Kanora
Kanora
own your music
How Kanora works

Buy it, copy it, keep it, play it anywhere.

Kanora keeps your music library, which is all the music you own in one place. This page shows how a CD in your hand becomes music playing in your room, and what you need along the way.

How Kanora worksTwo ways in: A CD you own, or Files you already have. Then four steps: 1, Get it in; 2, Kanora keeps it; 3, Share it; 4, Play it. The same steps are written out below.A CD you ownFiles you already haveSTEP 1Get it inSTEP 2Kanora keeps itYour home networkSTEP 3Share itMaciPhone and iPadAndroidAirPlay speakersCarPlayApple TVIn DevelopmentApple WatchIn DevelopmentSTEP 4Play itHow Kanora worksTwo ways in: A CD you own, or Files you already have. Then four steps: 1, Get it in; 2, Kanora keeps it; 3, Share it; 4, Play it. The same steps are written out below.A CD you ownFiles you already haveSTEP 1Get it inSTEP 2Kanora keeps itSTEP 3Share itYour home networkSTEP 4Play itMaciPhone and iPadAndroidAirPlay speakersCarPlayApple TVIn DevelopmentApple WatchIn Development
Four steps, with two ways in. The same steps are written out below.
Before you start

What you’ll need.

You can begin with a single album.

To copy a CD

Kanora for Mac needs a CD drive to copy a disc. If your Mac has none, connect an external one.

The Mac app

Copying a CD is a Mac job today. The Mac app runs on macOS 12 Monterey or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

To use music you already have

Music you already have needs no CD drive. Kanora for iPhone, iPad and Android keep a library on the phone itself, so they work without a Mac.

To play it on other devices

Keep the Mac and the other device on the same home network, and pair them with a short code.

The path

Four steps, in order.

  1. Get your music in

    Copy a CD you own onto your Mac, or add music you already have. Copying a CD is called ripping, and it leaves you with files you can keep.

    A CD you own

    Put the disc in your Mac’s drive and Kanora copies it, then looks up the album details.

    Files you already have

    Add the files and folders you already have. No CD drive is involved.

    Show the detail: the formats, the album lookup and what a phone can import
    • Kanora for Mac rips a CD to FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC or MP3, and can keep an MP3 copy beside a lossless one, which is a file that keeps everything on the CD.
    • It looks the disc up on MusicBrainz, fetches the cover art, and handles releases with more than one disc.
    • Today, ripping a CD is a Mac job.
    • Music you already have can come in too. Kanora for Mac imports files and adds folders, and Kanora for iPhone, iPad and Android import files from the phone and keep them in a library there.
    • Imported files are shown to you for review before they are added.
    • An iPhone or iPad can also play a Kanora library straight from a USB drive, without copying it onto the phone, when the Mac’s library lives on that drive. Kanora only reads the drive.
    • Recording from vinyl or cassette is in development, and it is a Mac job too.

  2. Kanora keeps it

    Your music stays in ordinary folders you can see and back up, and Kanora keeps a catalogue of it. There is no account to make.

    Show the detail: editing details, and what is not built yet
    • Metadata is the information that goes with each track: album, artist, track number and cover art. You can edit it for one track or for many at once.
    • Edits stay in Kanora’s library. Writing changed details back into your original files is not built yet.
    • Kanora finds duplicates and missing tracks, and relinks files that have moved.
    • The catalogue is a .kanora file inside the library folder, and Kanora can rebuild everything else from it.

  3. Share it with your devices

    The Mac shares its library with your other devices over your home network. An iPhone, iPad, Android phone or Apple TV (in development) pairs with a short code, then browses and streams it.

    Show the detail: pairing, downloads and the limits
    • Pairing uses a short code shown on the Mac. Nothing goes through a Kanora server, because there is not one.
    • Phones can download albums to take with them, in original quality or as a smaller MP3 copy.
    • Outside your home network, a phone plays what it has downloaded. Streaming the Mac’s library from there is not built yet.
    • Kanora for iPhone, iPad and Android also work on their own, without a Mac, with a library kept on the phone.
    • Kanora for Android can also send an album from the phone to the Mac.
    • Kanora for Apple TV is in development. It has no library of its own and browses the Mac’s.

  4. Play it anywhere

    Play it from the Mac, from your phone, through AirPlay speakers, or in the car with CarPlay, which plays the music that is on your phone.

    Show the detail: each device, and the limits of CarPlay
    • The Mac plays through its own speakers, or to AirPlay speakers.
    • iPhone and iPad play in the background, with controls on the lock screen and in Control Center, and send audio to AirPlay speakers and receivers.
    • CarPlay plays the music that is on the phone: its own library, albums downloaded from the Mac, or a USB drive chosen in the phone app. It does not stream from the Mac and has no search.
    • Android plays in the background, with lock screen and notification controls.
    • Kanora for Apple TV is in development. It plays through the Apple TV, or controls the Mac while the Mac plays to your hi-fi.
    • Kanora for Apple Watch is in development. It controls the iPhone from your wrist, and syncing music to the Watch is still being made reliable.
In plain words

The words on this page.

ripping
Copying the music on a CD onto a computer as files, so you can play it without the disc.
lossless
Files that keep everything on the CD. They are bigger than MP3s, because nothing is thrown away to make them smaller.
metadata
The information that goes with a track: the album name, the artist, the track number and the cover art.
library
All the music Kanora keeps track of, wherever the files sit.
AirPlay
Apple’s way of sending music from a phone or a Mac to a speaker or receiver over your Wi-Fi.
CarPlay
The way an iPhone shows its music and controls on a car’s screen.
Availability

Where Kanora is today

Kanora is not yet a release product. It is in private testing, and small test builds are shared when they can answer a useful question.

The Private Testing page says how to ask about a build, with no promise about a date or a price.