~/winamp 🎵 mp3 📊 visualizer ☕ Support me apps ← about me

winamp online — the classic player, rebuilt and actually working_

Drop your own music in and press play. Real 10-band equalizer with 18 presets · spectrum analyser & oscilloscope · 6 fullscreen visualisers · crossfade · ID3 tags with album art · full playlist editor with .m3u export · 8 skins · draggable windows, shade mode, double size & fullscreen player. No account, no install, nothing uploaded — your files never leave your computer.

Library

Drag music anywhere onto this page. Folders work too. Nothing is uploaded — files are read straight from your disk.

Playback

off
1.00×
—

Look

Visualiser

100
The little display in the main window cycles analyser → scope → off when you click it, exactly like the original.
Advanced — connect Spotify (optional, Premium only)

Everything above works without this. Spotify Connect is here for people who want the Winamp shell driving their Premium account. Once connected, load your Liked Songs, top tracks, a playlist or a search into the Winamp playlist — they appear marked ♫ and play with the normal transport, seek bar and volume. The equalizer, analyser, crossfade and visualisers cannot work with Spotify — browsers deliberately give a page no access to the decoded stream, so those stay local-file only.

  1. Create a free app at developer.spotify.com/dashboard.
  2. Add https://jasperbernaers.com/winamp/ as a Redirect URI and tick Web Playback SDK.
  3. Paste the Client ID below and connect. It is stored only in your browser and is designed to be public.
not connected

Guide — getting the most out of it

Thirty seconds to music. The rest is the fun part.
1Feed it music

Drag files or a folder anywhere onto this page, or press ADD DIR to pull in a whole library at once — subfolders included. Titles, artists and cover art come out of the files' own ID3 tags.

2Press play

Click any playlist row and it plays. Z X C V B are the original Winamp transport keys and they all still work.

3Switch the EQ on

In the equalizer window press ON, then drag the sliders or pick one of the eighteen classic presets. These are real filters, not decoration — you will hear every move.

4Make it look right

Pick a skin, drag the windows into an arrangement you like, double-click a title bar to roll a window up, and turn on double size with Ctrl+D. It is all remembered.

5Go fullscreen

Two ways to fill the screen: Shift+F blows the player up to fill the display, and F opens the visualiser with six reactive presets — good on a second monitor, at a party, or behind a stream.

The three windows

MAIN The player

The classic 275×116 layout. Transport across the bottom, volume and balance top right, seek bar in the middle, and the black display showing time, title, bitrate and sample rate in a proper pixel font.

Click the time
Switch between elapsed and remaining
Click the analyser
Cycle spectrum → oscilloscope → off
Wheel over volume
Nudge the level
Double-click balance
Snap back to centre
EQ / PL buttons
Show or hide the other windows
Double-click title bar
Shade mode — rolls up to a strip
⛶ in the title bar
Fullscreen player
The llama
Try it
EQUALIZER Ten bands that actually do something

Peaking filters at 60, 170, 310, 600, 1k, 3k, 6k, 12k, 14k and 16kHz with a separate preamp, exactly the layout of the original — but wired to real Web Audio biquads. The curve above the sliders shows the response you have built.

ON
Engages the filters (bypassed when off)
AUTO
Picks a preset from the track's genre tag
Preamp
Pull it down if boosting bands makes things harsh
Presets
All 18 originals, Flat to Techno
Double-click a slider
Return that band to 0 dB
PLAYLIST A real editor, not a list

Drag rows to reorder, type to jump, and use SORT and LIST for the bulk operations. It handles thousands of tracks because only the visible rows are drawn and tags are read in the background.

Click a row
Plays it straight away
Drag a row
Reorder
Ctrl / Shift-click
Select without playing
SORT
By title, artist, length, filename · reverse · randomize
LIST
Save or load .m3u, crop, clear
Drag the corner
Resize the window
VISUALISERS Six fullscreen presets

All driven by a live FFT with beat detection on the low band, so they move with the music rather than to a timer.

