Menu bar and Dock
Close the window and the music keeps playing from the menu bar, with Game Mode in its menu. The Dock menu has the controls and Love, and a Menu bar player is optional.
Lagu for Mac
A Plex music player
for the Mac.
Lagu for Mac plays the music library on your Plex Media Server with the full desktop player: lossless playback, the equalizer, downloads, and network speakers. It keeps macOS’s own window buttons, lives in the menu bar when you close it, and costs nothing, now or at launch.
Free forever Apple silicon & Intel · notarized Open beta
01 · On the Mac
At home
in macOS.
Open the disk image, drag Lagu to Applications, and sign in through Plex’s own page in your browser. The app is signed and notarized, so it opens without a trip to System Settings, and your Plex sign-in is kept in the keychain.
Media keys and Now Playing
The keyboard’s media keys work with Lagu in the background, and Control Center’s Now Playing shows the track and art.
A mini-player that floats
A slim bar, or a square of artwork with the controls under it, kept above your other windows. It remembers its shape and where you left it, and can stay open beside the main window.
Spotlight search
Press ⌘K from anywhere in the app for one overlay over artists, albums, and songs.
Pick the output
Settings, Playback, Output lists every audio device on the Mac. Lagu remembers a DAC or headphones and switches back when they are plugged in again.
Downloads where you want them
Keep albums and playlists on the Mac in a folder you choose, even on an external drive. Verify downloads re-fetches any damaged file.
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 the Mac’s light and dark switch.
Select many, and shortcuts
⌘-click, Shift-click, or ⌘+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.
A Now Playing panel
One button in the player bar opens Now Playing, Lyrics, and Up Next in a panel on the right, floating as a card or in its own column.
Artist pages
A big artist photo, Top songs in two columns, your most played albums, and About beside Similar artists.
02 · Sound and the rest
The full desktop
player.
Lossless and gapless
FLAC direct-plays from your server with the codec, bit depth, and sample rate on Now Playing, and albums play without gaps.
Ten-band EQ
A 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, then play to a WiiM or another DLNA speaker, even with the server away from home.
Visualizers
Seven of them, in the colors of the album that is playing, with a fullscreen mode. With the visualizer off, Now Playing shows a large cover instead.
Crossfade and lyrics
Crossfade between tracks, loudness leveling that measures the tracks your server hasn’t analyzed, synced lyrics, and radio with Sonic Adventure and a Guest DJ.
Scrobbling and Discord
Last.fm and ListenBrainz, and Discord Rich Presence showing what is playing, with the cover when it can find one. All off until you turn them on.
On screen
Lagu on Mac,
screen by screen.
LAGU REMOTE
A phone runs the Mac across the room.
Turn on Lagu Remote in Settings and the Mac is a Remote host whenever Lagu is open, even just in the menu bar. Pair an iPhone or an Android phone with a QR code and it can browse, search, queue, seek, and set Lagu’s volume on the Mac over your own network. The same sheet moves playback from the phone to the Mac and back again. Turn on Lagu Relay in the same settings and the phone reaches it from another network too, encrypted end to end.
What it doesn’t do
The gaps,
listed.
What the Mac build does not have yet. The platform table has every feature, cell by cell.
The Intel build is new
Lagu comes for Intel Macs as well as Apple silicon ones, and the Intel build is still being checked on Intel Macs. If you have one, a report on the forum helps.
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 starts fresh
On phones the queue comes back after a restart. On desktop it does not yet.
One streaming-quality setting
Phones split quality between Wi-Fi and cellular. The Mac has one setting.
Getting it
From download
to music playing.
Download it
Get the .dmg from the download page: Apple silicon for M-series Macs, Intel for older ones.
Install from the disk image
Open the .dmg and drag Lagu to Applications. Later versions install from inside the app, after you say yes.
Sign in with Plex
Lagu opens Plex’s sign-in page in your browser. Approve it, pick your server, and the library loads.
Questions
Asked about
this platform.
Is there a Plex music player for Mac?
Yes. Lagu is a music player for Plex with a desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux. On the Mac it plays lossless and gapless, has a ten-band EQ, offline downloads, network speakers, a floating mini-player, and media-key support.
Does Lagu run on Intel Macs?
Yes. There is an Intel build next to the Apple silicon one on the download page, signed and notarized the same way. It runs on macOS 12 or later. It’s new and still being checked on Intel Macs, so if something is off on yours, say so on the forum.
Is Lagu for Mac free?
Yes. The desktop app is free forever on macOS, Windows, and Linux. Only the mobile apps carry a price, $1.99 once, and there is no subscription.
Does Lagu for Mac 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.
Can I control Lagu on my Mac from my iPhone?
Yes. Lagu Remote pairs an iPhone or Android phone with the Mac over your own network, or from anywhere once you turn on Lagu Relay, which passes only end-to-end encrypted messages. The phone can browse, queue, seek, and set Lagu’s volume, and move playback between the two.
Lagu on other screens: iPhone · iPad · Apple Watch · Apple TV · Android · Android TV · Windows · Linux · 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