ZERO ADS. ZERO TRACKING.

Your music, uninterrupted.

Experience the ultimate ad-free music player designed for true audio enthusiasts. Vanguard Player is meticulously built from the ground up to deliver pure, high-fidelity playback, seamless library management, and a strikingly sleek interface—completely free of distracting clutter, tracking, or paywalls. Fully open-source, community-driven, and completely yours.

Download Now

Choose your platform

Vanguard Player is currently available for Windows and Linux architectures.

Windows Download for Windows (.exe)
Linux Download for Linux (.deb)
What's Inside

Everything you need.
Nothing you don't.

Built for music lovers who want power without clutter — zero ads, zero tracking, just pure listening.

YouTube Audio Streaming
Search and stream any track directly from YouTube — no account, no API key, no ads. Pure audio, bypassing all video overhead via yt-dlp.
Local Music Library
Import and manage your local MP3, FLAC, and audio files. Vanguard reads metadata tags and organises your collection automatically.
Offline Downloads
Save any track as a high-quality MP3. Choose High (320kbps+), Medium (~128kbps), or Low quality. Listen anywhere — even without internet.
Playlist Import
Import from Spotify via Exportify CSV or paste any YouTube/YouTube Music playlist URL — Vanguard auto-matches every track. No login or API keys needed.
Playlists & Queue
Create, edit, and reorder unlimited playlists. Full queue management with shuffle and repeat support.
Precision Playback Controls
Shuffle, repeat, seek, volume, and variable playback speed — with smooth progress tracking and animated now-playing indicators.
Sleep Timer
Set an auto-pause timer from quick presets (5m – 90m) or a custom duration. Perfect for falling asleep to music without leaving it running all night.
Zero Telemetry. Zero Tracking.
No analytics, no crash reporters, no data collection of any kind. Everything — playlists, history, settings — stays on your machine.
Backup & Restore
Export your entire library — playlists, liked songs, and settings — as a portable JSON file. Restore it on any machine and pick up exactly where you left off.
Preview

See it in action

A clean, distraction-free interface built for music lovers.

♪ VANGUARD Sleep Timer › Home Offline Stats Settings Queue PLAYLISTS ♥ Liked Songs 24 ♪ Late Night Drive 47 ♪ Chill Vibes 83 Import from Spotify Import from YouTube HOME Search YouTube... (Ctrl+F) Search Recently Played Clear ♪ Blinding Lights The Weeknd ♪ As It Was Harry Styles ♪ Heat Waves Glass Animals ♪ Starboy The Weeknd ♪ Levitating Dua Lipa ♪ Save Your Tears The Weeknd ♪ Anti-Hero Taylor Swift ♪ Flowers Miley Cyrus Queue NOW PLAYING ♪ Blinding Lights The Weeknd Queue is empty ♪ Blinding Lights The Weeknd ⇄ ⏮ ▶ ⏭ ↻ 0:00 4:23 🔊
Main Player 01 / 03
Now Playing
Clean, distraction-free player UI
Full playback controls, queue management, and smart recommendations — all in one view.
midnight echoes ⌕ SEARCH RESULTS ♪ Midnight Echoes Neon Drift · 4:12 ▶ ♪ Midnight Echoes (Remix) Stardust Revival · 5:38 ♪ Midnight (Echoes Edit) Night Runner · 3:55 ♪ Echoes at Midnight Chromatics · 6:04 ♪ The Midnight — Echoes The Midnight · 4:47
Search 02 / 03
Search
Instant YouTube audio search
Find any track in milliseconds — no account or API key needed.
S Import Spotify Playlist 1 Go to Exportify Open exportify.net in your browser 2 Log in with Spotify Authorise Exportify to read your playlists 3 Export your playlist Click the green Export button — a .csv file will download 4 Upload the CSV here Click the button below and select the .csv file ⬆ Upload Exportify CSV MATCHING · 18 / 24 Blinding Lights The Weeknd ✓ Matched Heat Waves Glass Animals ✓ Matched
Spotify Import 03 / 03
Import
Bring your Spotify playlists over
Export via Exportify, upload the CSV — Vanguard matches every track automatically.
Support

Frequently Asked Questions

Everything you need to know about Vanguard Player.

General & Features
Yes! Vanguard Player is 100% free and open-source. There are absolutely no paywalls, premium tiers, or hidden fees — and never will be.
Vanguard streams audio directly from YouTube using yt-dlp under the hood. It extracts only the audio stream — no video is ever downloaded or rendered — giving you a clean, high-fidelity playback with minimal bandwidth usage. You can also play your own local files (MP3, FLAC, etc.) from the Offline section.
No. Vanguard uses yt-dlp directly — no YouTube account, no API key, and no Premium subscription needed. Everything works out of the box.
Yes! Any track can be downloaded as an MP3 directly to your local storage via the built-in yt-dlp extractor. You can choose download quality — High (best available, 320kbps+), Medium (~128kbps), or Low (smallest file size) — and set your preferred download folder in Settings. Downloaded tracks appear in the Offline section and play without any internet connection.
Yes! Export your Spotify playlist as a CSV using Exportify (free, no extra software), then upload the CSV inside Vanguard. It runs up to 12 parallel YouTube searches to auto-match every track and rebuild your playlist — no Spotify login inside the app, no API keys required. You can also import any public YouTube or YouTube Music playlist directly by pasting its URL — tracks are imported instantly with no matching step needed.
Installation & System Requirements
Currently, Vanguard Player is fully supported on Windows (NSIS installer, .exe) and Linux (.deb for Debian/Ubuntu) — all x64.
On Linux, all required dependencies (mpv, yt-dlp, ffmpeg) are declared as package dependencies in the .deb — apt installs them automatically alongside the app, nothing manual needed. On Windows, all required binaries are bundled inside the installer — no extra setup required.
An internet connection is needed to search and stream music from YouTube. However, any track you've downloaded via the built-in extractor is saved locally and available anytime through the Offline section — fully playable without any internet. Your local music files also work completely offline.
Privacy & Technical
No. There is zero telemetry, zero analytics, and zero data collection of any kind. The only stats Vanguard tracks are your total listening time — stored entirely on your local machine, never sent anywhere. Your playlists, history, and settings never leave your device.
Vanguard is built on Tauri + Rust instead of Electron, meaning the backend talks directly to the OS via IPC sockets (Linux) or named pipes (Windows) rather than spinning up a full Chromium browser. The result is a sub-50MB install that uses a fraction of the RAM of typical music players, even with large playlists loaded.
yt-dlp handles audio extraction and YouTube streaming with up to 12 concurrent searches for playlist imports. mpv is the audio engine, controlled via a Unix IPC socket (/tmp/mpvsocket) on Linux and a named pipe (\\.\pipe\mpvsocket) on Windows. ffprobe powers the Audio Info panel (codec, bitrate, sample rate, channels). Vanguard also exposes variable playback speed and loudness normalisation — all piped directly into mpv's audio filter chain.
Community & Support
Since Vanguard Player is community-driven, the best place to report bugs or suggest new features is on our GitHub Issues page. We actively monitor it!
If you enjoy the ad-free experience, you can support the project by leaving a ⭐ Star on our GitHub repository, sharing the app with friends, or buying the developer a chai through our Support page!