Rockbox 4.0 Released

It’s traditional to launch new software on April Fool’s Day, which is when we heard that Rockbox 4.0 has been released. But, in this case, the venerable MP3 firmware actually …read more

Apr 20, 2025 - 06:15

It’s traditional to launch new software on April Fool’s Day, which is when we heard that Rockbox 4.0 has been released. But, in this case, the venerable MP3 firmware actually did update after a long absence. It’s great to see that good old Rockbox is still kicking along. We first mentioned Rockbox here at Hackaday approaching 20 years ago. How time flies. There used to be a whole ‘scene’ around hacking Personal Media Players (PMPs), also known as “MP3 Players”.

We tracked down Rockbox contributor [Solomon Peachy] to ask for some simple advice: If someone wants to install Rockbox on a personal media player today, what hardware should they buy? [Solomon] referred us to the AIGO EROS Q / EROS K, which is the only compatible hardware still being manufactured and sold. Beyond that, if you want to buy compatible hardware, you’ll need to find some secondhand somewhere, such as eBay. See the Rockbox Wiki for supported hardware.

Smartphones and streaming services have subsumed the single-purpose personal media player. Will you put the new Rockbox on something? Let us know in the comments.