What is crate?

Crate is a Mac app that lets a person browse and manage the music stored on an Android phone over WiFi, without plugging in a cable every time or relying on a streaming service. It is built for people who carry their own local music files, such as FLAC, on an Android phone or an old Android device repurposed as a dedicated music player, and want an easy way to see and organize what's on it from their Mac. After installing the app and running a short one-time setup wizard, a person can browse their whole collection as albums, artists, or one flat list of songs, complete with cover art, and play any track right from the Mac. New files or whole folders can be dragged onto the app to send them to the phone, and the app keeps the audio and cover art while skipping unrelated files. Tracks or albums can also be deleted with an undo option, or saved back onto the Mac. If a rip has no metadata tags, Crate rebuilds artist, album, title, and track number information from the folder and file names, and looks up missing artist information online. The connection uses Android Debug Bridge, which is bundled inside the app. The first connection is made over a USB cable while the setup wizard walks the user through turning on USB debugging, with specific instructions for Pixel, Samsung, Xiaomi, and OnePlus phones, after which the app switches to a WiFi connection automatically whenever both devices share the same network. On newer versions of macOS, the user has to grant the app a Local Network permission, which the wizard checks for and helps fix if it's missing. Crate only communicates with the connected phone and, for cover art and metadata lookups, with MusicBrainz, Cover Art Archive, and Wikipedia. The prebuilt release only supports Macs with Apple Silicon, though the source code can be built for an Intel Mac. It is free and open source under the MIT License, and is not affiliated with Google, Android, or Poweramp.