Navidrome MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Navidrome. Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, and other MCP clients can browse your library, build playlists, discover new music, and play audio through your machine's speakers.

Table of Contents

• Features

• Available Tools

• Installation & Setup

• Troubleshooting

• Development

• License

• Support

Related MCP server: Spotify MCP Server

Features

🎵 Music Library

Browse and search songs, albums, artists, genres, and tags. Filters cover query, starred status, year range, sort order, and tag values, and they combine: "all my starred jazz albums from the 90s, sorted by year" or "every song tagged Soundtrack with a 5-star rating". Tag analysis tools show what is in your library, so you don't have to guess at filter values.

🔊 Local Audio Playback

Requires mpv on the host running the MCP server (see Installing mpv).

Audio plays through your machine's speakers with no browser or Navidrome web UI. Search and play in one step: "play 5 random starred albums", "queue everything I've starred from the 90s sorted by year", or "add 10 random rock songs to whatever's already playing, shuffled". Albums have three shuffle modes: keep order, randomize album order, or interleave tracks.

The queue is editable during playback: reorder or shuffle without interrupting the current song, and removing the current track advances to the next. Saved Navidrome radio stations (Icecast, SHOUTcast) stream through mpv with live ICY metadata, so you can see what the station is playing. Plays scrobble back to Navidrome, so play counts and recent activity stay in sync. mpv starts on first use, can survive MCP client restarts through a per-user socket (see MPV Remote setup for the lifetime rules), and works on Linux, macOS, and Windows 11.

This works with voice transports (Whisper STT + TTS) for a hands-free music device on a Raspberry Pi or an always-on machine.

🎛️ MPV Remote (Web UI)

Requires mpv (same as Local Audio Playback). On by default and starts with the server.

A web UI at http://localhost:8808 gives any browser the Local Playback controls: now playing with cover art, transport and seek, volume, and a live queue you can click to jump around, updated in real time. A built-in picker starts any playlist, your starred songs, or your starred albums from the page, so it works as a remote without the assistant. Enable Expose on LAN to control playback from a phone or tablet. Audio always comes out of the machine running the server. Setup, lifetime, and security details are in MPV Remote setup.

🎶 Playlists

Create, update, reorder, and delete playlists. Add songs, whole albums, artist discographies, or specific discs in one operation. Find which playlists contain a given song. Build playlists from listening data: "a 'Hidden Gems' playlist of 5-star songs with under 5 plays" or "one top track from each album of my top 10 artists, in chronological order".

🎼 Music Discovery (Last.fm)

Requires a Last.fm API key (free at last.fm/api), set in the settings page.

Find similar artists and tracks, fetch biographies and top tracks, and browse global music charts. Combine this with your library to find missing albums ("albums missing from my top 5 artists, ranked by popularity"), rediscover overlooked music ("tracks similar to my favorites that I own but never play"), or build "Best Of" playlists from what you own.

🎤 Synchronized Lyrics

LRCLIB is set in the settings page and needs no API key. Lyrics stored in your files work without it.

Lyrics come from the audio file's own tags first and fall back to LRCLIB's community database. Timed lyrics carry millisecond timestamps, and plain text is used when no timed version exists.

The web player shows a lyrics view that highlights the current line and scrolls to follow it. Click a line to jump playback there. Scrolling pauses the follow so you can read ahead, and a control returns you to the current line. Font size and sync offset are adjustable, and both are kept per device. The screen stays awake while the view is open and playing.

📻 Internet Radio

Manage Navidrome radio stations and discover new ones globally. Stream URLs are validated before they are added (MP3, AAC, OGG, and FLAC detection), and SHOUTcast/Icecast metadata is extracted. Bulk maintenance works: "validate all my stations and remove the broken ones" or "test these 10 URLs and add the working ones".

Global discovery uses Radio Browser (requires a user agent, set in the settings page). It covers thousands of stations with filters for genre, country, language, codec, bitrate, and popularity. Votes and clicks are registered, so your usage feeds the community ranking.