Classic Bars
The Winamp analyser, grown up
Oscilloscope
Raw waveform, glowing
Radial
Spectrum wrapped into a ring
Particles
Field that bursts on the beat
Plasma Warp
Feedback tunnel, Milkdrop-ish
Starfield
Warp speed on kick drums
SHORTCUTS The original key bindings

Muscle memory from 2001 still works. Press ? at any time for the full list.

Z X C V B
Prev · play · pause · stop · next
L / J
Open file · jump to track
R / S
Shuffle · repeat
↑ ↓
Volume
← →
Seek 5 seconds
Alt+E / G
Playlist · equalizer
Ctrl+D
Double size
Shift+F
Fullscreen player
PRIVACY Where your music goes: nowhere

There is no server behind this page. Your browser opens the files from your disk, decodes them locally and plays them. Nothing is copied, scanned, uploaded or logged, and you can disconnect from the internet and keep listening.

Files
Read locally, never transmitted
Tags & art
Parsed in the page from the file bytes
Settings
Local storage on your device only
Folder access
Only if you grant it, revocable any time

Why rebuild a media player from 1997?

Winamp shipped in April 1997 and by 2001 had roughly sixty million users. It was not the prettiest thing on the desktop and it certainly was not the most powerful, but it got three things right that people still miss. It was fast — it opened before your hand left the mouse. It was yours: every window could be dragged, rolled up, resized and reskinned until the player looked like nothing anyone else was running. And it treated music as files you owned, sitting in folders you organised, rather than a catalogue you rent by the month.

That is the whole brief for this page. It is not a screenshot or a nostalgia mock-up — it is a working player. You give it your own audio and it runs it through a real Web Audio pipeline: preamp, ten peaking filters, stereo panner, compressor, analyser, output. The equalizer moves the sound. The analyser is reading the actual signal. The crossfade works because there are genuinely two decks running.

What changed in this version

The previous version of this page could only play Spotify, which meant creating a developer app, pasting a Client ID and holding a Premium subscription before anything happened at all — and even then the equalizer had to be fake, because the Web Playback SDK hands a page no audio to process. That has been turned around. Local playback is now the main path, works the moment you drop a file in, and every DSP feature is real. Spotify still exists for Premium users, tucked into an advanced panel where it cannot break anything else.

What it does

How the sound is actually processed

Each deck is an <audio> element feeding a MediaElementAudioSourceNode. From there the signal passes through a preamp gain, then ten BiquadFilterNodes in series — all peaking type, each centred on one of the classic Winamp frequencies with a Q chosen so neighbouring bands overlap smoothly rather than fighting each other. After the filters come a StereoPannerNode for balance, an optional DynamicsCompressorNode for auto-level, the master gain, and an AnalyserNode that both visualisers read from. Switching the equalizer off does not zero the filters, it reroutes around them entirely, so there is no phase smear when it is bypassed.

A note on file formats

The player uses your browser's own decoders, which is why it is small and fast and why it needs no plugins. In practice that means MP3, M4A/AAC, WAV, OGG Vorbis, Opus, FLAC and WebM all play. FLAC is supported in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari 11 and later. WMA, APE, and the tracker formats Winamp once handled through plugins are not available to any browser, so they are not available here either.

And the llama

Winamp shipped with a demo MP3 by DJ Mike Errico containing the line that became the player's unofficial motto. It turned up in the about box for years and is probably the most quoted piece of software marketing of the decade. There is a llama in the corner of the main window. You know what to do.

