Set up Navidrome on a Mac

Turn your Mac into a private music server. Your files stay on your machine. You can listen from any device on your home Wi-Fi.

≈ 15 minutes Easy macOS 12 or newer
What is Navidrome? What's this?

Navidrome is a small, free program that reads a folder of music on your computer and serves it to other devices — your phone, your laptop, a music player like Moosic. Think of it like a tiny radio station that only plays your own collection, only on your own network.

  1. Pick a folder for your music

    Decide where your music files live. Most people use ~/Music (the built-in Music folder in your home directory). If your music is on an external drive, that works too.

    What does ~/Music mean?

    The squiggle (~) is a shortcut for your home folder — the one with your name on it in Finder. ~/Music just means "the Music folder inside my home folder." On most Macs, you can find it in Finder under Go → Home.

  2. Install Homebrew (if you don't have it)

    Homebrew is a free tool that installs other tools for you. Open the Terminal app (search with Spotlight, ⌘ + space, type "Terminal"), paste this line, press Return:

    /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

    May ask for your Mac password. Type it (no characters appear — normal). Takes a few minutes. Skip if Homebrew already installed.

    What is Homebrew?

    Homebrew is a free package manager for macOS — basically an "app store for command-line tools." You type brew install something and it downloads, installs, and wires up that tool plus everything it depends on. macOS doesn't ship a built-in equivalent, so Homebrew is the standard way developers install tools like Navidrome, ffmpeg, git, and hundreds of others.

    It lives entirely under /opt/homebrew (Apple Silicon) or /usr/local (Intel) — won't mess with your system files. Used by millions of developers. Open source, actively maintained, brew.sh.

  3. Install Navidrome

    In the same Terminal:

    brew install navidrome

    Pulls in ffmpeg (audio transcoding) and taglib (tag reading) automatically. Takes a couple minutes.

    What's ffmpeg for?

    Navidrome streams to phones, laptops, browsers — each wants a different audio format. ffmpeg does the conversion on demand. Homebrew installs it as a dependency, so you don't have to do anything.

  4. Tell Navidrome where your music is

    Create a small settings file. Paste this whole block into Terminal and press Return:

    mkdir -p ~/.config/navidrome
cat > ~/.config/navidrome/navidrome.toml <<EOF
MusicFolder = "$HOME/Music"
DataFolder  = "$HOME/.local/share/navidrome"
Port        = 4533
EOF
mkdir -p ~/.local/share/navidrome
    What's in that file?
    • MusicFolder — where your songs live.
    • DataFolder — where Navidrome keeps its database (song index, listening history).
    • Port — channel number Navidrome listens on. 4533 is default.

    If music is elsewhere, edit the first line, e.g. MusicFolder = "/Volumes/MyDrive/Music"

  5. Start Navidrome on every boot

    One command — runs Navidrome as a background service, auto-starts on login:

    brew services start navidrome

    To stop later: brew services stop navidrome. To check: brew services list.

    Just want to run it once?

    If you'd rather start it manually each time:

    navidrome --configfile ~/.config/navidrome/navidrome.toml

    Leave Terminal open while it runs. Quitting Terminal stops Navidrome.

  6. Open it in your browser

    Open Safari or Chrome and go to:

    http://localhost:4533

    Create your admin account (any username, password you'll remember). First scan takes a while on big libraries — let it run.

    What does localhost mean?

    "This same computer." Browser talks to a program on this Mac, on channel 4533. Other devices on your Wi-Fi can reach it too — see next step.

  7. (Optional) Reach it from your phone or laptop

    Find your Mac's IP. In Terminal:

    ipconfig getifaddr en0

    You'll see something like 192.168.1.42. On your phone (same Wi-Fi), open http://192.168.1.42:4533. Music, anywhere in the house.

Next → Connect Moosic to your new server
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