📊 Listening Analytics

Access play counts, recent activity, top-rated and most-played listings, and tag distribution across your library. Use this to compare habits ("genres I'm playing more vs. less this year"), find forgotten favorites and one-hit wonders, or build mood playlists from your listening patterns.

⭐ Ratings & Favorites

Star and unstar songs, albums, and artists. Set 0-5 star ratings and list everything starred or top-rated. Read and write the saved Navidrome queue that the web UI uses for cross-device sync.

📚 Multi-Library Support

Filter all operations to a subset of your Navidrome libraries. Set a default in the settings page (Default libraries, library.defaultLibraryIds) or switch active libraries at runtime.

Available Tools

Tool categories whose heading says requires ... are only registered when that configuration is present.

Core System

Library Management

Search

Playlists

Ratings & Favorites

Listening History & Saved Queue

Metadata & Tags

Last.fm Discovery (requires a Last.fm API key)

Lyrics

Radio Management

Global Radio Discovery (requires a Radio Browser user agent)

Local Playback (requires mpv)

Playback streams the original file by default (see Transcode format in First-run setup).

Installation & Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20+ (download)

• A running Navidrome server

• An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, or another MCP client with local stdio support)

• Optional: mpv for local audio playback

Quick Setup

Install the published package (auto-updates on launch):

npm install -g navidrome-mcp

Package: navidrome-mcp on npm.

For a development build:

git clone https://github.com/Blakeem/Navidrome-MCP.git
cd Navidrome-MCP
pnpm install
pnpm build

Configure Your MCP Client

The MCP client config only tells the client how to launch the server. Your Navidrome credentials and all options live in a local settings.json, edited through a browser settings page, so no secrets go in the client JSON or environment. The settings page opens on first run (see First-run setup).

For Claude Desktop, edit claude_desktop_config.json (locations: %APPDATA%/Claude/ on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/ on macOS, ~/.config/Claude/ on Linux). Other MCP clients use the same JSON shape.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "navidrome": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["navidrome-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

For a manual build, replace command/args with:

"command": "node",
"args": ["/absolute/path/to/Navidrome-MCP/dist/index.js"]

First-run setup

On first start without configuration, the settings page opens in your browser. This happens whether you launched the MCP server or the standalone web player (navidrome-web). If a browser can't open (e.g. over SSH), the URL is printed to the console, and the unconfigured MCP server exposes an open_settings tool that returns it. Open the settings page any time with:

npx navidrome-config

Enter your Navidrome URL, username, and password, plus any optional features. Then click Test connection and Save. This writes a local settings.json (shape: settings.example.json). Settings load at startup and don't hot reload, so restart what you launched: quit and reopen the MCP client, or re-run navidrome-web. When upgrading from the old env setup, the form pre-fills from your previous env/.env values. Verify and save.

Headless machines and containers: the settings page binds loopback only, so a host with no browser (a VPS, a Docker container) is configured with environment variables instead. When no settings.json exists, the server runs from NAVIDROME_URL, NAVIDROME_USERNAME, and NAVIDROME_PASSWORD, plus optional variables such as MCP_TRANSPORT and LASTFM_API_KEY. A settings.json, once created, always wins over env.

Required: Navidrome URL, username, password.

Optional (set in the settings page):

• Default libraries: comma-separated library IDs to activate by default. Blank means all.

• Last.fm API key: enables Last.fm discovery.

• Radio Browser user agent: enables global station discovery.

• Lyrics provider (LRCLIB) + user agent: enables lyrics fetching.

• mpv path: the mpv binary location if it's not on PATH. Blank auto-detects.

• Transcode format: defaults to raw, which streams the original file for best quality and reliable seeking. Set a codec (e.g. mp3, opus) for slow or metered links. The bitrate applies only when a codec is set.

• Web UI (port / host / expose / enabled / auto-open browser): configures the MPV Remote (see MPV Remote setup). Defaults to localhost:8808.

