Windows
A music player for Windows, from someone who left Windows
Windows is Foobar2000's home and it is very good there. This page is honest about that, and about the specific reasons you might still want rox.
Start with the awkward part
If you run Windows, your Foobar2000 setup is configured the way you like, and it has been stable for years, rox is not an upgrade. Foobar2000 has two decades of components, a smaller footprint, and no surprises left in it. Pretending otherwise on a page like this would be an easy way to waste your afternoon.
The reasons to look anyway are narrow and real. You want the same player and the same layout on the Linux or Mac machine you also use. You want the source to be readable and the licence to be AGPL rather than closed freeware. Or you want a theming story where a whole look is one file you can send to someone, instead of a folder of components, configs and scripts that only reassembles on your machine.
Installing it
Unzip anywhere and run rox.exe. There is no installer, no service, no uninstaller entry and nothing running in the background once it's closed.
Portable mode keeps the library, settings and caches in a rox-data folder next to the executable, so the whole thing lives on a stick. Pass --portable for one run, or drop an empty file named portable beside the executable to make it permanent.
The binary isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen will object the first time. More info, then Run anyway. Signing certificates cost money that a free player doesn't have, and saying so is better than pretending the warning is a bug.
rox.exe --portableExclusive output through WASAPI
Exclusive mode takes the endpoint in WASAPI exclusive, which puts the file's own rate and bit depth in front of the converter with nothing in between. rox reports back what the device actually accepted, so if the hardware quietly refused your 192 kHz you find out from a readout rather than from a forum argument.
While it holds the endpoint, nothing else on the machine plays through that device. That is what exclusive means and it is the reason it isn't the default.
The rest of the Windows integration
Media keys and the now-playing overlay come through SMTC, the same system surface built-in apps use, so the volume-key panel shows the track and the transport buttons work.
What it can't do on Windows
- No tray icon. Quit-to-tray exists on Linux and macOS; on Windows, closing the last window quits.
- No single-instance guard. On Linux and macOS a second launch hands its files to the running rox; on Windows it starts a second copy.
- x86_64 only, and the binary is unsigned, so expect SmartScreen once.
- No plugin API, so a specific Foobar2000 component has no equivalent here.
Whatever you build here is one file, and it opens the same on the Linux or Mac machine sitting next to it. If a setup you spent a weekend on has ever been stranded on one operating system, that's the part worth an afternoon.
Point it at your library
Free and open source under the AGPL. No account, and nothing running in the background when it's closed.
More on what it looks like, the full Foobar2000 comparison, or what the exclusive output above is actually doing, under ReplayGain and bit-perfect. Same player on Linux and macOS.