FAQ — Winamp Online

36 questions on how it works, what it plays and what happens to your files.
The basics
What is this?
A recreation of Winamp 2.x — the media player that defined the MP3 era — rebuilt as a single web page. Unlike a screenshot or a mock-up it is a working player: you give it your own audio files and it plays them through a real Web Audio pipeline with a functioning equalizer, analyser and crossfade.
Do I need an account or a subscription?
No. Open the page, drop in some music and press play. There is no account, no sign-in, no Premium tier and no install. Spotify support exists but is entirely optional and tucked away in an advanced panel.
Are my music files uploaded anywhere?
No. The browser reads the files straight from your disk and decodes them locally. There is no server behind this page, so there is nothing to upload to. You can disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded and it will keep playing.
Which audio formats can it play?
Whatever your browser supports, which in practice means MP3, M4A and AAC, WAV, OGG Vorbis, Opus, FLAC and WebM. FLAC works in Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari 11 and later. WMA and older proprietary formats are not supported by any browser.
How do I add music?
Three ways. Drag files or a folder anywhere onto the page. Press ADD FILE to pick individual tracks. Or press ADD DIR to load an entire folder including its subfolders in one go — the fastest way to get a real library in.
Sound & effects
Does the equalizer actually do anything?
Yes, and this is the big difference from the previous version of this page. The ten sliders are real peaking biquad filters at 60, 170, 310, 600, 1k, 3k, 6k, 12k, 14k and 16kHz, with a separate preamp gain, exactly like the original. Move a slider and you hear it. Switch the EQ off and the filters are bypassed entirely.
Which equalizer presets are included?
The original eighteen: Flat, Classical, Club, Dance, Full Bass, Full Bass & Treble, Full Treble, Headphones, Large Hall, Live, Party, Pop, Reggae, Rock, Ska, Soft, Soft Rock and Techno. The curve display above the sliders shows the resulting frequency response as you move them.
What is the preamp for?
It raises or lowers the level going into the equalizer. If you boost several bands the signal can clip and sound harsh, so pull the preamp down a few decibels to make room. If your track is quiet, push it up. It is the leftmost slider in the equalizer window.
What do the visualisers do?
The small display in the main window cycles through the classic spectrum analyser with falling peak caps, an oscilloscope and off — click it to switch, exactly as in the original. The fullscreen button opens six larger visualisers: Classic Bars, Oscilloscope, Radial, Particles, Plasma Warp and Starfield, all driven by a live FFT with beat detection on the low band.
What is crossfade and when should I use it?
Crossfade overlaps the end of one track with the start of the next so the music never stops. Set it to zero for albums you want to hear as intended, two to four seconds for background listening, and eight or more for continuous mixes. It works because the player runs two independent decks and fades between them.
What is the balance slider for?
It moves the sound between the left and right speakers, using a stereo panner. Double-click it to snap straight back to centre. It is the small slider to the right of the volume in the main window.
Can I change the playback speed?
Yes, from half speed to double. By default pitch is preserved, so a track sped up stays in the same key — useful for podcasts and for learning a part. Turn pitch preservation off and it behaves like a turntable, with the pitch rising and falling with the speed.
What does the auto-level button do?
It puts a gentle compressor and a small makeup gain across the output, which evens out the difference between a quiet 1998 rip and a loud modern master so a mixed playlist does not jump in volume. It is off by default because it does change the dynamics.
Is there a sleep timer?
Yes, in the options strip. Choose 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes and the player fades out and pauses when the time is up, which is nicer than being woken by the next track.
Playlist & library
Where do the track names and album art come from?
From the files themselves. The player parses ID3v2 tags for title, artist, album, year and track number, and pulls out the embedded cover image if there is one. If a file has no tags it falls back to ID3v1, and failing that it reads the filename, understanding the common Artist - Title pattern.
How do I play a track from the playlist?
Click it. A single click on any row starts that track immediately — no double-click needed, which also makes it work properly on a phone. If you want to select tracks without playing them, for example to delete a batch, hold Ctrl (or Cmd) to pick individual rows and Shift to take a range. Dragging a row still reorders rather than plays.