• Transport (type / host / port): how the server exposes the MCP protocol. Defaults to stdio, the local transport desktop clients use. Set type to http to run the server as a network process (see Running over HTTP).

Features turn on when their settings are present.

Installing mpv (optional)

mpv is a cross-platform media player. The server registers the playback tools when it detects mpv at startup. Without it, the server still manages your library and the saved Navidrome queue, but produces no audio.

macOS (via Homebrew):

brew install mpv

Linux:

sudo apt install mpv       # Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / PopOS
sudo dnf install mpv       # Fedora / RHEL / CentOS Stream
sudo pacman -S mpv         # Arch / Manjaro
sudo zypper install mpv    # openSUSE

Windows:

winget install shinchiro.mpv   # winget is included on Windows 11
scoop install mpv
choco install mpv

Use the full ID shinchiro.mpv. Plain winget install mpv prompts you to pick between it and an unofficial Store package. The shinchiro build is the one mpv.io links for Windows.

Windows PATH note. The shinchiro.mpv package installs to C:\Program Files\MPV Player\ and does **not** add itself to PATH. Either:

• Add that folder to your PATH (System Properties → Environment Variables → Path → New), then open a new terminal, or

• Set mpv path in the settings page (playback.mpvPath) to the full mpv.exe path, e.g. C:\Program Files\MPV Player\mpv.exe.

Other install methods (scoop, choco, manual zip) use different folders. If mpv --version fails in a fresh terminal, locate mpv.exe and apply one of the fixes above.

A pre-built binary from mpv.io also works. Verify with mpv --version. Then restart your MCP client so the server re-detects mpv.

MPV Remote setup

Enabling & lifetime

The panel is on by default. The server starts it as a separate navidrome-web process and the port binds immediately, so the page is reachable before anything plays. Hosts without mpv don't start it. Player settings live behind the in-player gear icon, and the gear and power buttons only appear for browsers on the host machine.

Whether playback survives closing your AI client:

• Default (off): the MCP-launched player and mpv stop when the MCP server closes or restarts.

• Keep playing after the MCP server closes (webui.persistAfterMcpExit, in the settings page or the gear modal): the player keeps running. Stop it with the power button.

• Launched yourself (navidrome-web, below): always runs independently. The MCP server attaches to it and never shuts it down.

mpv stops when the player stops, with no background idle timeout. To disable the panel, uncheck Enable the companion control panel in the settings page (webui.enabled).

Running it standalone

Run the player independently of any MCP client:

navidrome-web                # after: npm install -g navidrome-mcp
# or, from a dev clone / manual build:
node dist/web/main.js

It reads settings.json, opens your browser, and runs in the background until you stop it with the power button. It coexists with an MCP-launched instance: the process that binds the port first owns it and the other attaches. Logs go to navidrome-web.log in your config directory.

If nothing is configured yet, launching it opens the settings page instead of the player (see First-run setup). Fill it in and Save. Then re-launch navidrome-web.

Desktop shortcut (recommended)

Generate a double-clickable icon for your platform. It starts the player in the background with no terminal window and opens your browser. If a player is already running, it only opens the browser.

navidrome-web-shortcut       # after: npm install -g navidrome-mcp
# or, from a dev clone (see Development):
pnpm make:launcher

The shortcut bakes in the absolute paths to your node and the built player, so it works with nothing on PATH. It writes:

• Linux: Navidrome Player.desktop on your Desktop and in your app menu (~/.local/share/applications). On GNOME, right-click → Allow Launching the first time.

• macOS: Navidrome Player.app on your Desktop (drag to /Applications if you like).

• Windows: Navidrome Player.vbs on your Desktop and Start Menu. (A OneDrive-redirected Desktop puts it there.)

Re-run the generator after moving or rebuilding the project to refresh the paths.

Configuration

All settings are optional and live in the Web UI section of the settings page, keyed below by their settings.json paths. Restart the client after saving. The exception is persistAfterMcpExit, which the gear modal applies live.

