.
Connector plugins
Trackhop has an open connector interface: a separate app can hold the sign-in to a service and answer Trackhop’s requests for playlists and tracks. The Play build lists the plugins installed on the phone in Settings › Plugins and offers their services in Accounts; it never names, links or downloads one. How the interface works, and the plugins known so far, are on the connector plugins page.
The reference plugin is Trackhop Bridge, by the same author: it gives the Play build the same web connectors the GitHub build carries inside. It is distributed on GitHub only. Read its notes before installing: those web interfaces are not official APIs, they are against the services’ terms, and they can stop working without notice.
Community
- Questions, ideas, problems: GitHub issues. The diagnostic report in the app makes a report useful; see Reporting a problem.
- Bridge problems: Trackhop Bridge issues.
- Writing a plugin: the connector plugins page documents the interface; open an issue to have yours listed there.
- Translations: corrections to any of the twelve languages are welcome as issues or pull requests.