The questions we’re asked,
and the short answers.

A Plex account, a Plex Media Server, and a music library on it. Lagu is a client for your own server — there is no Lagu account to create and no service of ours in the middle.

The beta is open to everyone. Desktop installers for macOS, Windows, and Linux are on the download page. iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Apple TV join through a public TestFlight link, and Android phone, tablet, and TV through Google Play’s open testing. Fire TV and Fire tablet testers sign up there with their Amazon account’s email, and Amazon sends the invite.

Desktop is free, and iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Fire TV, and Fire tablets are free while the beta runs. Android is the exception. Google Play doesn’t let a free app become paid later, and the only way it lets a paid app go to testers for free is its internal test, which holds 100 people. Those places are taken, so Android joins through open testing as a $1.99 purchase, the same one you’d make at launch, so you keep Lagu when it leaves beta. Launch is the day Lagu goes up on the stores for everyone, and that’s when the price starts: one $1.99 App Store purchase covers iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV together, and one $1.99 Google Play purchase covers Android. Desktop is free forever. There is no subscription and nothing to buy inside the app.

Lagu is native on iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, Android TV, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and desktop on Windows, macOS, and Linux. CarPlay comes with the iPhone app and Android Auto with the Android app. The Android TV app also runs on Fire TV devices that run Fire OS, and the phone app on Fire tablets, through the Amazon Appstore. The newest Fire TV sticks run Vega OS, which can’t run Android apps, so Lagu isn’t on them. The Android tablet layout is in verification. The platform table shows what each one does.

Yes. Next to the Apple silicon build, the download page has an Intel (x64) build, signed and notarized the same way. It’s new and still being checked on Intel Macs, so if something is off on yours, say so on the forum.

No. Lagu on your device talks directly to your Plex Media Server. Your music, your listening, and your library data never reach us. If you use Lagu Relay to control Lagu away from home, what passes through it is encrypted end to end, so we can’t read it. The privacy page spells out the little the site itself collects.

Yes, from desktop and Android phone. Turn on Network speakers in Settings under Playback and DLNA speakers on your network appear in the output picker, with your streaming-quality choice carried over. Your Plex server can be on the same network or somewhere else: Lagu fetches the audio and the album art itself and hands the speaker a private address on your own network, so your Plex token never leaves the device. The volume keys and slider set the speaker’s own level, and you can seek while casting.

Only when you turn on a visualizer, and only because Android’s audio-visualizer API needs the record-audio permission to read the audio an app is itself playing. That goes for the phone and the TV. It is bound to Lagu’s own audio session, so it cannot hear anything else, and nothing is recorded, stored, or sent anywhere. Decline it and you keep the cover art. The privacy page has the longer version.

Yes. Through Lagu Relay, your phone reaches Lagu on your computer or TV from another network, over cellular or someone else’s Wi-Fi. Every message is encrypted end to end between the phone and the computer or TV, so the relay can’t read them. It’s on by default on phones and both TVs, and one switch in Settings › Remote on a computer. It needs no Plex Pass and no account. Streaming your library itself away from home is a separate question, covered below.

Yes: to Last.fm and ListenBrainz, on every platform, off until you connect a service in Settings. Plays made offline queue up and send when you’re back online. Whether or not either service is connected, your own Plex server keeps its play counts and history — Lagu reports plays to it like any Plex client, and that’s what Deep Cuts, listening stats, and play-count playlist rules are built from. Those records stay on your server. Plex can also scrobble on its own: if your Plex account is linked to Last.fm, your server reports plays from every client, Lagu included. That’s why scrobbles can appear before you’ve connected anything in Lagu, and why connecting Last.fm in both places would record each play twice. Pick one.

A brand-new library, or one still being scanned, has the same symptoms, and so does a track your server hasn’t got to yet. Lagu only says a feature requires Plex Pass once your server has refused the request; a timeout, a dropped connection, or a signed-out session is never blamed on your subscription. If your library is still being analyzed, give it time and the features arrive on their own.

No. Lagu uses your server’s loudness analysis wherever it exists, and on desktop, iPhone, iPad, and Android it measures every track your server hasn’t analyzed on the device itself. The first play of such a track starts at a measured level, or 8 dB down if the measurement isn’t ready in time, so it never starts too loud. Apple TV and Android TV don’t measure: they start an unanalyzed track 8 dB down until your server analyzes it. The settings guide has the details.

Playing your library from outside your home network takes one of two Plex subscriptions: a Plex Pass on the account that owns the server, which covers everyone the server is shared with, or a Remote Watch Pass on your own account, which covers just you on any server you can reach. Either one unlocks it. It’s a Plex account matter, and it applies to every Plex client equally.