Tape Deck

Tape Deck plays your own music as a cassette. Choose an album and it goes into the deck as a tape. The reels turn at the speeds a real cassette's would, one pack growing as the other shrinks. The counter runs, the leader passes before the music starts, and a side comes to its end. SIMPLE OR ADVANCED • Simple to start with: plain keys, one side, and only the settings that matter • Advanced when you want it: every setting, both sets of keys and the holds, kept as you left them THE DECK • Play, rewind, fast forward, stop and eject, each with the sound of the mechanism • Two sets of keys: a portable recorder's, with a Pause that holds the tape, or a modern player's, with skip keys that wind the tape while held • Sides and auto-reverse: fit an album to one side, or cut it to a C60 or a C90 and turn it over • Gapless playback from track to track • Over a hundred tapes, from plain shells to classic ones: pick one, flick the label for the next, let each album have its own, or take one from the pile at random • A clear shell, a cutaway and an exploded view of its parts, drawn to the standard's sizes • A handwritten label for each album, with its cover, in one of thirteen period label styles • Tape hiss, wow as the motor starts and stops, three tape types, noise reduction, and a tape condition from fresh to chewed • LED meters in the transport, if you want them • Each tape keeps its place: put an album back in and it plays on from where it came out YOUR LIBRARY • An opening screen that lists every source, what each needs and how it stands; tap one to set it up there • A demo tape to play until you have music of your own • The music on your iPhone or iPad, synced from a Mac, played as tapes • Copy album folders into iCloud Drive › Tape Deck › Music and they reach all your devices, or into the app's own folder through the Files app • Or play a folder where it is, on a NAS too • Or connect to a music server of your own, the free Tape Deck Server, a Plex Media Server, a Jellyfin server or a Subsonic server such as Navidrome, and keep albums on the device as you play them • Albums, artists and tracks, a Recent tab, search, and favourites that follow you through iCloud • Mixtapes: make one by hand, or from what you've played in the last hour • Audiobooks and podcasts from your own Audiobookshelf server, by chapter, with a reading speed, your place kept on that server, playing while they download APPLE MUSIC • With an Apple Music subscription, your Apple Music library plays as tapes too: albums, artists, songs and playlists, and a search that reaches the whole catalogue • The sound is Apple Music's own, so the tape's hiss, wear and wow step aside; the reels, the counter, the keys and the eject carry on EVERYWHERE YOU LISTEN • Turn it sideways for a bedside deck: the cassette full screen, keys on the shell, the screen kept on while it plays • Handoff: carry the tape on to your iPad or Mac from the same second • Send this tape as a link, or from Tape Deck in Messages beside eight animated cassette stickers • A Home Screen widget of the deck, its reels turning, with Previous, Play or Stop and Next, and on the Lock Screen and in StandBy • Apple Watch: the tape in your iPhone's deck on your wrist, the Digital Crown for the volume, your recent albums on a shelf, and a complication • CarPlay: Recent, Albums, Artists and Books on the car's screen • Siri and Shortcuts: "Carry on the tape in Tape Deck", "Play what's new in Tape Deck", "Stop Tape Deck" • Lock screen and Control Centre controls, and AirPlay • Named for VoiceOver throughout, and Reduce Motion is followed AND A SPECTRUM LOADER In Advanced, with the tape stopped, hold stop and eject for three seconds and the deck becomes a tape loader for a real ZX Spectrum: run a lead from the headphone socket to its EAR socket, type LOAD "" and play a game's .tap file from the Files app. Tape Deck has no account, no adverts and no tracking. It plays what's yours.