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Cs Music Pro

by Mike Clay

iPhone · iPad

Active Last checked 31 Jul 2026

Quick verdict

What it is
Store information collected; independent summary not yet available.
At a glance
  • $2.99
  • In-app purchases

Categories and search queries

Official categories

AppCorpus categories

Key functions

Function Availability Access Scope Evidence
In-app purchases Yes Limited free Store published

Screens

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Pricing & paywalls

App Store

  • Price: $2.99
  • In-app purchases

Ratings & reviews

App Store

4.3 1812 ratings · App Store

  1. 4/5Hate the update

    I’ve been using Cesium for years now at this point, and overall it’s so much better than Apple’s Music app; kudos to the developer. However... I’m not a huge fan of the update. It feels like it’s moving in the direction of Apple’s Music app, in terms of some UX choices, which is the reason I switched to Cesium in the first place. The new UI looks great, but now it forces you to either see all songs in a list or only the albums. You can switch between all songs and albums, but I’d rather have both without needing to go into settings every time I want to listen differently. It also now shows iCloud items that haven’t been downloaded, by default, though there is at least an option to turn it off. Personally, I would rather the default be off, some it’s not on my device for a reason. Some other issues I have is that the time remaining in a song disappears once the song is far enough along. I care more about how much is left than how much I’ve listened to. I don’t know why the time elapsed doesn’t just remain at the left end of the bar. The update also seems to have removed the ability to swipe and tap “play next/later,” which is so much faster than having to long press on a song, and you can’t see the “jump-to” alphabet until you’ve started scrolling.

    chasingsheep · 31 Jul 2026

  2. 3/5App is still super useful, with room for optimization

    Cesium has been my go-to music app for a few years now and I’ve loved its interface and functionality much more than the ugly and hardly functional Apple Music app. The app has significantly improved since my last review. Previously, it crashed all the time and had barely any functionality. Now Mike restored some original functionality (ratings, queueing, etc.) and Cesium is almost back to its old self. The search has a tendency to crash the app, so that’s sad, since that means I have to defer to using Apple Music’s search and its “play next” feature, which is really annoying. As a wish list item, I wish that I could sort by artist within a playlist, because then I could use the little right sidebar to jump to a letter, since I find myself doing a bunch of scrolling looking for an artist to start off my music listening, which is time-consuming. Also, whenever I queue a song to play next, it will, then another song or two will play, then it’ll play the same exact song that I queued earlier again, which is kinda annoying because then I have to skip it. After that, my songs will play normally. This might only happen when I do multiple “play next” actions in a row, because I haven’t noticed this problem when I only do one “play next” at a time. (I’m using an iPhone 6 with the latest iOS and Cesium update, if that impacts the situation.) Looking forward to the subsequent updates and optimizations though. Keep it up, Mike, you’ve really made one of the best music apps on the market!

    Elixir Walls · 31 Jul 2026

  3. 3/5A lot to love, increasingly more things not to love

    I’ve been a long time user of Cs Music Player (or Cesium as it used to be called). I’m not so old but it seems I’m a dinosaur when it comes to the way I like to listen to music since I’m a firm believer in OWNING music, having a music library that somehow reflects my own progressing tastes. Apple used to love music lovers and used to provide some very nice hardware and software to cater to guys and gals like me. Now these times are gone and streaming took over. Anyway. I really would like to like Cs and I lindner do since it allows me to listen to my synced iTunes library in a meaningful way. A huge library needs the right tools to handle it and Cs still does that. So thanks for that. However, I don’t like the direction the app is heading with constantly changing and seemingly erratic UI choices that try to reinvent the wheel. That’s really not necessary because if Cs was just a copy of what Apple’s iTunes app used to be a few years ago, everything would be just fine. But for some unknown reason Mike seems to take pleasure in deconstructing well-proven features which is really a shame since the USP of Cs is really simple: an app that allows you to easily navigate your (huge) music collection and so helps you to enjoy it. Please, Mike, don’t try to improve things that are just fine the way they are. Personal wish: please bring (back) the shuffle by album feature. Thanks.

    Rai El Grande · 31 Jul 2026

  4. 4/5Buggy

    I want to like this app, but it's pretty buggy. Sometimes when you press the home button or modify the queue, the song that is currently playing starts over. Sometimes when you add a song to the top of the queue, it doesn't play (it gets removed from the queue). Sometimes when you try to modify the queue, the changes don't get saved. Sometimes it hangs (I'm not talking about the iOS 11.2 lag, this is different) and sometimes it even crashes. It doesn't seem to update song metadata (e.g. 'last played' and play count) in a timely fashion. Songs that have just played still appear in the queue. If you add a long playlist (a couple thousand songs) to the queue, it reduces it to about 500 songs, I have no idea how it selects which songs to play when it does this. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the app and get the same results. I'm on iOS 11.3. Update for version 4.3: This app has gotten a lot better since the developer implemented workarounds for the Apple bugs. However, the Apple bugs still make it very difficult to modify the queue. Is there anything we can do to push Apple along? Post something on the feedback site perhaps? Shame on Apple for not fixing these bugs, they've known about them for a long long time.

