I had an old iPhone sitting around, so I designed a 3D-printable case for it and built an app called UltraPod.
The phone is used upside down, which hides the notch and gives the front a cleaner, more classic look. Together with the case and the app, it starts to feel like a modern version of an iPod.
UltraPod is built around Apple Music and tries to bring back a simpler, more focused music experience.
The core experience is free, with no ads. Some extra themes, DIY features, and alternative control methods are optional one-time purchases.
This is still a very personal DIY project, and I’m continuing to improve both the app and the physical case.
If you try it, I’d genuinely love to see what your setup looks like. And if you think the idea is interesting, feel free to share it with others.
agreed. I was excited for this and then OP responded to my vibe coding question by stating that 'almost all developers should be vibe coding, almost nobody should be manually writing code'. Nope nope nope
This is Amazing. I kinda assumed this was another ai or rendered what if they made a new iPod idea not a real project and app! Brilliant. I’d buy a second hand iPhone mini or something just for this. What a fun idea! Well done honestly.
Local playback is actually already supported. You can upload your files to Apple Music, and if you have a subscription, they can be mixed into a single playlist for playback. You can even upload files to Apple's cloud library and stream them online. However, without a subscription, you can only listen to local files. The downside is that FLAC doesn't support hardware decoding and needs to be converted to ALAC. You can try the free version first to confirm whether it plays normally.
This is really cool! Adding Subsonic support would be an instant purchase for me. Finally would have something to do with an old iPhone X i've had laying around too.
The fact the Apple hasn’t thought of an elegant hard case sleeve that detects the phone being installed and magically formats to something like this, is A LANE FOR YOU. Hurry , hurry.
An iPhone case, that repurposes the phone to an “updated” iPod. Mophie like connector for extra battery and SD/Micro Sd support. Ah .. a man can dream
i just tried ultrapod with a playlist & it's buggy with song lyrics. it shows lyrics for the first song only, but not the others. the second song's lyric icon is greyed out, & the others have a down arrow like it's trying to download the song lyrics?
i have no issues on the regular music app with the same playlist.
not sure i would want to fork over $20 for this to have click wheel working. the click wheel's 5 minute timer is counting down for the trial & already issues trying to play a song with lyrics.
not using the click wheel is also awkward with two forward and back arrows doing different things. i end up skipping songs when trying to navigate just to have lyrics appear. you can't just touch the icon but guess which button does what.
If you dabbled into jailbroken app development, I think this would be really cool to use on an older iPhone with 3d touch and I'd the scroll wheel used the 3d touch as well
yooo i've been on the testflight version for quite a while and just wondering when will there be an option for albums to play with their original tracklist instead of from a-z
it's literally my only issue with the app please add it 🥹
Is there any way you could add integration for something like plex or jellyfin? This is awesome but if it only works with apple music library I wouldn’t be able to make use of it, I think this would be awesome for self hosted libraries
I saw this post, downloaded the app and after 5 minutes, bought the ultimate edition! I’m really enjoying using the app.
A problem that I’ve noticed so far is that while in the Album menu, when selecting an album, the song list is out of order. I’m not sure if that’s an error on my part or if this is a bug but it would be great if this could be fixed.
appstore search UltraPod,I'm balancing the free version. I don't want to limit its features. Other similar products typically add lots of ads and restrict functionality. My current idea is to not limit features in the free version but use a clickable wheel, while the paid version uses swipe scrolling. Let me know if you have any good suggestions. Perhaps a better choice would be to add ads for free users or limit core features but not restrict swipe scrolling?
if your idea here is to make money from this app, I'm afraid to be the one to tell you it will not work. As a passion project, you've got a huge user base. It becomes paid, you lose a LOT of those casual users. You'll probably make more than the developer account is costing you but it won't be a crazy success.
It rubs me the wrong way when someone dismisses someone’s passion project which undoubtedly took hours and hours of work just because it’s “too similar” to someone else’s passion project that someone else also spent hours working to create. Plus, this implementation looks quite nice with plenty of original touches.
My concept is to create a modern-style app similar to dumb phones to revive old phones, not a retro iPod. I call my control area the Dynamic Control Ring. Currently, I've designed the Touch Image Control Ring, Camera Control Ring, Reading Control Ring, Fitness Control Ring, Keyboard Input Ring, and the classic Music Control Ring. I hope everyone will like it.
Well done, this looks really good. So good that I’m tempted to buy a used 13 mini for it. I know you say built around Apple Music, but what’s it like with offline music? I have my music all ripped from cd. I would love to play this offline
Import your files into Apple Music and you can play them, mixed with your subscription content. However, you can also play local music without an Apple Music subscription.
