Frontend developer Tanner Villarete’s clever creation resembles the 6th generation iPod Classic from 2007 (incidentally, the same one I had and loved), and works just like the real thing — except, it works with your Spotify and Apple Music libraries! It might seem like little more than a React project mimicking hardware from over a decade ago, but there’s something about seeing the UI react to your finger spinning the touch wheel and tapping the center button, and flipping through albums in Cover Flow (shown above) that brings fond memories flooding back. Oh, and there’s even a Breakout-style game you can play. Villarete explained to me that this project was a tribute to a gadget close to his heart: If you’re tickled by the idea of navigating your streaming music library, you’ll be happy to know Villarete has more ideas in the works for the open-source project, as well as features that others are building — device themes, haptic feedback for the scroll wheel, and dynamic battery percentage (all in progress, slated to be released soon). Plus, he’s hoping to build the iPod Classic out into a standalone desktop app that you can run without opening a browser: I set up the repo two years ago, but nearly all of the development of the iPod interface was done in just under two weeks while I was on vacation over the 2019 holidays. Back then it connected to a server I personally hosted to play music. More recently, however, I started digging into Apple’s MusicKit API and Spotify’s Web Playback SDK and thought it would be really neat if I could get the iPod I created to play anyone’s music libraries through either of the two services. That work started a few months ago and was finalized last week. Until then, enjoy your streaming-capable iPod by visiting this page on your mobile device.