Using it as a phone/tablet remote

1. Enable Expose on LAN in the settings page and Save.

2. Restart the MCP client (or restart navidrome-web).

3. The player logs the LAN URLs it's reachable on at bind time (e.g. http://192.168.1.42:8808). Open one in your phone's browser and bookmark it.

Security note

The web UI has no authentication. Anyone who can reach the port can pause, skip, seek, change volume, and jump around the queue.

• With webui.host=127.0.0.1 (the default) it's only reachable from the host machine, which is safe.

• With Expose on LAN (webui.expose=true) it's reachable from anything on the LAN. That's fine on a trusted home network, but do not expose it to the public internet. There is no rate limiting, and the control API allows queue changes and starting playlists. Player settings and the power button stay loopback only and are hidden for remote browsers, so a phone on your LAN can control playback but can't change settings or shut the player down. The main settings page is never exposed. Once exposed, GET /healthz returns 404 off the host to avoid leaking a version fingerprint, so check the player's health from its host.

Running over HTTP

By default the server speaks MCP over stdio. The client launches it as a child process and talks to it over stdin/stdout. This works for a desktop client on the same machine but can't be reached over a network.

Setting the transport to http makes the server bind a socket and serve the MCP Streamable HTTP transport at /mcp. It then runs as a standalone process that networked MCP clients connect to directly, with no supergateway or mcp-proxy bridge.

Add a transport block to your settings.json. host defaults to 127.0.0.1 (loopback only). Set expose: true to bind all interfaces (0.0.0.0) so a remote client can reach it, and an explicit host overrides expose. Set authToken to require bearer auth. This is recommended whenever the port is reachable beyond loopback, and the settings page has a Generate button for it:

"transport": {
  "type": "http",
  "port": 3000,
  "expose": true,
  "authToken": "a-long-random-secret"
}

Point an HTTP-capable MCP client at http://<host>:<port>/mcp:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "navidrome": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://your-host:3000/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer a-long-random-secret" }
    }
  }
}

When a token is set, every /mcp request must carry Authorization: Bearer <token> (compared in constant time), and anything else gets a 401. If the transport binds a non-loopback address with no token, the server logs a warning at startup instead of refusing to start, so a deployment locked down by a firewall or NetworkPolicy still runs. GET /healthz is never gated. It is an unauthenticated liveness endpoint for container health checks, returns 200 {"status":"ok"}, and makes no Navidrome call.

Host filtering (DNS rebinding protection): on the default bind (loopback with no auth token), requests whose Host header isn't a loopback alias are rejected, so a malicious web page can't drive the server through your browser. Setting an authToken or binding a non-loopback address turns the automatic filter off. A remote deployment is reached by names the server can't know in advance, and the bearer token already blocks rebinding (a lured browser can't attach your token). To pin the accepted names, set transport.allowedHosts, which is enforced whenever present. Set transport.allowedOrigins only for browser clients. It gates the Origin header.

The transport can also be configured through environment variables: MCP_TRANSPORT (stdio|http), MCP_HTTP_HOST, MCP_HTTP_PORT, MCP_HTTP_EXPOSE (true to bind all interfaces), MCP_HTTP_AUTH_TOKEN, and MCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_HOSTS / MCP_HTTP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS (comma-separated). The web UI has a matching WEBUI_* family (WEBUI_ENABLED, WEBUI_PORT, WEBUI_HOST, WEBUI_EXPOSE, WEBUI_AUTO_OPEN_BROWSER, WEBUI_PERSIST_AFTER_MCP_EXIT). These apply when no settings.json exists, and they pre-fill the settings form on first run (see First-run setup).

Single account, shared state: every HTTP session is served by one process holding one authenticated Navidrome account, and the active-library selection is process-global. A set_active_libraries call changes the library filter for all connected sessions, and get_user_details reflects that shared selection.

Security: the server holds an authenticated Navidrome session, so an open port is full library control with no credential. Exposing the port beyond localhost is an opt-in (expose: true, or an explicit non-loopback host). When you do, set an auth token or restrict access with a firewall, a Kubernetes NetworkPolicy, or a reverse proxy that adds TLS. Keep the default stdio transport unless you need remote access.

