4 min read

1-bit 1.3, the one where we forgot to change the codename

1-bit 1.3 is on the App Store. Opportunistic background library scans, composer/conductor/work fields for classical, a Listening Tips guide, a refined cellular streaming gate — and an easter-egg card that still calls this version 'Too Late, Too Soon'. Bridge 0.1.3 ships alongside. Same bit-exact DSD over DoP, no transcoding.

Updated

  • 1-bit
  • iOS
  • DSD
  • audio
  • release

1-bit 1.3 is on the App Store. Same URL, new build. Update on your iPhone and it’ll be there.

Open Settings → About in the new version and tap the easter-egg card. You’ll find: Version 1.3, codename “Too Late, Too Soon”. Which was 1.2’s codename. The release checklist has a step for this — three sites in AboutView.swift that have to move together every release — and the checklist quietly didn’t get run this time. Once a build is uploaded to App Store Connect, the easter-egg version is frozen in the binary; the only fix is a fresh build and a re-submission, which is not what 1.3 needed. So the codename slip ships as-is, and the iOS repo’s CLAUDE.md now opens the release-checklist section with this exact story so the next release doesn’t repeat it. Honest changelog: a codename that lies about the version, fixed in 1.4.

The actual shape of 1.3 is the boring kind of release: the scanner becomes less demanding of your attention, the library starts understanding music that isn’t pop-rock, and a Listening Tips guide collects the things that make this app sound the way it should.

What’s new

Opportunistic background scanYour first scan of a big library can keep going after you background the app. iOS schedules a one-shot task; the work runs only when the device is charging, idle, and on Wi-Fi. The whole thing stays on your phone — no traffic beyond the SMB or bridge connection you’d already authorised. Off-switch in Settings → Refresh.
Classical metadataComposer, conductor, and work fields land in the library. Opera, symphonic, and concert recordings group the way the music does instead of being flattened against ALBUMARTIST. Bridge 0.1.3 extracts the same fields server-side; SMB sources read them out of the file tags directly.
Listening tips, in one placeA new in-app guide collects the things that make 1-bit sound the way it does: which DAC, what DoP actually is, why DSD pre-caches by default, when gapless does and doesn’t work, when to bypass crossfeed. Open from Settings → Listening Tips.
Long-press a folderHold any folder in the browser to play it, queue it next, append to a playlist, or jump to its album — without leaving the browse view. Small thing; surprising how often you reach for it once it’s there.

And on the bridge side

Bridge 0.1.3 ships alongside — 62 commits since 0.1.2, wire protocol unchanged at v1, every change additive. The headline:

A new Library Inspector in the admin console: folder-first browse, FTS5 search, cursor-paginated virtualized scroll, inline metadata edit, per-track variant management, a stats drawer, and a Jobs page for upscale runs. Classical extractors (composer / conductor / work / original year / BPM) across FLAC, MP4, AIFF, WAV, DSF, and DFF. Multi-value ARTIST / ALBUMARTIST preserved on FLAC and MP4 instead of being collapsed. ALAC source bit depth read from the MP4 alac atom rather than inferred. A configurable upscale.variantsDir with source-mirrored layout plus a bridge upscale move CLI. And a Tailscale Let’s Encrypt cert-expiry warning at startup so the iOS ATS 398-day re-pair cliff stops being a surprise. Full release notes on the bridge releases page.

What got refined

The v1.2 per-share cellular gate now also stops the next-track preloader from quietly reaching for cellular when you’ve picked Warn before streaming or Wi-Fi only, and Low Power Mode is honoured the same way. Artist Detail filters orphan albums so the view doesn’t show ghosts of moved files. Stale albumID / artistID on tracks are canonicalised on the next access, so a re-scan that re-grouped an album doesn’t leave the queue pointing at the old ID. Album headers gain a mixed-format subtitle (“FLAC 24/96 · DSF DSD64”) for compilations that mix encodings. As ever, the unfiltered changelog is in the pull requests on the 1-bit repo.

Same audio path

No transcoding. No resampling. No mixer in the path. DSD goes out as DoP to your USB DAC; PCM goes out at the file’s native sample rate. The phone moves bytes; the DAC does the DAC’s job. How DSD playback is handled →

The unromantic version

If you have 1-bit installed: open the App Store and tap update. Your existing SMB shares keep working. Your existing bridge pairings keep working. The cellular default stays Always allow; the background scan is on by default but iOS still controls whether and when it runs. Nothing else changes until you say so.

If you’re new: it’s a free download, iPhone or iPad, iOS 18.6 or later. Bring a NAS or a bridge, a USB DAC, and music you actually like.

Related posts

Comments