While Apple packages a music player right inside each iPhone they offer, most people don’t really like it. The Music app tries to do a whole lot of things because while it does attempt to fulfill a lot of requirements, it does it great. The App Store is full of music players for iPhone that far better Apple’s own offering.

1.Cesium

Cesium is the only third party music player that nearly everyone appears to recommend to everybody asking for a music player app. It automatically hooks into your Music library and shows all of your songs in a simple, yet appealing interface. Songs that are not available on your device, locally, but are added to your iCloud Music Library are available to be downloaded. If, however, you only want to see your local music, you can simply turn off “Show iCloud Items” in the app’s settings.

This app offers some neat swipe gestures. You can swipe left or right to explore a variety of functions for the swiped item. For example, if you swipe left-to-right on an Artist, you will be shown options to play songs by that artist, or to shuffle them. Similarly, swiping right-to-left, exposes options to “Play Next”, or “Add to Queue”.

The settings offer a lot of customization, including the brightness at which Cesium automatically switches between Night and Day modes, as well as an option to set the UI of the app to a custom color, by adjusting the RGB sliders inside “Settings -> Themes”.

Install (Paid, $1.99)

2.Marvis Music Player

The Marvis Music Player is another really music player for the iPhone. Except for the list of songs on your device, everything is displayed in a nice 3 columned view, with album or artist images as the cover. The app also allows swiping between screens, which is definitely a plus, considering that the navigation icons are just way too small to be accurately tapped all the time. The app has a dark theme by default, and a light theme can be unlocked through an in-app purchase.

The app also uses a unique way of displaying views. Instead of segueing to a new view when you tap on, say, an album, the app expands the album contents right below it, which looks very graceful. However, the app is ad-supported, so get ready for some really intrusive looking banner advertisements on the bottom of the page.

Install (Free, with in app purchases)

3.Boom: Music Player

Boom is one music player that brings something completely new to the table. Boom is a music player that offers a variety of really cool predefined equalizers, along with a fully customizable 5.1 surround sound feel to any pair of headphones that you may need to use, including in-ear earphones, over the ear headphones and more. You can choose the type of headphones you’re using in the settings for the app.

The devs claim that “Extensive use can cause addiction”, which is actually kind of true. That level of customizability in the sound quality is addictive, especially if you listen to music for prolonged periods of time. The interface of the app is clean, and while it is not really “intuitive”, the app walks the user through the major UI elements, so you can get started off really quickly. specifically liked the way Boom displays playing music, and also allows to swipe left and right to change between tracks. The app’s sound effects are free to use for 5 days, after which they can be purchased, should the user want to continue using them.

Install (Free, Sound effects at $4.5)

4.ARIIA

ARIIA hits the bullseye with its clean and minimal UI and a really nice dark and light mode. ARIIA also happens to be a gesture controlled music app, designed specifically to help you listen to your music while you’re driving. The gestures come in convenient, because you can’t really look at your phone screen while driving or you shouldn’t, at least. ARIIA comes with really easy to use gestures to control your music, so you can swipe left to go to the next song, right to go to the previous song, swipe up with one finger to increase the volume, and swipe down to decrease the volume.

The only drawback with ARIIA, is the lack of ability to choose a playlist that you need it to play that is, unless you first release the Music app, play a playlist, and then switch over to ARIIA.

Install (Free)

5.jetAudio

jetAudio is a free music player for iPhone that has a lot of cool features not available in other apps. The app automatically hooks into your music library, including songs that are in your iCloud Music Library, and is ready to go the moment you launch it. There’s a dark interface, which is decent enough, and the Now Playing view has some great options on the top of the screen, including things like an equaliser, customisable sound effects, as well as a sleep timer so that you can set your music to stop automatically after a particular amount of time.

Feature offered by the app is the ability to create a server that you can access on your computer to upload files directly to your iPhone. However, this does not use any passwords, and anyone who knows your iPhone’s IP Address can easily upload anything they need onto your device. The app is free, but you’ll have to put up with banner advertisements on the bottom of the screen, which are rather irritating.

Install (Free)

6.Taptunes

Taptunes is another really great music player for iPhone. The interface is great and has a different view for the way albums are displayed on the home screen, including some really cool views for your albums. The only issue with the app is that it only displays the albums. You can search for artists, and songs, but Taptunes provides no way to look for playlists, or even to create one.

It even has some really nice gestures to control playback, including gestures for swiping between songs, playing or pausing music, and controlling the playback volume. It also supports AirPlay.

Install (Paid, $2)

7.Ecoute

Ecoute is another really great music player for your iPhone. It offers a lot of features such as compatibility with AirPlay, ability to stream podcasts, as well as support for Last.fm. The app offers a simple UI,  and a very beautiful Now Playing screen. The app also comes with light and dark themes, and you can change the settings to automatically switch between light and dark mode depending upon the brightness of your screen.

Note: 

Settings for the app cannot be found inside the app, instead, they are accessible through the Settings app, by going to Settings -> Ecoute.

In addition, the app is very smooth in performance, and the animations are really nice. Users can also choose between a grid or a list display for the app.

Install (Paid, $0.99)

8.Listen: The Gesture Based Music Player

Listen is another gesture based music player. Compared to the only other gesture based music player for iPhone in this list, Listen has a decent UI, and falls down on some of the gesture choices. The app does offer some really good features, such as the ability to show or hide songs in the iCloud Music Library, as well as a toggle for “Shake to Shuffle“, and it lets users decide what song they want to listen to, from right within the app. Overall, the app is decent enough and worthy of a shot, however, if you’re used to ARIIA, the gestures in Listen might feel awkward.

Install (Free)

9.Songbucket

Songbucket is another free music player for iPhone. The way it works, is that you can add songs, or albums to buckets, which you can fill out, or completely empty according to your mood kind of like a playlist. The app has a decent UI, and the dark theme used by the developers looks good. There’s a box on the bottom that can pulled up to reveal the currently playing track. But, the basic play/pause, shuffle and repeat controls are right there to be accessed without having to pull the now playing tab up.

Install (Free)

10.Beat Music Player

Beat music player is a really minimal music player for iPhone. It has all the basic features one expects from a music player, all packed into a really great design. Not only that, the app has a lot of gestures that can be used to control playback on the app, as well as adjust the volume, change the views between songs and artists, and personal favourite, pinching on the Now Playing screen to go back to the playlist. It really gives the app a feeling of depth. There are also some really great themes available in the app, along with some other locked themes that can be purchased.

Install (Free)