Where the audio comes out. The transport decides who can reach the MCP protocol and does not move the audio. mpv runs next to the server process, so the machine running the server makes the sound. HTTP on a machine outside a container gives remote MCP access with working playback: run the server on the machine wired to your speakers, point remote clients at http://that-machine:3000/mcp, and set an authToken. A container gives an always-on endpoint for the library tools only (search, playlists, ratings, radio metadata, Last.fm, lyrics) with no audio.

For containers, see Running in Docker: the image, deployment shapes, mounted config, and audio caveats.

A Note on ChatGPT Desktop

ChatGPT's MCP support (web and desktop) requires a hosted HTTPS endpoint and does not work with local stdio servers. This server can serve MCP over HTTP (see Running over HTTP), so you can host it behind a reverse proxy that terminates TLS instead of a bridge like mcp-remote. For a self-hosted music server, it is simpler to use Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, or another client with stdio support.

Troubleshooting

Connection problems

• Verify Navidrome is running and reachable

• Ensure the Navidrome URL in the settings page includes the protocol (http:// or https://)

• Use the settings page's Test connection button (or test credentials with curl / a browser) before saving

macOS-specific

• See the macOS Troubleshooting Guide. The common issue is a Node.js path not found, fixed with symlinks or full paths.

Configuration

• Use absolute paths in config files

• Validate JSON (no trailing commas)

• Restart your MCP client after changes

Known Limitations

• No audio without mpv. Use the Navidrome web UI or a Subsonic client instead (see Installing mpv).

• Recently played has no timestamps. Navidrome exposes play counts and completion status, not when a track was last played.

• Saved queue ≠ live queue. The *_saved_queue tools operate on Navidrome's server-side queue (web UI sync). The *_play_queue tools operate on the local mpv playlist.

Development

git clone https://github.com/Blakeem/Navidrome-MCP.git
cd Navidrome-MCP
pnpm install
pnpm build
node dist/config-app/main.js   # opens the settings page; fill in + Save
# (writes settings.json to your OS config dir; see settings.example.json)

pnpm dev          # hot reload
pnpm test         # watch-mode tests
pnpm test:run     # one-shot tests
pnpm check:all    # lint + typecheck + dead-code
pnpm build        # production bundle

Testing the standalone web player from a dev build

This is the from-source path for trying the player before a release reaches npm (the published package may lag behind dev). It applies to the MCP server too, since both run from the same dist/.

# 1. Build (also bundles the web UI's static assets into dist/)
pnpm build

# 2. Configure if needed; writes settings.json to your OS config dir
node dist/config-app/main.js     # opens the settings page; fill in + Save

# 3. Run the standalone player directly
node dist/web/main.js            # serves http://127.0.0.1:8808 and opens your browser

To make a double-clickable icon out of that build (no global install needed):

pnpm make:launcher               # writes a shortcut to your Desktop + app menu

Windows notes (PowerShell):

• Use pnpm build then node dist\web\main.js, same as above with backslashes.

• pnpm make:launcher writes Navidrome Player.vbs to your Desktop and Start Menu. It launches node dist\web\main.js with no console window and bakes in the absolute path to this checkout, so re-run it after moving the folder.

• If a redirected/OneDrive Desktop hides the file, the Start Menu copy still works (Start → type "Navidrome").

• mpv must be installed for playback. Set playback.mpvPath in the settings page if it isn't on PATH.

After npm install -g navidrome-mcp, the same flows run as navidrome-web, navidrome-config, and navidrome-web-shortcut with no clone or build.

Testing with MCP Inspector:

pnpm build
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/index.js                  # web UI
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector --cli node dist/index.js \
  --method tools/call --tool-name search_all --tool-arg query="jazz"    # CLI

License

• Code: AGPL-3.0

• Documentation: CC-BY-SA-4.0

Support

• GitHub Issues

• GitHub Discussions

Built with ❤️ for the Navidrome community