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If Chrome offers Allow on every visit, take it.
One tap sets everything below it. Move any of them by hand and this says Custom. Storm flashes the screen; if that bothers you, or you are photosensitive, leave it alone.
Rolls all five at once. It never rolls the two flashing backgrounds — those are yours to choose by name, not something a button should spring on you.
Seven ways to draw the same sound. Random picks one and holds it — it changes when you change something else, rather than flickering between seven.
Thrown over the background, and used by every source below — the beat, the mids, the highs and your finger.
Fairy sends a wisp of light drifting across the stage with a long tail behind it, throwing a different one of the six above every time it flashes — so you cannot tell what the next one will be. Its bursts are deliberately small: a wisp throwing full-size ones several times a second is not a wisp, it is the effects running four times as fast. Two at a time at most, and the tail fades out behind it rather than ending on an edge. Random and Surprise me can land on it. Two fingers anywhere on the stage sends a pair out that never expire — two fingers again sends them away.
Lightning strikes instead of bursting: a bolt down the screen on the beat, and on the mids and highs if those are on. It flashes the screen dimly as each bolt lands — if flashing bothers you, or you are photosensitive, leave it alone. The flash is capped lower than the storm background's, cannot land more than about twice a second, and is dropped entirely when this phone asks apps to reduce motion. Random and Surprise me never choose it: flashing happens when you name it, not when dice do.
Scales every burst. On Battery saver the particle budget will clip the biggest ones — that is the cap doing its job, not the setting failing.
A room smears the sharp edges a file keeps, so what works for a track playing here will never fire from across the room. The cost of Easy is honesty: a burst stops meaning a distinct beat was hit.
Always drawing, behind the bursts that land on the beat. Storm and lightning flash the screen — if flashing bothers you, or you are photosensitive, leave those two alone. Pick one anyway and the flash stays dim, strikes stay at least 0.8 seconds apart, and no setting can turn either of those up.
This phone asks apps to reduce motion. The two flashing effects still flash if you choose one.
Every burst until now came from the lowest four of sixty-four bands: the kick drum, and nothing else. Mids are voices, snares and guitars, and land mid-screen; highs are hats and cymbals, and land near the top, so you can see which part of the track spoke. Nothing is hidden by turning this up — but bursts get more frequent, and on Battery saver the particle budget is reached sooner, so each one carries fewer pieces.
Mids are the busy layer, so they now have to be proportionally dominant rather than merely loud — a drum hit raises everything at once and no longer counts, while a vocal or a guitar line raises mids alone and does. The cost is that on a track which is mostly percussion the mid layer goes quiet, and that is correct rather than broken. Bass and highs drops them entirely and keeps the sparkle.
Drag or press on the visuals. Lightning strikes down to your finger and flashes the screen dimly as it lands — if flashing bothers you, or you are photosensitive, choose A burst only. The flash is capped lower than the storm effect's, cannot land more than about twice a second however fast you move, and is dropped entirely when this phone asks apps to reduce motion. A quick tap is still full screen; Nothing stops the drawing, not the gesture.
Colours every layer at once. Random rolls the effects; the equalizer takes one real colour from the set, since it cannot roll.
The star on the transport switches the effects half on and off, and lands back here — the two are the same setting.
Not listening.
The one source that can see sound this app does not own — another app's music, a speaker in the room, a stream. Nothing is recorded and nothing leaves the phone; the sound is measured and drawn, never saved and never sent.
While it is listening the screen is kept awake, so a phone propped against something does not go dark mid-track. Measured cost: about 12% of a battery an hour, screen and all.
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On Automatic the app starts from what this phone says about itself, then watches its own frame rate while it draws and moves between the three settings below. It steps down within about two seconds of stuttering and back up only after several seconds of running clean, so it settles rather than flickering between two. The line above always says which one is actually running — Automatic never means "Full, probably".
Bursts throw fewer pieces and the background carries fewer as this comes down, and Battery saver also redraws the equalizer 24 times a second instead of 60 — visibly less fluid on a fast track. Nothing is removed and no effect becomes unavailable. Full costs about 12% of a battery an hour with the microphone on; what the other two save against that has not been measured.
Minimized keeps what you touch and drops what you only read: the transport row and the track name stay, the queue and the scrubber go, and the visuals get the space. The chevron on the player does the same thing in one tap.
Hidden leaves the visuals and this menu. Your queue, saved links and controls are untouched and come straight back. Anything playing stops, since there would be no way to stop it.
No folder remembered yet.
This browser can remember a folder, so your music comes back without picking it again. It cannot reopen it silently — a page is never allowed to reach your files unasked — so the first thing you touch in the app brings it back, whatever that touch was for. You do not have to find a button. It reads up to 500 tracks and three folders deep, and says so when a folder is bigger than that.
If it keeps asking: Chrome's permission prompt sometimes offers three answers, and the middle one, Allow on every visit, is the one meant to stick — the default covers only that visit. Chrome also documents that an installed app should keep the permission with no prompt at all. On some phones it asks every time regardless; that is the browser's decision and nothing in this app can override it. If yours keeps asking, a bug report from below now carries exactly what the browser answered, which is the only way to tell the two apart.
Installing this app to your home screen makes that permanent — Chrome keeps folder permission for an installed app without asking again. It also opens without the browser bars, which leaves more room for the visuals.
None saved.
Any YouTube links saved by an older version are kept but cannot play. This removes those too.
A quick walk through the stage, the microphone, your own music and the looks. It runs once by itself the first time; this is how to see it again.
Kept on this phone as you type, so a half-written note survives closing the menu.
Email opens whatever mail app this phone uses, with everything already written — nothing is sent until you press send there, and this app still never talks to a server itself. Copy is for a phone with no mail app set up.
Shown in full, never a hidden blob. The names of your music, your saved links and anything you are playing are not in here and never will be.
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Hive Pocket Media Player
Everything runs on this phone and your music is never uploaded. Since 1.18.0 nothing here
reaches the network at all — YouTube was the last thing that did. Reporting a problem does
not change that: the app hands the text to your mail app, which is the thing that sends
it, after you press send in it.
On a browser that allows it — Chrome on Android since early 2025, and Chromium on the desktop — the app remembers your music folder and offers it back with one tap. It can never reopen it silently; no page is allowed to reach your files unasked. Anywhere else it asks for your music each time, because nothing there can remember a folder and copying every track into storage would double the space and could be wiped without warning. Saved links come back everywhere.