Alternatives to Cog
A free and open source audio player for macOS that plays a very wide range of formats. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
Cog
A free and open source audio player for macOS that plays a very wide range of formats.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as Cog.
Swinsian
A macOS music player and library manager with wide format support and advanced tag editing.
Swinsian is also a native macOS music player, but it is paid and closed source, and it adds library management, batch tag editing with regex, smart playlists and a duplicate finder.
VOX
A music player for Mac and iPhone aimed at high-resolution audio files such as FLAC.
VOX is a freemium, closed source player aimed at lossless and Hi-Res files, with iPhone apps, Sonos and CarPlay playback, and paid cloud storage for your own library.
Audacious
A lightweight open-source audio player descended from XMMS, with optional Winamp Classic skins.
Audacious is a lightweight open source audio player that runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, with Winamp Classic skin support, an equalizer and bundled plugins.
Audirvāna
Play a local music library and supported streaming services from a desktop application.
Audirvāna is a paid, closed source desktop player for Windows and macOS that combines a local library with supported streaming services and offers audio output configuration.
Harmonoid
A cross-platform music player and library manager built on mpv and FFmpeg, with a Material Design interface.
Harmonoid covers desktop and mobile platforms with mpv and FFmpeg playback, and adds a tag editor, Last.fm scrobbling, ReplayGain and crossfade, though its license terms are unstated.
Quod Libet
Organize and play music with flexible metadata tools.
Quod Libet is an open source GPL-2.0 player for Windows, macOS and Linux built around library management, with flexible metadata searches and plugin support.
Museeks
A simple, cross-platform music player for playing a local music collection on the desktop.
Museeks is a simple open source music player for Windows, macOS and Linux, with a deliberately limited feature set and pre-1.0 version numbering.
Dopamine
A simple desktop audio player for playing and browsing a local music collection.
Dopamine is an open source desktop player for Windows, macOS and Linux with a clean interface for local music, offering fewer advanced options than Cog.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
VLC media player
A free player that opens almost any video or audio file, disc or stream without installing a codec pack.
IINA
The mpv engine wrapped in a macOS app that actually looks and behaves like a macOS app.
Elmedia Player
A macOS video and audio player with native Apple Silicon support and AirPlay and Chromecast streaming.
cmus
A small, fast console music player for Linux, macOS and other Unix-like systems.
Super Audio CD Decoder
A foobar2000 input plugin that plays Super Audio CD ISO images and DSD audio files.
musikcube
A terminal-based music player, library and audio streaming server for Windows, macOS and Linux.