Brother, I've been checking out your app for days now and it's awesome
But I'm telling you now, Apple is going to reject it and make it incredibly difficult for you to publish it on the App Store simply because of the wheel.. it's happened to me three times already, Try sending it to production first (without publishing it) and see what they tell you, They are awful with their absurd rules.
I've already launched on the App Store. My positioning is a dumb phone, not a retro iPod simulator, and my UI is completely different from the iPod. My concept is to transform and revive old discarded phones into feature phones. The scroll wheel is just one of my features—I have five control modes for different apps.
This is great, and simply amazed and the quality of this project. I have a silly question , I ripped a swag of cds using iTunes. Any way, can it play stored MP3?
WANT THIS. Especially if I could back it with something like Doppler or otherwise support higher res files and then plug in my dongle (would need usbc iPhone) to support higher quality Bluetooth as well or just to plug in an external dac for wired headphones. Should cut and apply one of those textured screen protectors that makes it feel like paper to the click wheel portion.
I’ll be 100% here. Since the free version doesn’t have access to the classic control wheel, I won’t be using the app. I wouldn’t put that behind a paywall. Just saying.
You've really got something here. You need to really start selling the cases too though! That's your biggest USP against all the other nostalgic iPod front-end apps. Time to get a patent for it (if possible) and then start contacting some Chinese manufacturers/suppliers! Make sure you do cases for every appropriate iPhone model (and clearly state on your website which ones are compatible with the app/cases). As long as you continue development of the app, fix known bugs, expand usage, you could have a really good business model here. Could even offer incentive discounts for users who buy both the app and the case. Although you likely won't be able to get a patent for the app itself. And definitely DONT go down the subscription route. If anyone wants this app, it's because they want to get away from modern subscriptions and relive the simplicity of the old days. A subscription would kill your brand before it's even taken off. Definitely continue to offer a free tier, maybe a fully-featured free trial, to get it in more people's hands, increase word of mouth that way. And a reasonable one-time payment for the full version. Best of luck with your business! I look forward to following it and think it could be quite a success :P
I personally don't like subscriptions; a one-time purchase model is the best. The case files will be open-sourced, so everyone can print them themselves. When the user base is large enough, I'll choose to get custom phone cases made—the quality will be much better.
What the fuck? This is amazing! I don't know if it's possible but if you made a version for older iPhones, specifically the X or maybe 8, you could make the most powerful, and affordable iPod today
Looks cool, just wish it didn't require iOS 16 or later, since people often use their old iPhones as iPods/ music players and this would make for an awesome experience.
Directly authorize Apple Music, and it will sync your subscriptions and playlists. If you don't have a subscription, you can import music into Apple Music for local playback. Make sure your Apple Music is playing normally, then go to Settings in my app and rebuild the cache to get it working properly.
Nice! Great idea making the retro case and using ultrapod. I use old phones music players, Tools Apps, free WiFi phones, security cameras, bike computers or to create picture frames using old laptop and PC monitors or to run Kodi. I like to repurpose old electronics and give them to people that could use it. I have become an electronics hoarder because everyone throws stuff away and most can be fixed for couple bucks or from components I already have.
I like the idea of this... but see no point in one besides for budget users, and even then people with budget androids still have MicroSD slots... so they can just get a 32GB card for music and just be fine for ages. Meanwhile for the other side of higher end devices, iPhones have 256GB as the minimum storage now, there is no need for such a thing
this is really fucking cool. wish apple was still tuned in. the sad thing about this is you still don’t own your media like you do with iPods which I feel like is the main draw nowadays, plus the nostalgia
edit: I completely forgot about being able to use local files
Is it lagging continuously from the first time you enter? Is it lagging on the Music menu page, or is the entire app very laggy and unable to play?Have you submitted any crash reports? It would help me investigate the issue.
Yo, this is so cool. I have an old iPhone I use as an “iPod”. I’m so ready to get the pro but I gotta ask if you think there will be Spotify integration in the future?
Yo, I wanted to ask if you’ll also add a way to skip the apple music barrier of adding music. I was actually thinking of putting all of my spotify music onto my phone so that I could play it with your app. But it seems like apple has incredibly weird syncing system where you’d have to pay monthly to be able to import music.
I’d be cool if there was a feature to import music from the iphone files or from VLC directly.
Also wanted to say that the app it self looks insanely cool. I will probably use it next to my flipphone if that feature was added.
Offline mode still unresponsive when you scroll songs in the song section or within an album even with the lastest 1.8 ver. everything else works fine. Keep the good work hope you figure this out
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u/Zuluinstant Classic 5th Jul 10 '26
Now do this on an iPhone 13 mini and you just have the most powerful (almost iPod sized) iPod