It’s 2026, and the iPhone is 19 years old and is one of the 3 most successful computing platforms in history.

Right now ~1.5 billion people carry iPhones.

And yet it still has no built-in, standalone way to play music files!

If you buy music files from Bandcamp and download them right on your phone, you have no good way to play them.

If a friend shares a bootleg with you via AirDrop, you have no good way to play it.

That’s because the iPhone’s default Music app can’t play or import files or folders right on the phone. For historical reasons, you’d need to use a traditional computer to “sync” those files into the Music app.

You have a supercomputer in your pocket but it’s hampered by obsolete strategy taxes.

It’s well past time to fix this.

• The long-standing technical barriers to such an app are gone
  • For its first decade iPhone had no way to manage files, but it got a Files app in 2017
• It’s easier than ever to get music files onto your phone
  • AirDrop, Messages, email, iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, Safari downloads, etc — it all just works
  • Music purchased from Apple is no longer locked with so-called DRM
• Many people born between ~1940 and ~1990 have fond memories of having their own physical media, and their own MP3 files, and miss all that
  • They remember what it felt like to curate and cherish their own music collection
  • Many still have their music files sitting around on hard drives on shelves, and could access them without too much trouble
• There’s a growing backlash against streaming services
  • Sales of physical media (CDs, etc) are growing again
  • This is an early trend but it has a broad and diverse basis

The app will be available for sale some time in 2026.

If you’d like to be notified when it goes on sale but you don’t want to join the beta test, send me an email and I’ll let you know.

I have not yet set pricing; it’s TBD.

I do know this much: it will not be free.

Tolerable Software is a new small business. For now it’s just me: Avi Flax.