Lagu for Linux

A Plex music player
for Linux.

Lagu for Linux is the full desktop app, the same one that ships for Windows and macOS: your Plex music library with lossless playback, downloads, the equalizer, and network speakers. It comes as a single AppImage, and the desktop app is free for good.

Free forever AppImage · x86-64 Open beta

Lagu on Linux showing the Recently Played smart playlist: 150 tracks with Play and Shuffle buttons and a list of songs with their albums and star ratings, a sidebar with the library sections and playlists, and a player bar showing House of the Rising Sun by The Animals in FLAC 24-bit / 176.4 kHz. A badge in the title bar shows a phone connected through Lagu Remote.

01 · On the desktop

Runs like
a desktop app should.

Download one file, mark it executable, and run it. Lagu signs in through your browser with Plex’s own login page and keeps nothing of yours anywhere but your machine.

Tray and close-to-tray

Close the window and the music carries on from the tray. Lagu keeps to one running instance, so launching it again brings the window back.

Media keys

Play, pause, and skip from the keyboard or a headset with Lagu in the background. Your desktop’s media controls, such as KDE’s media widget, show the title and art and can seek and set the volume.

Mini-player

A small always-on-top window in two shapes: a slim bar, or a square of artwork with the controls under it. It remembers its shape and where you left it, and can stay open beside the main window.

Spotlight search

Press Ctrl+K from anywhere in the app for one overlay over artists, albums, and songs.

Game Mode

Turns off the ambient color animation and visualizers and leaves static cover art, so Lagu stays out of the GPU’s way while something else needs it. A controller badge in the title bar shows it’s on.

Right-click everywhere

Context menus on tracks, albums, and playlists, hover actions on rows, and keyboard focus states throughout.

Bloom or Mono, light or dark

Bloom tints the page, sidebar, title bar, and player bar with the cover that is playing. Mono is flat, in a Primary colour you pick, true-black OLED included. Either look can follow your desktop’s light and dark switch.

Select many, and shortcuts

Ctrl-click, Shift-click, or Ctrl+A to pick songs on an album, a playlist, or Songs, then queue, add, or download them together. Press ? anywhere for every keyboard shortcut.

Starts without Plex

If Lagu can’t reach Plex at launch, it opens on your Downloads with Retry, and an album page plays the songs you have.

02 · Sound

The whole
playback stack.

Lossless and gapless

Direct-play FLAC with the codec, bit depth, and sample rate shown on Now Playing, and no gap between album tracks.

Ten-band EQ

Preamp, twelve presets, presets of your own, and AutoEq profiles for about 2,900 headphones, kept between launches.

Network speakers

Experimental and off by default: turn on Network speakers in Settings, Playback, and play to a WiiM or another DLNA speaker. Your Plex token never reaches it.

Downloads

Albums, playlists, artists, and tracks at original quality or a bitrate you pick, kept-synced playlists, and Verify downloads for a damaged file.

Visualizers, fullscreen

Seven visualizers drawn in the colors of the album that is playing, with a fullscreen mode. With the visualizer off, Now Playing shows a large cover instead.

Scrobbling and Discord

Last.fm and ListenBrainz, and Discord Rich Presence showing what is playing, with the cover when it can find one. All three are off until you turn them on.

On screen

Lagu on Linux,
screen by screen.

Lagu on Linux: a sidebar with Listen Now, Radio, the library sections including Collections, Folders, and Stats, and playlists; Home with a Turn it up greeting, Rowdy Radio and Shuffle Library buttons, and Recently Played and Made for You rows; and a player bar showing Party All the Time by Eddie Murphy. — Listen Now: a station to start on, then Recently Played and Made for You.

The Radial visualizer fullscreen on Linux: a glowing yellow disc over a red and green background taken from the cover of Duran Duran’s Future Past, with the track Invisible named in the top left corner. — The Radial visualizer, fullscreen, in the colors of the album.

The Radio screen on Linux: a Choose source switch between two music libraries, Library Radio with a Play button, a Build your own section with Artist Mix and Sonic Adventure, and For You stations from Deep Cuts to Dua Lipa. — Radio: Library Radio, Build your own, and stations for you.

The Genres list on Linux: a filter field, then genres from Alternative and Avant-Garde to Country and Easy Listening, each with album art, and an A to Z index down the right edge. — Genres, each with its art, and an A to Z rail down the side.

All screenshots →

LAGU REMOTE

A phone runs the machine under the desk.

Turn on Lagu Remote in Settings and Lagu for Linux is a Remote host whenever it is running, tray included. Pair an iPhone or Android phone with a QR code, and it can browse the library, search, queue, seek, and set Lagu’s volume on the desktop over your own network. The same sheet moves playback between the phone and the desktop in either direction. A Linux box wired to the amplifier becomes the player for the room, with the phone as its screen.

Lagu on an iPhone with the Choose where to play sheet open: This iPhone, Move playback here, and a list of paired hosts. The Linux desktop adam-cachy is ticked and shows the track it is playing, a Windows desktop is ready, and each host lists its certificate fingerprint.

What it doesn’t do

The gaps,
listed.

What the Linux build does not have yet. The platform table has every feature, cell by cell.

AppImage only, x86-64 only

There is no .deb, .rpm, Flatpak, or ARM build yet. If one of those would decide it for you, say so on the forum.

Google Cast is an experiment

Casting to a Chromecast, Google TV, or Nest speaker is off by default in Settings and has been tried on only a few receivers so far. While casting there’s no gapless, no downloaded files, and no EQ or leveling.

The queue does not survive a restart

Phones bring the queue back paused where you left it. Desktop starts fresh.

One streaming-quality setting

Phones split quality by Wi-Fi and cellular. Desktop has a single setting.

Getting it

From download
to music playing.

Download it

Get the AppImage from the download page, and check it against our signed checksums if you like.

Run the AppImage

chmod +x Lagu-*.AppImage, then open it. Nothing is installed system-wide, and removing Lagu is deleting the file. Later versions install from inside the app, checked against our signed checksums first.

Sign in with Plex

Lagu opens Plex’s sign-in page in your browser. Approve it, choose your server, and the library loads.

Questions

Asked about
this platform.

Is there a Plex music player for Linux?

Yes. Lagu is a music player for Plex with a desktop app for Linux, Windows, and macOS. The Linux build is an x86-64 AppImage with lossless gapless playback, a ten-band EQ, offline downloads, DLNA network speakers, and a mini-player that stays on top.

Is Lagu for Linux free?

Yes. The desktop app is free forever on Linux, Windows, and macOS. Only the mobile apps carry a price, $1.99 once, and there is no subscription.

Does Lagu for Linux need Plex Pass?

No. Playback, downloads, the EQ, network speakers, and Lagu Remote work without it. Sonic radio, moods, and Plex-fetched lyrics rely on Plex Pass on the server, as they do in any Plex client.

Which distributions does it run on?

Lagu ships as an AppImage, which runs on most x86-64 desktop distributions without installation. There is no ARM build, so a Raspberry Pi is not supported yet.

Can I use a headless Linux box as a music endpoint?

Lagu is a desktop app and needs a graphical session. What it can do is run in the tray on a machine wired to your speakers and be driven entirely from a phone with Lagu Remote.

Lagu on other screens: iPhone · iPad · Apple Watch · Apple TV · Android · Android TV · macOS · Windows · every feature

Bring your library along.

The open beta is here. Desktop is free, iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV are free while the beta runs, and Android is $1.99 once on Google Play.

Download Lagu

A Plex music playerfor Linux.

Runs likea desktop app should.