    tom_993 · 31 Jul 2026

  5. 3/5What Apple Music was and should be. Needs better scrobbler

    Update: app doesn’t work as well as it used to. It might be updates by apple’s fault but daft it is freezes often, crashes, often becomes unresponsive. Sometimes you have to go into the Apple Music app to stop the music playing. Still like the layout but it needs to be more reliable Original review: Good. Still some issues. Has become quite laggy though or just less responsive to finger presses. More so than the Apple player in a noticeable way. Needs better scrobbler. It's not precise when's moving and the hit box for your finger to activate it is way too small. The one thing the new Apple Music player does well is an improved scrobbler. Copy nothing from Apple Music but that scrobbler user experience. The app is What Apple Music was and should be. It's better for large collections. It prioritized usability over eye candy in the cluttered/poor interface Apple Music app. that is probably there for people that don't actually have Music collections. Otherwise they'd want better navigation in the Apple Music app. If you want the old Apple Music player's layout, look, and general function back this is an app you'll like. It's what you've been looking for. And there's other customization like colors, mines all black with blue lettering, night mode style. And other options.

    Mick_Swagger · 31 Jul 2026

Privacy & accessibility

App Store

Privacy

  • Data Not Collected Developer declared

Accessibility

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Versions

App Store

  • 6.3.4

    Dirty little secret: sometimes the reason for those "general bug fix and improvement" updates is to make changes to the App Store optimization. This isn't one of those updates, though, because I also made some very minor visual tweaks.

  • 6.4

    Introducing the NEW ACTIVITY TAB! The Activity Tab brings together a several new ways to interact with your music library based on the way you actually use it. Conveniently access all your loved (or top rated) songs in one place. Easily see which playlists have received recent updates. Quickly access your most recently added content, or just check out Recently Played to track down "that one song." It all comes together in the Activity Tab. Remember to scroll to the bottom: you can reconfigure the section order to better match your workflow. And also introducing SAFE MODE: So, I've seen a good number of complaints from users who are experiencing freezes, lags, and crashes. The unfortunate truth is that the VAST majority of such issues are not actually even Cs itself, but timeouts resulting from when Cs polls the system player. It's not clear why some users are affected and others not. The worst culprits are processes that request information from the system repeatedly: highlighting the currently playing song in lists and displaying current playback progress. The new Safe Mode option (accessed in the Settings tab), reduces these requests to the absolute minimum to improve stability.

  • 6.4.1

    • This update includes changes to the app startup process that fix issues some users reported having with the app freezing or crashing on launch. • Added a Safe Mode toggle to the Cs pane in Settings.app. • Fixed bug causing details to not update when iterating through tracks in the Song Info pane. • Fixed bug with section counts in search results. • Minor localization improvements.

  • 6.4.10

    • I missed the party, and did not know that the alphabet section index had been implemented in UICollectionView a while ago. So now this version uses the default functionality, and has 50% less third party dependencies :)

  • 6.4.11

    Updates and improvements to how Pinned Item data is persisted and handled. This includes a new "Reset Pins" option in the Settings tab that can be used to clear pin data in the event there are any issues during the update data migration.

  • 6.4.12

    • Fixes issue with deprecated method used to create "4-up" grid artwork. This started causing crashes for some users in iOS 17.

  • 6.4.13

    Corrects a few visual issues. Of most note is that a user brought to my attention that the ascending/descending sort indicator is counter-intuitive for alphabetical vs. numerical sorts. This has been corrected visually – no actual sort preferences have been changed.

  • 6.4.14

    Hey Mike; on the song info pane, the play button has the icon twice, how do you screw something like that up?! It's a good question. --- Happy New Year! If you are enjoying the app, please consider leaving a rating or review :)

  • 6.4.2

    Today's update corrects some small bugs with display and functionality: • Fixed issue shuffling playlists in collections. • Fixed display issue displaying all search results. • Refined updating based on playback in the Activity tab. Stay tuned for a future update with more substantial improvements. If you have a suggestion for Cs, please email me at [email protected] (no promises on a response!)

  • 6.4.3

    Fixes crash when creating new playlist through the "Add to Playlist" submenu.

  • 6.4.4

    This update includes minor iPad UI improvements, including fixes for issues in Split View.

  • 6.4.5

    • Menu updates • I get fairly regular reports from users that changing to alternate app icons does not work. I've double and triple checked, and the app is following Apple's documentation for alternate icons. App Icons are related to system caching, so if you are finding that the app icon is not updating it might be worth trying to restart the device and see if the issue corrects itself. If you are finding that the icon will persistently not update, let me know at [email protected]. Thanks!

  • 6.4.6

    • Threading changes to the search logic. Most users with small-medium library should find no noticeable difference. Hopefully this will be the same for users with large libraries – the new code is more stable :) • Fixed bug that "locked" the Now Playing screen when accessed via URL.

  • 6.4.7

    If you're the sort of user that searches within playlists, you may have noticed that the header could be a bit... janky. It is now much less that.

  • 6.4.8

    If you're the sort of user that searches within playlists, you may have noticed that the header could be a bit... janky. It is now much less that. (Also, if you are one of the 1% who updated to 6.4.7 this update restores affected pinned items.)

  • 6.4.9

    • New play and shuffle controls added to the "All Songs" view.

  • 7.0

    Just a few weeks before Cs hits its TENTH birthday, I am very very pleased to release Cs7!! This update brings some serious under the hood improvements that bring more consistency with Miximum and PlayTally (haven't tried those? Check them out!) Here are a few noticeable changes in Cs7: VIEW OPTIONS The old sorting menu has been replaced with the more powerful "View Options" menu. This powerful new control gathers together several different options and functions into one place: • Grouping options: More granular control in how you collect songs in different views, including the old "View All Songs" view. These options • Standardized sorting options: Consistent sorting, throughout the app. • Activity Quick Filters: The Activity tab is no more. Instead, you can apply the same logic as filters – allowing you to easily see your favorite songs, recently added artists, or pinned albums with just a tap. NEW SEARCH TAB Search has moved back down to its own dedicated tab, which now displays recently searched items. There has also been improvements so search performance and the results display. NEW ICON Updated icon supports iOS 18 home screen dark and tinted modes. CONTEXTUAL INFO • More contextual sorting metadata throughout • More contextual menus and options throughout If you enjoy the new remastered Cs, please consider leaving a rating or review! They help new users find the app :)

  • 7.0.1

    Thanks for the feedback! Though it has been... mixed. Contrary to some user demands, I will not be firing the individual responsible for certain design decisions. That individual is also responsible for all the other decisions too, so it would end development. They have been made fully aware of the complaints :) Quick update to address a few key issues that have come up: • The Now Playing view for iPads has been restored to full coverage! And there was much rejoicing. • A number of users have reported crash issues on iOS 18.0.1. Unfortunately, this is not an issue that I have been able to replicate, or has been reported during beta testing, and crash logs have been sparse. This build includes a couple of changes that I hope will resolve the issue. If you are experiencing this issue, please consider enabling "Share With App Developers" in iOS Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements so that I can get more data.

  • 7.0.2

    Thanks for all the feedback! Some of it suggests a lot of people aren't reading these notes, but I suppose that's to be expected, haha. • Pinned collections have been restored to the top of the list vs. within View Option filters. • The new "Compressed" display option will reduce album artwork size and remove contextual info to maximize screen real estate. • A lot of distress over the disappearance of the alphabetical section index, amongst other things. This confusion is my fault of course, but I'm getting a lot of email from angry folks who didn't realize they needed to choose "Alphabetical" instead of "Default" as a sort option, or that the Activity tab functionality was entirely gone. This update includes some tooltip callouts to draw more attention to those options. If you are reading this, I apologize for the annoyance in advance. • Unfortunately, issues with the "Play Later" control appear to be an Apple-side bug introduced in iOS 18. I have filed a report, and added a message within the app to that effect. Patience is appreciated, but I understand it's annoying when it works in the stock app. If this update addresses one of your bugbears, why not leave a review mentioning the swell, handsome, responsive developer? There's at least one more round of revisions coming, so stay tuned!

  • 7.0.3

    Continued updates: • Duration sort option has been restored • Favorite toggle on NP pane (with rating) has been restored. • Assorted Bug fixes (incl. alphabetical section index) Still more coming! I really appreciate the positive comments and reviews, and the continued patience of those that are frustrated. I get it, it drove me to learn programming and build an app!! ;)

  • 7.1

    A long overdue update that resolves a few sticky issues: • Play Later functionality has been resolved in one of the later iOS updates (TBH I am not sure which one), so that alert has been removed and functionality restored. Make sure you are on a recent version of iOS 18! • Search has been moved out of the tab bar and back to the top right corner. • Search support for Japanese characters has finally been fixed! • An issue causing slow launches for some users has been corrected.

  • 7.1.1

    - Improved startup/launch behaviour.

  • 7.2

    This update modernizes the state restoration process, and should resolve freezing on launch.

  • 7.2.1

    • Fixed issue with reversed playlist sort types not persisting. • Some general code-hygiene.

  • 7.2.2 · 27 Oct 2025

    • Favorite star markers in song views now update more responsively when changing Favorite status.

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Last verified
31 Jul 2026
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