Can I reorder the playlist?
Yes — drag any entry up or down with the mouse. You can also sort by title, artist, duration or filename, reverse the order, randomize it, remove the selection, or crop to keep only what you have selected. Type in the search box to filter as you go.
Can I save my playlist?
Yes. LIST → Save .m3u writes a standard extended M3U file with the durations and titles, which any desktop player will open. Load .m3u reads one back in and reorders the tracks you already have loaded to match it. The playlist order is also saved automatically in your browser between visits.
Does it remember my music next time?
The playlist, order, settings and window layout are always remembered. Whether the audio itself comes back automatically depends on the browser: in Chrome and Edge, loading a folder with ADD DIR stores a permanent handle to it, so one click restores the whole library on your next visit. Other browsers cannot do this for security reasons, so the entries reappear greyed out until you re-add the files, which relinks them by name and size.
Why are some playlist entries greyed out?
Those are tracks the browser remembers from a previous visit but cannot open again without your permission. Press RESTORE if it appears, or simply re-add the same files or folder — they will snap back into place in the right order rather than being added again at the end.
How many tracks can it handle?
Several thousand comfortably. The playlist is virtualised, so only the visible rows are drawn, and tag reading happens in the background a few files at a time so the interface never freezes while a big folder loads. Very large libraries will take a moment to show durations for everything.
The interface
What are the keyboard shortcuts?
The original Winamp bindings work: Z previous, X play, C pause, V stop, B next, L open file, J jump to track, R shuffle, S repeat, ↑↓ for volume, ←→ to seek. Alt+E toggles the playlist, Alt+G the equalizer, Ctrl+D double size, and Space is a friendly play/pause. Press ? at any time for the full list.
Can I move the windows around like the real Winamp?
Yes. Drag any title bar and the windows snap magnetically to each other and to the edges, just like the original. Double-click a title bar to roll a window up into shade mode. The EQ and PL buttons in the main window show and hide the other two, and your arrangement is saved.
What does double size do?
It doubles the whole player, which was how most people actually ran Winamp once monitors got bigger than 800×600. Press Ctrl+D or use the size control. The player also scales itself automatically to fit your window, and switches to a stacked layout on phones.
Is there a fullscreen mode for the player itself?
Yes — press the ⛶ button in the main window's title bar, the Fullscreen player button under Look, or Shift+F. The page around the player disappears, the windows are centred and scaled up as far as they will go, and a screen wake lock keeps your display awake. Move the mouse to bring back the exit button, or press Esc. It is separate from the fullscreen visualiser, which shows the graphics instead of the player — F opens that one.
Which skins are included?
Eight: Base 2.9 — the grey and green original, Winamp Modern, Amber Monitor, Cyber Green, Vaporwave, Bricks, Midnight and Ivory. They are recreated in CSS rather than loaded from .wsz files, so switching is instant and costs no download.
Can I load real .wsz Winamp skin files?
No. Classic skins are archives of bitmap sprites cut to exact pixel coordinates, and unpacking them in a page would mean shipping a full skin engine plus the sprite maps. The eight built-in skins reproduce the palettes of the best-known ones instead.
Troubleshooting
Why does nothing play when I press play?
Either the playlist is empty, or the browser is still waiting for you to interact with the page — audio cannot start on its own. Click anywhere first, check the volume slider is up and the tab is not muted, and make sure the format is one your browser can decode.
The visualiser is flat but I can hear music.
That normally means the audio is not routed through the analyser — most often because playback is coming from the optional Spotify panel, which the browser does not let any page inspect. For local files, check that the visualiser is not simply switched off; clicking the small display cycles it.
Does it work offline?
Once the page has loaded, yes. Everything runs locally and your music is already on your machine, so you can pull the network and keep listening. Only the web font needs the internet, and the page is perfectly readable without it.
Does it work on a phone?
