> E.g. if you want to buy some FLAC music files from somewhere else, it won't "just work" anymore.

The thing is nobody* does that.

There are a few. That’s why I added the asterisk. But realistically very few people actually do it. Especially compared to the number of iPhones they sell every year.

If you were using MP3 files, you wouldn’t have an issue. Or AAC. There might even be others. Apple really likes to make things easy, but they tend to only do it for the common case. That’s what gets the most use, that’s what makes the most people happy, that’s what they focus on.

If you’re the kind of person who wants to do things that are far out of the mainstream you’re never going to be happy with an iPhone. You can use other apps as other people pointed out. But I wouldn’t expect this to ever work in Apple’s music player. It’s the same reason you can’t have root, re-theme your phone heavily, replace the dialer, or a lot of other heavy customizations. That’s not what they focus on.

It’s just their ethos.

> The thing is nobody* does that.

Because it is difficult to do.

> If you’re the kind of person who wants to do things that are far out of the mainstream you’re never going to be happy with an iPhone.

FLACs are not the act of an extremist.

> Because it is difficult to do.

No, at this point I think the vast majority of people just use streaming services.

The second biggest group, but probably much smaller, it’s people like me who both have a library and a streaming service.

After that, smaller again, I would assume it’s people who have just a library. The majority of these are probably files bought from Apple and Microsoft and Amazon. Those are all formats that the iPhone can play.

In last place is people who use more unique formats like FLAC. I understand why you would want it over the other formats. But I think it’s by far the least common case.

> The thing is nobody* does that.

I find that hard to believe when so many music stores and labels (especially classical music and jazz) are selling FLAC downloads. It all works fine on Android with great polished and featureful apps like "USB Audio Player Pro".

There are third-party apps available that handle FLAC just fine. I use a paid app called Neutron Music Player mainly because it has an SMB client to connect to a NAS with my FLAC collection, but you can also use its built-in server to transfer FLAC to internal storage. I think you can even sync the SMB source to local storage as well but I haven't explored that, since I play them over the network just fine.

Yep Foobar 2000 for iOS is free and plays Flac (and many others), and has a convenient built in FTP server that you can temporarily enable to tranfer them over the network into its music library.

I have never been able to make an Apple laptop recognize my phone as a USB storage device to copy photos from it.

GOOG phones used to cost less than half of APPL ones. And for a while to have physically wider screens which made them better book readers. Unfortunately the price difference seems to be nearly negligible now.

You need Android File Transfer because Apple doesn't support MTP.

Huh? In what world can’t I use FLAC files on my iPhone? VLC does it great, I use them almost literally every day…

How do you even get the files on the iPhone? I see long blog posts discussing the steps needed for this. Not really "just works" is it?

VLC is currently #18 in the app store in the media player category. It's not just some linux app. As to how to get flac files on the iPhone,

1) you can connect it a computer open Finder go to apps section drag the file there

2) put the file in the iCloud and access it from any device with the files app on

3) in Safari if a link is a media file you can share it with VLC

and that's just 3 off the top of my head, I think there's a couple more. It's really not that hard, gone are the days where apps needed to run local webservers to slurp content. But actually VLC can actually probably get media that way too.

1. Requires a Mac.

2. Requires a proprietary apple service. I'm starting to notice a trend with your suggestions.

3. Are you really suggesting people manually download their files one by one? Rofl.

Isn’t the poster replying on the options for downloading FLAC to a DAP on IOS?

What is the options for Android?

I don’t know of any native android solution that allows for sync to sync desktop or online platform for specifically FLAC files without a backend user/server/client service that is native.

What’s your alternative?

Android presents a filesystem when plugged in to a computer, so almost any file sync tool should work.

2: what do you expect here? Apple has their own authentication and authorization - should they just leave an ssh port open on every phone or what?

I type in the URL shown in the VLC app on my computer and drag and drop files to it, when I am connected to same network of course.

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html

> A media library, with WiFi Uploads & Downloads, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive & Box.com integration and optional passcode lock.

>Web Interface for easy uploads and downloads to/from device.

But how do you "sync" music libraries with the phone storage? Dragging and dropping files is still not a great experience and doesn't scale.

I use Plex/Plexamp… syncs my FLAC albums and playlists. I can use it on any platform if I choose to do so.

You can download them from Safari and select 'VLC', for one...otherwise you can easily use Finder on Mac to just drag it over to the VLC documents folder on your iPhone - not sure about Windows.

Not sure what you're talking about. I have zero issues using my FLAC files from elsewhere on my iPhone.

You must have installed some niche piece of software that the vast majority of iPhone users will never use or hear about. Hopefully the indie dev keeps updating it and Apple never pulls it from the store!

In what world VLC is “some niche piece of software that the vast majority of iPhone users will never use or hear about”? You REALLY never heard of VLC?

VLC and free open source software certainly won't offer "just works". If you are happy to go down this path, then Android will offer more free open source apps for you.

It seems more likely that the majority of iOS users (and likely Android users too) just don't care.

I would be shocked if > 20% of Android users manage their own music library rather than using one of the standard music streaming services.

You've picked on iOS (incorrectly) for not being able to playback FLAC, then shifted argument. The point was proven that you don't need to buy into Apples ecosystem for this.

How do you play it? How do you import them into your library? If it's not mp3, aac, or m4a, iTunes won't index it, it won't end up in your library, and any of the standard music apps will not play it.

Speaking from experience because this is a continuing pain point for my music collection that includes oddball formats like flac, ogg, and others--none of which I can even get on my phone without using a cloud service.

I use VLC, which works great.

I don't use iTunes, ever, anywhere; and I feel sorry for anyone who does.

VLC, fine. How do you transfer .ogg or similar files to your iphone?

You can use iTunes, the VLC web interfacr, iCloud, Dropbox, NextCloud and probably a myriad of other ways I haven't considered.

It's not 2008 anymore.

I use Foobar2000 on iOS where you can toggle its embedded FTP server to transfer files, either to its own music library or one shared with iTunes. It's very easy.

Nevermind, looks like I had some conversion going on to get those files on my iPhone. It's irrelevant anyways, since AAC is audibly transparent to the human ear.

AAC may not be audibly transparent after its transcoded for Bluetooth. If you are using Apple headphones then this of course shouldn't happen, but for Sony's LDAC, better to start with FLAC.

Try using a custom ringtone that you do not purchase through the Apple store.

This used to bother me, but I haven’t used a ringtone at all for 10 years so I really don’t care anymore.

Although before that, I made my own ringtone using GarageBand off a ripped mp3 and didn’t buy anything through the apple store.

LOL yeah my ringtone for all calls is silence.

OK. https://www.wikihow.com/Set-a-Song-As-Your-Ringtone-on-iPhon...

I forget how I got it setup but I have a custom ringtone for one contact that I certainly didn’t buy.

Perhaps not the best example because my brand new pixel 6 has a horrible DAC and can't pass through properly to a USB DAC which iPhones have no issue with. (I'll believe a fix is coming then I see it.)

https://www.reviewgeek.com/105739/googles-pixel-6-is-disappo...

Tell him/her to use USB Audio Player Pro, it has its own USB driver that supports bit perfect playback and integrates with streaming services also.

What? I just downloaded a flac file and it played fine on my iphone? I've never even tried it before. Am I doing something wrong?

The last time I had an iPhone (for work) it required an adapter to be able to connect to a MacBook Pro.

Any phone will need a cable to connect to a computer, unless it’s over Wi-Fi.