SAF Media Scanner vs Vanilla Music
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
SAF Media Scanner
Scans SAF (Storage Access Framework) paths for audio files and builds a database to be used by Unpopular Music Player or Opus 1 Music Player. Contrary to the Android service it knows about composers, works, movements, conductors etc. Application Field: * The SAF scanner can access USB memory devices, like USB sticks via OTG adapter, in Android 6, 7 and 8. Note that Android 9 and 10 natively allow (read) file access to USB memory, just like to SD cards. * The SAF scanner can extract album art on SD cards and USB memory devices, this is currently not possible with the classical scanner, because without SAF it is limited to read-only access. * The SAF scanner can access SMB or SFTP servers, if the respective document provider is installed. * The SAF scanner even deals with non-seekable files by reading them completely into memory before further processing. Features: * Can be run manually whenever audio files have been added, removed or changed. * Auto scan (incremental) or complete scan (rebuild) selectable. * Various audio file types (mp3, mp4, flac, ogg, ...). * Multi CD albums: sub-subdirectories "CD1", "CD2", ..., with common folder image. * Common and non-common text tags. * Composer and grouping (work, movements). * Proprietary Apple iTunes tags for classical music. * Extracting of embedded images if none already exists. * Downscaling of both extracted and existing album images. * Original images can be kept as backup, if desired. * Maximum image size is configurable. * Creates a standard SQLite database in /ClassicalMusicDb that can be accessed from PC or other apps.
Vanilla Music
Music player with a simple interface similar to the stock music player. Supports browsing by folder, queueing, shake-to-skip and more. Supports the same audio formats as the stock music player since the system media APIs are used. This is a fork of https://f-droid.org/packages/org.kreed.vanilla which is no longer being developed by its author. We keep that in the repo as it supports Android versions below 4.0.3.
| Feature | SAF Media Scanner | Vanilla Music |
|---|---|---|
| License | GPL-3.0-only | GPL-3.0-only |
| Install sources | F-Droid | F-DroidGitHub |
| Categories | MusicMedia PlayerVideo | MusicMedia PlayerVideo |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |