The player screen, showing cover art, the track title, a scrubbing bar and transport controls

Coil

A native Android remote for Phoniebox.

Open it, see what is playing, pick something else, hand the phone back. When the box starts playing, playback controls appear on your lock screen — no app launch needed.

Get it on Google Play APK on GitHub

Pick one and stay with it. Play Store builds and GitHub APKs carry different signatures, which Android treats as different apps.

Player

Cover art, scrubbing, transport controls and volume, all on one screen.

Library browsing

Browse by folder or album and play anything you find.

Search

Find a folder, album or track. Ignores case and accents.

Sleep timer

Stops playback after a set time and leaves the box switched on.

Lock screen controls

Appear on their own when the box starts playing, and can be switched off entirely.

Favourites

Save a folder, an album or a single track, then reach it from a home screen shortcut — or a link, for an automation app or an NFC tag.

Multiple boxes

One per room, switched from the top bar, each with its own favourites.

Hardware volume buttons

Control the box while the media session is active.

Dark mode

Built for bedtime rather than bolted on.

Five languages

English, German, French, Spanish and Dutch.

Nothing leaves your network

No account, no telemetry, no cloud. Coil talks only to the boxes you configure.

Open source

GPL-3.0, on GitHub. Issues, pull requests and translations are welcome.

Screenshots

  • The player screen, showing cover art, the track title, a scrubbing bar and transport controls

    Player

    Cover art, the track title, scrubbing and transport controls.

  • Browsing the library by folder, with a mini player at the bottom

    Library

    Browse by folder or album, with the mini player docked at the bottom.

  • Saved favourites shown as a grid of covers

    Favourites

    Saved folders, albums and tracks as a grid of covers.

  • Searching the library, with folder, album and track results grouped under headings

    Search

    Folder, album and track results, grouped and ready to play.

  • The player with a sleep timer running, counting down to when playback stops

    Sleep timer

    Counting down to when playback stops. The box stays switched on.

On a tablet

  • The player on a landscape tablet, with cover art filling the left half and the title, scrubbing bar and transport controls on the right

    Player

    On a wide screen the cover moves beside the controls instead of above them.

  • Browsing the library by folder on a portrait tablet, with the mini player docked at the bottom

    Library

    The same folder and album browsing, with room for more of it at once.

  • The player on a landscape tablet with a sleep timer running, showing Stops in 25:00 beneath the transport controls

    Sleep timer

    The countdown sits under the transport controls, where it does on a phone.

What Coil does not do

Card management, system settings and shutdown stay in the Phoniebox web UI. Coil covers the thing you do twenty times a day — putting something on — and deliberately leaves administration alone. Beyond keeping the app focused, it means Coil never sends a command that could take the box down.

That applies to timers too. The box can shut itself down on a timer, or after being idle for a while; Coil offers neither. Its sleep timer is the one that stops the player and leaves the box on.

Requirements

  • A Phoniebox running v3 (future3/main). Earlier versions are not supported
  • The box and the phone on the same local network
  • Android 8.0 or newer

Coil talks to the box over its ZeroMQ interface. That interface is unauthenticated and unencrypted, so Coil is built for local network use only. Don’t forward those ports — use a VPN if you need access from outside the house.

Open source

Coil is free software under the GPL-3.0, and the source is on GitHub. Issues, pull requests and translations are welcome — for anything substantial, please open an issue first, since direction is still worth discussing.

Testing against your own box is the most useful thing you can offer. Different Phoniebox versions, library sizes and hardware turn up problems that no amount of reading the source will.

Relationship to Phoniebox

Coil is an independent third-party client. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Phoniebox project. Phoniebox is the work of MiczFlor and contributors; questions about the box itself belong there.