Connecting apps#

Aether speaks the OpenSubsonic API, so Subsonic and OpenSubsonic apps such as Symfonium can use it. In the app, enter your server’s address, e.g. https://music.example.com or http://192.168.1.10:8075, and the credentials below.

Important
Aether answers in JSON only. Apps that understand only the original Subsonic XML responses, such as DSub, cannot connect yet.

Credentials#

With authentication off (Auth.Method: none), the API asks for nothing: any username and password work.

With authentication on, your own password never works in an app. Each app gets its own credentials instead, so you can revoke one without touching the others. Open User settings → Connected apps from your account menu:

Connect a music app creates a username and password for the app’s login form. This works with practically every Subsonic app.
Create an API key creates a single key, for OpenSubsonic apps and your own scripts that support API-key sign-in.

Both are shown once — copy them into the app right away. The same page lists every app with access and revokes it, and also lists the browsers you are signed in to the web player from.

User settings → Connected apps, with an app's new credentials shown once

Warning
Subsonic apps sign every request in a way that can be replayed: over plain HTTP, anyone who captures one request can keep using that app’s access until you revoke it. Use HTTPS for anything beyond your home network.

Behind an authenticating proxy#

If a proxy such as Authelia protects Aether, it must let /rest through without its own sign-in: apps cannot fill in a login page. See Authentication.

The Aether desktop player can use such a server too: when its server step finds a sign-in portal in front of Aether, it asks for an API key instead of a password. Create one under User settings → Connected apps in the web player, paste it into the app, and it connects through /rest alone. The app remembers the key until you log out, revoke it under Connected apps, or it expires; administration stays in the web player.

What apps cannot do yet#

Apps offer a few features Aether does not serve yet. Most of them come up empty, or with an error:

Transcoding. Files are streamed as they are, so an app’s bitrate or format setting has no effect, and listening away from home uses the file’s full bitrate.
Ratings. An app can set them and is told it worked, but they are not saved.
Artist and album information — biographies, similar artists, album notes — and top or similar songs, so mixes an app builds from them stay empty too.
Lyrics, even when your files carry them.
Podcasts, jukebox mode and bookmarks. To resume, the play queue keeps your position in the current track instead of a bookmark.
Sharing, chat, and managing users and passwords — these are not planned. Manage users and passwords in the web player, see Authentication.

Two things also work differently from what an app may expect:

“Now playing” counts as a play. Some apps report a track as it starts and again once it has been played; Aether records both, so their plays can count twice in your history and in the Discover feed.
Plays stay in Aether. They are not passed on to Last.fm or ListenBrainz; if your app can scrobble to them itself, let it.