Yes. The windows stack vertically, the controls become touch-sized and you can add files from your phone's storage. Loading a whole folder is a desktop feature, and iOS limits background audio in browsers, so a phone is best for a quick listen rather than a long session.
Spotify, history & the llama
What happened to the old Spotify-only version?
It needed you to create a Spotify developer app, paste a Client ID and hold a Premium subscription before anything happened at all, and the equalizer could only be decorative because the Web Playback SDK does not expose the audio. Local playback is now the main path and everything works immediately. Spotify is still there for Premium users, in an advanced panel.
Can I still connect Spotify?
Yes, under Advanced. You need Spotify Premium and your own free developer Client ID; the connection uses PKCE so no secret is involved. After connecting, load your Liked Songs, top tracks, one of your playlists or a search into the Winamp playlist — those rows are marked ♫, and clicking one plays it. Play, pause, next, previous, the seek bar and the volume slider all drive Spotify from there. The equalizer, analyser, crossfade and visualisers cannot work with Spotify, because browsers give a page no access to the decoded stream by design.
I connected Spotify but nothing plays — what now?
Connecting only registers this tab as a Spotify device; it does not give it anything to play. Use the buttons that appear under the Advanced panel to load Liked Songs, Top Tracks, Recently Played, one of your playlists or a search into the playlist, then click a ♫ row. Three other things to check: the account must be Premium (the Web Playback SDK refuses free accounts), your developer app needs this page's exact URL as a Redirect URI, and if Spotify is playing on your phone or desktop app it may steal the device back — press Connect again to hand it to this tab.
Can I still use the old version?
Yes. The previous Spotify-only build is archived at /winamp/index_v1.html and still works. It needs your own Spotify developer Client ID and a Premium account before anything plays, and its equalizer is decorative because the Web Playback SDK gives a page no audio to process. The current version plays your own files with a real equalizer, and still offers Spotify as an option.
Is this the real Winamp?
No. It is an independent tribute, written from scratch, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with Winamp, Llama Group, Nullsoft, Radionomy or Spotify. All trademarks belong to their owners. The original desktop Winamp is still available from winamp.com.
Why does Winamp still matter?
It shipped in 1997 and by 2001 had around sixty million users. It got three things right that people still miss: it was fast, it was completely yours to rearrange and reskin, and it treated your music as files you owned rather than a catalogue you rent. That is why a player from the 1990s is still being rebuilt in 2026.
Where does the llama come from?
Winamp shipped with a demo MP3 by DJ Mike Errico containing the line "Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass". It became the player's unofficial motto and appeared in the about box for years. Click the llama in the corner here and you will hear about it.
Are my settings saved?
Yes — skin, size, window positions and shade states, equalizer curve and on/off state, volume, balance, crossfade, speed, shuffle and repeat, visualiser mode and the playlist itself are all kept in your browser's local storage. Nothing leaves your device, and clearing your browser data resets everything.
Can I use it commercially or embed it?
It is free to use for anything, with no account, no ads and no watermark, and it is one of the free browser tools at jasperbernaers.com. A credit or a coffee is appreciated but never required.
MP3 PlayerModern player · sleep timer · BPM detection · crossfade Music VisualizerFullscreen spectrum from mic, tab or file Audio EditorTrim, 15 effects, spectrogram, WAV/MP3 export 8-Bit Studio6-channel chiptune loop machine Windows 98 Screensavers3D Maze, Pipes, Flying Objects — more nostalgia All 166 toolsEverything on jasperbernaers.com Winamp v1 (archived)The original Spotify-only build, kept online
Not affiliated with Winamp. This is an independent tribute project, written from scratch, and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or associated with Winamp, Llama Group, Nullsoft, Radionomy, Spotify or any of their affiliates. All product names, logos and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. The original Winamp is available at winamp.com.

Looking for the old version? The previous Spotify-only build is still online at /winamp/index_v1.html — it needs a Spotify developer Client ID and a Premium account, and its equalizer is decorative rather than real.
🎵 drop your music — nothing gets uploaded
—