There was no app-level notification surface: two components had grown private toasts and the other 84 catch blocks ended at console.error, so a user with a moved file, a locked database or an offline network saw a button that did nothing. Where errors did surface, eight sites printed the raw Go string. Four levels, chosen by the call site from one rule — a failure is only worth interrupting for if the user can do something about it that they are not already doing: Blocking (data at risk), Persistent (something asked for that did not happen, worth retrying), Transient (a small action whose state visibly reverted anyway), Inline (rendered in the panel that failed). Three things about it are load-bearing. Coalescing lives in the store, keyed by (level, region, key) within a window, so 200 unplayable files are one message with a count and no future caller has to remember that. An inline notification carries a *region*, because "inline" says not global, not where. And the bottom band belongs to the player, so the app-level stack sits under the header — the player's own floating notice grows upward by however many lines it needs. `utils/describe-error.ts` maps the causes a user can act on to copy; `explainError` repeats a backend message when it is one of our own sentinels rather than a Go wrapping chain, since mapping "a library with that name already exists" to something generic is a regression. `confirmAction()` is a wa-dialog, so destructive actions inherit the focus trap and Escape the hand-rolled overlays do not have.
YellowJacket
Music how it was meant to bee.
YellowJacket is a fast, cross-platform desktop music player for your local collection. It plays your files, keeps your library tidy, and helps you discover and organize your music — all in a clean, responsive interface. No accounts, no streaming, no telemetry: just your music on your machine.
Runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Features
Play your music
- Plays MP3, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, and WAV
- Play, pause, seek, and volume control with a mute toggle
- Gapless, glitch-free seeking backed by a read-ahead buffer
- A queue you can add to, reorder, and shuffle, with play-next support
- Shuffle and repeat (off / all / one)
- Picks up right where you left off — remembers your track, position, and volume between sessions
- Media-key and MPRIS support on Linux, so your desktop's playback controls just work
Keep your library organized
- Point it at your music folders and it scans them automatically
- Reads tags and embedded cover art, and de-duplicates artwork so it isn't stored twice
- Incremental sync — only new or changed files get reprocessed, and deleted files are cleaned up
- Browse by album, artist, or genre, or search across everything
- Mark favorites and see what you've been listening to with play history
- Edit track tags directly when something's off
Playlists
- Create playlists, drag tracks in, and reorder them
- Smart playlists that build themselves from rules (by genre, rating, play count, and more)
- Pin a default playlist and spot duplicate tracks at a glance
Discover and clean up (powered by MusicBrainz)
- Explore — browse artists, releases, and genres from the MusicBrainz catalog, not just what's already in your library
- Auto-tag — match your files against MusicBrainz to fill in correct artist, album, and track metadata, with a review step before anything is written
- Lyrics search — find a track by a line you remember
Install
Download the latest build for your platform from the releases page.
| Platform | Download |
|---|---|
| Linux | yellowjacket-linux-amd64 |
| macOS | yellowjacket-darwin-universal.app.zip (Apple Silicon + Intel) |
| Windows | yellowjacket-windows-amd64.exe |
Prefer to build it yourself? See Building from source.
Getting started
- Launch YellowJacket.
- Open Settings and add the folder(s) where your music lives.
- Let the initial scan finish — you'll see progress as it works.
- Browse by album, artist, or genre, queue something up, and press play.
Your library and settings are stored locally:
| Linux / macOS | Windows | |
|---|---|---|
| Config | ~/.config/yellowjacket/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\yellowjacket\config |
| Library data | ~/.local/share/yellowjacket/ |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\yellowjacket\data |
Building from source
YellowJacket is built with Go and a Lit/TypeScript frontend, bridged by the Wails framework.
Prerequisites
| Tool | Version |
|---|---|
| Go | 1.25+ |
| Node.js | 22+ |
| pnpm | 10+ |
| Wails CLI | v2 (go install github.com/wailsapp/wails/v2/cmd/wails@latest) |
On Linux, install the system libraries Wails needs:
sudo apt-get install libasound2-dev libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev
macOS and Windows need no extra system packages. Run wails doctor to check your
environment.
Build
make setup # install tooling and git hooks
make dev # run with hot-reload
make build-prod # produce a release binary
More detail for contributors lives in
docs/dev/overview.md and CLAUDE.md.