Watch the trailer

Trailer by @exploraart - Adam Kazmierski.

What is Phosphor?

Phosphor is a desktop player for SID files - the music format used by the Commodore 64. It plays the High Voltage SID Collection (HVSC), the community archive that indexes tens of thousands of C64 tunes, and lets you listen on three different backends:

• Real SID hardware via the open-source USBSID-Pico USB device, with full chip configuration built in.
• Software emulation with two engines: reSID (cycle-accurate) and SIDLite (lightweight libsidplayfp).
• A networked Ultimate 64 machine - Phosphor sends play commands and optionally streams the C64’s audio back over UDP.

Features that go beyond a basic player: full sub-tune navigation, multi-SID (1/2/3 SID) support, automatic song-length lookup, STIL metadata, a live tracker visualiser, karaoke mode for MUS files, and a built-in HVSC browser so you don’t need a file picker to find anything.

Getting started

First launch - three steps to your first tune:

1. Sync HVSC. Click 📚 Library (or press L). If you don’t have a local HVSC tree yet, you’ll see a “No HVSC tree found” banner with a ⬇ Sync HVSC now button. Click it. Phosphor pulls the whole tree (~1 GB) over HTTPS from hvsc.brona.dk in the background - you can keep using it while it downloads. Or skip syncing and drop your own SID files/folders into the playlist with ➕ Files / 📁 Folder.
2. Pick a source in the Library panel. Three tabs at the top of the panel:
   • Local HVSC - walk by author/tune, search the whole category, or hit 🎲 Surprise me for a random pick.
   • Assembly64 - type a tune name or composer, then click ▸ on any release to see its .sid files.
   • Playlists - pick from curated M3Us shipped with each Phosphor release (HVSC Top 100, composer collections, themed mixes).
3. Play or add. Every tune row has ▶ (play immediately) and ➕ (add to playlist). Loading a Published Playlist replaces the current queue but never overwrites your default - click ↺ Restore my playlist to swap back.

Everyday flow after that:

• Space starts / pauses. ← / → skip tracks. ↑ / ↓ navigate the playlist.
• H hearts the current track. Shift+H toggles shuffle. , / . nudge master volume ±5%. F toggles full-screen visualiser. V cycles Bars / Scope / Tracker / Karaoke.
• Ctrl+F focuses the search box. Sortable columns - click any header (Title / Author / Duration / Type / SIDs). M pops the mini player mode for background listening.
• Full shortcut reference is in the Keyboard shortcuts section below, and ? shows an in-app overlay.

Configuring hardware or Ultimate 64: open ⚙ Settings (bottom right) to switch playback engine, set your Ultimate 64 IP, or point Phosphor at an existing HVSC directory. USBSID-Pico owners get a 🔧 Device panel for chip routing, clock rate, LEDs, MIDI, and save-to-flash.

Features

📚 The Library panel

The Library is Phosphor’s single entry point for finding SIDs. Three sources, one panel, switchable from a segmented control at the top:

📂 Local HVSC

Two-column author/tune walker with global filename search across the whole category. Add a single tune, an entire author folder, or hit 🎲 Surprise me for a random pick from 75,000+ files.

🔍 Assembly64

Live AQL search against the hackerswithstyle.se/leet catalogue. Type a tune or composer, expand any release inline to its .sid files, click ▶ Play or ➕ Add. Empty releases are auto-filtered.

📋 Published Playlists

Curated M3Us synced from the Phosphor repo - HVSC favourites, composer collections (Galway, Hubbard, Bjerregaard, Zyron), themed mixes. Expand any playlist to preview the track list before loading. Read-only mode protects your own playlist from being overwritten.

Screenshots

Download

Loading latest release…

All builds - GitHub Releases page →

Installing

For most people the Download section above is all you need - double-click the installer for your OS. The notes below cover the specifics per platform.

macOS

Double-click Phosphor-version-macOS.pkg. The installer drops Phosphor.app into /Applications and registers a privileged USB bridge (usbsid-bridge) as a LaunchDaemon so USBSID-Pico works without you having to type sudo at anything.

To uninstall, run the matching Uninstaller.pkg from the same release - drag-to-Trash is not enough (leaves the LaunchDaemon orphaned).

Windows

1. Install the WinUSB driver for the USBSID-Pico via Zadig. One-time step, and only needed for the USBSID-Pico hardware - software emulation and Ultimate 64 network playback work without it.
2. Download and run Phosphor-version-windows-x86_64-setup.exe. It installs Phosphor with a Start-menu shortcut (and an optional desktop icon) and registers an uninstaller in Add/Remove Programs.

Linux

Double-click the .deb (or sudo dpkg -i from a terminal). The package already ships the udev rule that grants non-root access to the USBSID-Pico, so you don’t need to add anything manually.

Building from source

Only needed if you want to develop or customise Phosphor - the prebuilt binaries above are the recommended path.

git clone https://github.com/sandlbn/Phosphor
cd Phosphor
cargo build --release
./target/release/phosphor

Full per-platform build instructions (macOS bundle signing, Linux .deb packaging, etc.) live in the README.

Keyboard shortcuts

Configuration paths

Phosphor stores config and caches under a platform-standard location:

The directory holds config.json, your favorites, recently-played history, the auto-saved session playlist, plus cached copies of Songlengths.md5 and STIL.txt for offline use. Synced HVSC tunes go under HVSC/ in the same folder by default.

Thanks

Huge thanks to Adam Kazmierski for countless hours of testing, breaking things, and helping fix them. From catching audio glitches to spotting swapped stereo channels - this project sounds way better because of him.

About

Phosphor is free, open-source software licensed for personal and non-commercial use. Bug reports and contributions are welcome on GitHub. The player is developed by @sandlbn; see the CHANGELOG for release history.