Plexamp Updates and Caldera Music

Plex Labs
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Hello everyone :waving_hand:t3:

It’s been a while, but I wanted to let you know that Plexamp development is still very much alive. It’s been quiet for a few reasons, one being that as of 2026 I’m no longer with Plex (as most of you know). But Plexamp has been a labor of love since the start, and that hasn’t changed. I’ve been quietly modernizing the app with all the latest dependencies and requirements (couldn’t even ship new versions on Google Play without that, as it turns out). A new version is coming when it’s ready, and it brings a few really nice things along with it.

This year also gave me some quiet space for contemplation, and naturally I started thinking about how I’d build Plexamp if I were starting from scratch today. Then I started tinkering, because contemplation only gets you so far. And before I knew it, out came Caldera Music.

Caldera Music distills a lot of lessons from the last decade into a single idea: a player engine that’s small, fast, portable to a fault, and audiophile to the bone. Rich codec support, best-in-class caching, all the bells and whistles, in a core light enough to run on just about anything with a power button. Out of that core, I’ve built a few things, all designed to live happily alongside the Plexamp you already use:

  • A new headless player for embedded Linux, far lighter than Plexamp (which is part JavaScript, bless its heart). Like, really lightweight. It shows up as a remote Plex player on the network, so you control it straight from Plexamp.
  • A set of menubar apps for macOS, Linux, and Windows: the headless player plus a spectacular Milkdrop-compatible visualizer window. Again, driven by Plexamp, local or remote.
  • A brand new native tvOS app with the same incredible visualizers. Each platform gets its own Milkdrop engine and native rendering pipeline, so on tvOS it’s pure Metal, tuned so the presets render at the highest resolution and frame rate the hardware can muster.

Are these done? Of course not. Software is never done; it’s merely released. But they’re at the point where I’d love to put them in your hands. Many of you have been here since Plex for Music began over a decade ago, and with any luck we’ll be at this together for decades more.

You can read more (and grab the goods) at https://caldera.homes/music/

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So, does the headless run on any Linux box?

Also, can any Plexamp user connect to the headless and play their own account playlists without having to change Plex accounts?

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“Any” might be a bit much, it should run on most modern ones.

Should be the case, but let me know if not.

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Loving the sound of this already. I might not need to invest in raspberry pi after all

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Wow, I’m reading more and this sounds amazing! Multi room sync, yes!

Love, love the privacy too.

So much to unpack and all of it looks quite amazing. Perfect timing for me. I’ve just recently restarted investing time into building our my music library.

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This is great, thanks Elan!

A tiny hiccup installing headless on a pi, which was otherwise very slick: the service file had the username pi hardcoded, so the enable —now command didn’t work for me. If the installer could interpolate the correct username into the file, that’d be awesome.

I appreciate not having to wrangle an old Node.js onto my pi just for Plexamp :heart:

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Fixing.

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Hey Elan, great work on Caldera! Quick heads-up: Windows Defender flags the Windows Amp installer as a threat and blocks the download. Almost certainly a false positive — new binary, no code signing cert, zero SmartScreen reputation yet. Might be worth mentioning on the download page or getting a signing cert to avoid scaring people off. Happy to share the exact Defender detection name if it helps.

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Any thoughts on porting Caldera to devices such as WiiM? There’s an enthusiastic group of users that are bursting at the seams for a better Plex music integration. Caldera feels like the right step. JasonwithWiiM and RyanwithWiiM on the WiiM board can link to WiiM dev teams.

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Wow.

Gearing up for some dowloads, installs, and tests.

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@elan first thing i tried was installing on one of my headless pi’s which runs headless plexamp now.

Caldera doesn’t seem to see any audio devices on my dietpi install.

Waiting for authorization (expires in 15 minutes)...
  Waiting... 19 seconds
Authenticated as: xxx

✓ Signed in to Plex.
No audio output devices found.
Setup aborted. Token saved — re-run --login to finish.
dietpi@music-office:~/caldera-music$ ./caldera-music --list-devices
Audio output devices:

dietpi@music-office:~/caldera-music$

What should I try?

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@elan Striking out left and right.

On my imac pro (intel, macos v. 15.7.7):

SCR-20260611-gnlv
SCR-20260611-gnlv490×426 23 KB

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@elan - TvOS Application is top notch Thank You. Also able to control via Plexamp perfectly. Could you add song info and feed info to the idle now playing screen. When it fades to this screen all we get is album art and controls currently. Great Work!

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Hi,

Can’t find how to turn OFF the visualiser on Apple tvOS. Is it possible?

Gary.

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Same on my macbook pro (intel, macos v. 15.7.7)

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There is a button on the now playing screen that looks like an eye.

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You are working with Plex on that? Is that what we are to understand?

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Same on my MacPro5,1 (3,33 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon, macOS 15.7.7)