I turned my old Android phone into an iPod Classic, and it streams from my Navidrome server

Published Aug 3, 2026, 8:00 AM EDT Dhruv Bhutani has been writing about consumer technology since 2008, offering deep insights into the personal technology landscape through features and opinion pieces. He writes for XDA-Developers, where he focuses on topics like productivity, networking, self-hosting, and more. Over the years, his work has also appeared in leading publications such as Android Police, Android Authority, CNET, PCMag, and more. Outside of his professional work, Dhruv is an avid fan of horror media spanning films and literature, enjoys fitness activities, collects vinyl records, and plays the guitar. Before there was Navidrome or Plex Amp, most of my music listening happened on an iPod Classic. A vestige of my childhood, I have a lot of fond memories associated with it. But despite its recent comeback, iPods aren't exactly practical in 2026. Today, I keep my entire music library on a Navidrome server running on my NAS. But much as I enjoy the experience of using Navidrome, truth be told, I haven't really enjoyed any of the mobile apps, and I've tried them all. So, recently, when I had a hankering for nostalgia and was considering digging out my old iPod, I stumbled across a music player app for my Android phone. Not only does it replicate the iPod experience right down to the inbuilt games, but it also integrates with both Navidrome and a local music library on my phone. Talk about killing two birds with one stone. Here's why it's become my go-to app for music listening on my phone. Much more than just a nostalgic interface Streaming my self-hosted library with an iPod-style interface NostalgicPod, as the name suggests, leans entirely into the nostalgia of using an iPod. It's built around the same philosophy that made using an iPod enjoyable, with your music library being front and center. There are no recommendations, autoplay queues, or recommendation feeds. The app can only connect to your music library, be it on your phone or on your server. Getting started barely takes seconds. Just install the app like any Android app from the Play Store, give it the relevant permissions and you're good to go. The app supports Navidrome through the Subsonic API, so you can just point it to your server, sign in, and let it sync. Within seconds, your entire Navidrome library shows up within the iPod-style interface, complete with album art, playlists, and starred tracks. Since everything syncs back to your Navidrome instance, all changes get reflected on your server as well. It's pretty cool to see the entirety of my multi-terabyte library showing up within a classic interface that still can't be beat, something even a modded iPod can't pull off. So, you might be wondering if this is anything more than a novelty. Well, depending on how you listen to music, it is. For someone like me who prefers album and artist-driven music listening, it forces me into an interface that I personally prefer. The click wheel encourages you to scroll through your artist collection, and along the way you discover artists that you haven't listened to in a while. It's starkly different from something like Spotify that emphasizes playlists and algorithmic discovery. Elsewhere, like I mentioned, the app works equally well if you don't run a self-hosted server. It can easily index music stored locally on your phone, making it a great choice for a compact local library. NostalgicPod can even pull down album artwork for you as long as you've got the correct ID3 tags in your files. On a recent trip, this was my go-to music-listening method. That flexibility is what makes the app stand out. While there are other apps that replicate the iPod interface, few give you an option to tap into your music server as well. A retro interface with modern conveniences All the features the original iPod never had The iPod-styled interface might be the headline feature, but NostalgicPod has enough modern conveniences under the hood to stop it from feeling like a gimmick. You'll find support for gapless playback, which is great if you listen to a lot of live albums and DJ sets like me. Of course, the format support goes far beyond anything that the iPod supported and includes FLAC. The app also supports synchronized lyrics, giving you a Spotify-style lyric experience right within the retro interface. I don't use it much, but if you prefer to sing along with your choice of music, the feature is available. Other features that do get a lot of use from me include the equalizer. I tend to switch between noise-cancelling headphones, wired earphones and true wireless earbuds depending on where I am, and the equalizer helps me dial in the sound exactly as I like. Circling back to the interface, I really like the attention to detail here. The developer has done an incredible job implementing Cover Flow. If you used an old-school iPod, you'd remember that it never really worked all that well on the dinky 80MHz processor of the iPod Classic. Not so here. Album covers fly and look stunning on a modern OLED display, making it a viable and often preferred way to listen to music. Other niceties include the fact that the developer has replicated everything down to animations, sound effects, vibration patterns, and even the simplistic games built into the iPod. If you don't want to spend hundreds on a vintage iPod Classic, NostalgicPod gives you the exact same experience minus the tactility. Come for the nostalgia, stay for the features I installed NostalgicPod on a lark because I was craving some iPod nostalgia. Well, the app delivers that in spades, but I didn't realize I'd also get a surprisingly good music player app that complements my self-hosted music setup. The app is distinctive, packs all the essential features you'd want in a modern music player app for Android, and works with both offline and self-hosted streaming libraries. As the name suggests, nostalgia is what pulls you in, but it's that seamless integration that makes it one of the few Android music apps that I've stuck with. NostalgicPod NostalgicPod is an Android music player app that replicates the iPod Classic's interface and supports both local music libraries as well as self-hosted servers like Navidrome.