Fermata 𝄐

Rediscovering the joy of listening.

There was a time when listening was an act — deliberate, personal, joyful. You dropped a needle on vinyl and sat with an album. You pressed play on a Walkman and the world became a soundtrack. You scrolled the click wheel on an iPod and disappeared into your collection. You tuned into a voice on the radio and felt someone speaking just to you. You pulled a book from the shelf and picked up right where you left off.

Then media became a utility. Infinite catalogs, algorithmic playlists, auto-playing queues. The content is still there, but the listening got lost.

Fermata is a media player for people who want it back.

What it does

Music. Connect your Jellyfin server and browse your entire library — albums, artists, tracks — with artwork front and center. Build mix tapes (playlists), favourite tracks, and play albums front to back with gapless transitions. The Now Playing screen wraps your album art in a vinyl disc that spins while you listen, bathed in colors pulled from the cover.

Podcasts. Connect Audiobookshelf and browse your shows. Track which episodes you've played, pick up where you left off, and sync progress back to your server automatically.

Audiobooks. Same Audiobookshelf connection. Navigate by chapter, resume exactly where you stopped, and watch your progress sync across devices.

One app, all your listening. Everything lives in a single, calm interface. No context switching between apps.

How it works

Fermata connects to media servers you already run. It syncs your libraries to the device so browsing is instant and works offline. Your data stays yours — there are no accounts, no cloud services, no tracking.

Supported sources

• Jellyfin — music libraries (albums, artists, tracks, playlists)
• Audiobookshelf — podcasts and audiobooks (with bidirectional progress sync)

Play anywhere

Listen on the device, or route playback to speakers around your home via Home Assistant — like Spotify Connect, but for your own library.

Runs everywhere

iOS, Android, and web. Responsive from phone to tablet to desktop.

Philosophy

• Calm by design — no ads, no algorithms, no interruptions. The app waits for you, not the other way around.
• Album art is the interface — artwork drives the visual experience. UI chrome recedes.
• Your library, your rules — Fermata doesn't curate for you. It presents what you have and gets out of the way.
• Offline-first — everything syncs locally. Browsing and playback work without a connection.
• Open — GPL-3.0. Free to use, inspect, modify, and share.

For developers

Fermata is built with Expo (React Native), NativeWind, expo-sqlite, and expo-audio. The codebase is organized by domain feature with a composable design system documented in Storybook.

See CLAUDE.md for architecture, conventions, and the full dependency graph.

npm install              # Install dependencies
npx expo start           # Dev server
npx expo run:ios         # iOS dev build
npx expo run:android     # Android dev build
npx expo start --web     # Web
npm run storybook        # Design system on port 6006

License

GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE for details.