Comparison

Sonarch vs FolderPlay

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Sonarch

Features
Read full description

Sonarch plays the music you already own. Point it at folders on your Mac, a drive on your network, or a cloud account, and it builds one library out of all of them. Nothing is streamed from us, nothing is counted, and nothing about what you play leaves your device. ONE TRACK, HOWEVER MANY COPIES A track you have as FLAC and again as MP3, sitting in two different places, is one row in your library โ€” with every format and every place it lives behind it. EVERY FORMAT, GAPLESS BETWEEN THEM FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC and OGG, with ReplayGain so a library built from many sources plays at one loudness. BROWSE VIEWS THAT FOLLOW THEIR RULES Any view can be restricted to the locations you choose, and a browse view takes rules as well, composed in its own filter engine. Each one is live and stays where you left it. WHERE YOU LEFT OFF A browse, a playlist and the albums wall each keep their own place, and quitting loses none of them. Bookmarks save any moment inside a track, to come back to later. WHAT YOU PLAYED, AND WHEN History keeps every play with the time it happened, counts a track that came round twice, and remembers the view each one was played from โ€” so it can be played again, or opened where it came from. FOLDERS, NETWORK SHARES AND CLOUDS Dropbox, OneDrive, pCloud, a WebDAV share or a Subsonic server, connected straight from your device with your own credentials. Your files never pass through our servers. Take what you want offline for the train. TAGS THAT STAY FIXED Correct a tag once and it survives every rescan โ€” written into the file where that is possible, kept by the library where it is not. ON THE MAC Send audio to another output with a keystroke, mid-track, without a trip into Settings. Schedule a start time and decide what happens when it ends. Drag in a ZIP from Bandcamp and it joins the library, with the shop's own tags stripped on the way past. ON IPHONE CarPlay, the Lock Screen and Control Centre, through the system player rather than a second interface to learn. Control the Mac from your phone over the local network. ALSO An editable playing queue. Lyrics from your tags or from LRCLIB. Scrobbling to Last.fm and ListenBrainz. Stop after this track, album or artist. Playlists, statistics, and a queue you can reorder. NO TELEMETRY, NO ACCOUNT NEEDED No analytics, no crash reporting, no advertising identifier and no third-party SDK of any kind. There is nothing counting what you play. An account is optional โ€” the player works perfectly without one.

About

FolderPlay

Features
Read full description

FolderPlay turns a folder in Files into a continuous audio queue. Choose a folder once. FolderPlay finds supported audio files, keeps their natural filename order, and starts playing without importing or copying them into another library. Come back later and continue from the same folder, file, and position. It is a focused player for lessons, recordings, mixes, demos, chapters, and music already organized on your device or in a Files provider. FREE โ€ข Play one folder from beginning to end โ€ข Keep the source folder unchanged โ€ข Background audio and lock screen controls LIFETIME UNLOCK โ€ข Save and resume unlimited folders โ€ข Bookmarks, playback speeds, and sleep timer โ€ข One purchase, no subscription FolderPlay does not upload your audio, create an account, stream a catalog, or build a duplicate media library.

Screenshots

Sonarch4 screens
FolderPlay3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Sonarch at none against FolderPlay's 1. On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. FolderPlay sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Sonarch asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard1 real difference ยท 5 level
Sonarch versus FolderPlay: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSonarchFolderPlay
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 2 daysโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo โ€” betterYes
DevicesiPhone, MaciPhone, iPad
Requires iOS18.017.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size33 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAliaksandr SiamionauArthur Borges

In-app purchases

None

Sonarch

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

FolderPlay

One-time1
  • FolderPlay Lifetime$4.99

Questions

Is Sonarch free?
Sonarch is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is FolderPlay free?
FolderPlay is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Sonarch or FolderPlay have ads?
Neither Sonarch nor FolderPlay shows ads.

Other comparisons