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Subster

Music timeline party game that plays songs from your own Subsonic library
New in version 0.1.8
• Much more accurate release years: a song is dated by its first official release, so a bootleg or promo pressing no longer makes a card years too old
• Servers that never expose MusicBrainz IDs — Nextcloud Music always — now use the album to identify the recording, fixing wrong years and missing songs
• A song whose year can't be established is left out rather than dealt with a wrong one
• Failed MusicBrainz requests are retried; a slow Wikidata lookup no longer holds up the deck
Subster is a pass-and-play music party game for your own music collection. A mystery song plays blind — no title, no artist, no year. Your job: place it on your timeline by guessing whether it came out before or after the songs you already hold. Guess right and you keep the card. First to 10 cards wins.

It works like the card game Hitster, but with no physical cards, no accounts, and no backend: the app talks directly to your Subsonic-compatible music server (Navidrome, Airsonic, Gonic, …).

Features


  • Plays your music — connects to any Subsonic-compatible server

  • Save several servers and switch between them; each remembers its own library and playlist

  • Smart deck building: songs are ranked by real-world recognizability (Deezer popularity + a bundled canon of chart hits), so the deck feels fair instead of obscure

  • Original release years via MusicBrainz and Wikidata — a remaster from 2015 still counts as its original year

  • Tokens: skip a song, bet against another player's placement and steal the card, or earn a bonus for naming title and artist

  • Difficulty presets, year range and genre filters, clip length options

  • Keeps playing with the screen off (lock-screen media controls)

  • English and German UI



Privacy

No accounts, no ads, no analytics. To rank songs and resolve years, only artist/title of library songs are sent to the public Deezer, MusicBrainz and Wikidata APIs — nothing about you or your server. The "Online metadata" setting has three levels: full, "No Deezer" (drops the only proprietary service but keeps MusicBrainz/Wikidata years), and offline, where only your own server is contacted.

You need a Subsonic-compatible music server to play. Your server credentials never leave the device, and are stored as a salted token rather than the password itself — except for servers that only accept legacy authentication, where the app tells you that the password has to be kept.
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  • app screenshot
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  • app screenshot

Versions

Although APK downloads are available below to give you the choice, you should be aware that by installing that way you will not receive update notifications and it's a less secure way to download. We recommend that you install the F-Droid client and use that.

Download F-Droid
  • Version 0.1.8 (108) suggested Added on Aug 05, 2026

    This version requires Android 5.1 or newer.

    It is built and signed by F-Droid, and guaranteed to correspond to this source tarball.

    Permissions
    • run foreground service
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services.
    • run foreground service with the type "mediaPlayback"
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services with the type "mediaPlayback"
    • have full network access
      Allows the app to create network sockets and use custom network protocols. The browser and other applications provide means to send data to the internet, so this permission is not required to send data to the internet.
    • app.subster.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION

    Download APK 3.3 MiB PGP Signature | Build Log

    • New in version 0.1.6
    • Fixed: the playlist picker ignored the first tap after liking a song
    • Deck building now explains a failed connection instead of showing "Failed to fetch", and its remaining messages are translated
    • The store description now names Wikidata as the third metadata source, next to Deezer and MusicBrainz
  • Version 0.1.6 (106) - Added on Jul 31, 2026

    This version requires Android 5.1 or newer.

    It is built and signed by F-Droid, and guaranteed to correspond to this source tarball.

    Permissions
    • run foreground service
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services.
    • run foreground service with the type "mediaPlayback"
      Allows the app to make use of foreground services with the type "mediaPlayback"
    • have full network access
      Allows the app to create network sockets and use custom network protocols. The browser and other applications provide means to send data to the internet, so this permission is not required to send data to the internet.
    • app.subster.DYNAMIC_RECEIVER_NOT_EXPORTED_PERMISSION

    Download APK 3.3 MiB PGP Signature | Build Log

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