Apollo

Today I spent the whole day trying to figure out real-time audio syncing, and honestly, it was way harder than I thought. I tried Firebase first, but it’s expensive and I can’t really afford it as a student. Then I checked out Supabase, but it felt super technical and I couldn’t get it to work the way I wanted. Plus, none of the real-time databases I tried could actually handle audio streaming like Spotify or YouTube Music, so I decided to take a different approach—just syncing playback if the files are already on both devices. That way, I don’t need to deal with storing or streaming files at all. Setting up rooms with Firebase was new and kinda tough, so instead I focused on making the UI nicer. I added a cute little bouncing cat that dances to the beat of the music—it actually looks really fun. I think I’m done with this project for now. You can still import local files, play them, and enjoy the cat animation on both Android and iOS. I’ll be shipping it soon, putting the code on GitHub, and making a site where people can download it. Maybe in the future I’ll come back and add the original features I wanted, but for now I don’t really have the money or time.

today i tried adding firebase to my music app so i could store songs temporarily, create rooms, and sync playback across devices in realtime, but it turns out the free plan still needs an upgrade to blaze for storage. then i switched to supabase, but it didn’t feel practical either. right now i feel kind of stuck.

Project Update

The import function is now fully working. Users can bring in their own local audio files, play them, and even delete them from their playlists. This makes the player independent of the few demo tracks I had hardcoded earlier, which I’ll be removing soon.

Right now the UI is still simple, but that’s intentional while I focus on the core features. The next big step is adding group jamming sessions, which is the main feature I want this project to stand out for. After that, I’ll work on things like notification widgets, a better UI, and pulling proper metadata from the imported songs.

The goal is to make this into a free and solid alternative to the mainstream, expensive music players out there. I really want this project to work out, and I’ll keep pushing updates as I go.

Today I made some solid progress on Apollo. When I first started this project I had a bunch of different ideas, but now the direction feels a lot clearer. I worked on adding the ability for users to import files and play them inside the app, and also made some small UI improvements along the way. Right now the app is functional, but the importing feature and group sessions still aren’t fully ready.

Just finished building the audio player It’s functional now, but still need to add music import + polish the UI. Next up: mini player, local file picker, and some personal touches like lyrics & queue system. Excited to make it my music app

Mainly Worked on the Song Page UI.