How to set up Audify, a free music player, on Windows 11

Short answer: install Audify Player from the Microsoft Store. It is free, with no ads, nothing to buy and no account. On first launch it adds your Music and Videos folders by itself and keeps watching them; for music stored anywhere else, use Find all my music & videos or Add folder…. Then open Equalizer to pick a preset or load an AutoEQ profile for your headphones. One honest limit: on Windows, Audify plays through the shared Windows mixer and has no exclusive (WASAPI) mode.

Install Audify from the Microsoft Store

1. 1. Open the Audify Player listing. Go to Audify Player on the Microsoft Store, or open Microsoft Store from Start and search for Audify Player. The publisher is Audify and the price is Free.
2. 2. Check your PC, then install. The listing asks for Windows 10 version 17763 (the October 2018 Update) or later, which includes every Windows 11 PC, in its 64-bit (x64) edition. Signed in with your Microsoft account, you can install it on up to ten Windows PCs. There is no ad, no in-app purchase and no Audify account to create.
3. 3. Open Audify from Start. Updates arrive through the Microsoft Store like any other Store app, which is why this version has no Check for updates button of its own. Audify follows your Windows display language; to change it, go to Settings → Appearance → Language.

Add your music folders

1. 1. Let the first scan run. On first launch Audify adds your Music folder (usually C:\Users\YourName\Music) and your Videos folder, scans them, and builds Songs, Albums, Artists and Genres from the files' own tags, plus a Folders view. It keeps watching both folders, so music you copy in later shows up by itself within seconds.
2. 2. Music somewhere else? Use Find all my music & videos. With an empty library it is the big button on the Songs page; otherwise it is in Settings → Library → Scan media folders. On Windows it keeps Music and Videos, searches Downloads, Desktop and Documents for the folders that hold music, and adds the Music, Media, Audio, Videos or Movies folders at the top of your other drives, such as D:\Music.
3. 3. Or add one folder yourself. On the Songs page, open the ⋯ menu (More options) and choose Add folder…, or use Add folder… in Settings → Library → Scan media folders. Do this if OneDrive keeps your Music folder: Audify only looks for the Music folder directly inside your user folder.
4. 4. Remove a folder you don't want. Settings → Library → Scan media folders lists every folder in the library, each with Remove. Removing a folder takes its songs, play counts and playlist entries out of Audify; the files themselves stay on your PC.

Set up the equalizer and AutoEQ

1. 1. Open Equalizer. It is near the bottom of the sidebar, above Settings. You can also reach it from Settings → Sound → Equalizer.
2. 2. Switch it on and choose a preset. Turn on the switch at the right of the header, then open the Preset menu: Flat, Rock, Pop, Jazz, Classical or Bass Boost. Moving any of the ten sliders turns the preset into Custom.
3. 3. Save your own curve. Shape the ten bands, each up to 12 dB up or down, and select Save to keep the result as a named preset. Delete a saved preset later with the ✕ beside its name.
4. 4. Load an AutoEQ profile for your headphones. On autoeq.app, find your exact headphone model and export its Parametric EQ .txt file. In Audify, select Import AutoEQ… and choose that file: it becomes a preset named after the file, and the equalizer switches on. Audify fits the profile onto its ten bands, so it is a close match rather than a full parametric equalizer; our AutoEQ guide explains the trade-off.
5. 5. Even out the volume between songs. Settings → Sound → Consistent volume is on from the start. It plays quiet and loud tracks at a similar level, using a file's ReplayGain tags or Audify's own analysis, which runs while the PC is idle. Under Balance by, choose Album to keep each album's own quiet and loud moments.

Exclusive mode on Windows: what it is and what Audify does

Windows normally plays every app through one shared mixer, so a notification can sound over your music. In exclusive mode (WASAPI exclusive) one app takes the sound device for itself instead: Microsoft's own documentation warns that exclusive-mode streams silence system sounds, notifications and other apps. Audiophiles use it so the device runs at each file's own sample rate, with nothing mixed in.

Audify for Windows has no exclusive mode. It plays to your default Windows output device through the shared mixer, and the signal path on its Now Playing screen says so: Output, System mixer (shared). Exclusive, bit-perfect output is a feature of Audify for Mac (how it works on macOS). If WASAPI exclusive or ASIO is a must on Windows, foobar2000 and MusicBee are the honest choice; our Windows comparison sets them side by side.

You can still avoid needless resampling in shared mode. The mixer runs each device at one default format, and an app's stream normally has to match its sample rate, so a 44.1 kHz CD rip played on a device set to 48 kHz is converted on the way out. To match them, press Windows+R, type mmsys.cpl and press Enter, select your speakers or headphones on the Playback tab, then choose Properties → Advanced → Default Format and pick the rate most of your music uses, such as 2 channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality).

FLAC, ALAC and the other formats it plays

The decoders ship inside the app, so there is no codec pack to install. FLAC, ALAC, APE, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, MP3, AAC, OGG, Opus and WMA all play, and so do tracker files such as MOD, S3M, XM and IT. Videos in MP4, MKV, AVI, MOV or WebM play under Videos in the sidebar. The FLAC on Windows guide has the full table.

Keyboard shortcuts, media keys and the phone app

Press Ctrl+/ to see every shortcut. The ones you will use most: Space plays or pauses, Ctrl+→ and Ctrl+← skip to the next or previous track, → and ← jump 10 seconds, ↑ and ↓ change the volume, and Ctrl+K opens the command palette, which finds songs, albums, artists, commands and settings by name. The media keys on your keyboard (play/pause, next, previous and stop) work too, even while Audify is in the background.

To make Audify open your music files, go to Settings → Playback and click Default player (Open system settings). Windows doesn't let an app make itself the default, so Audify opens the Default apps page in Windows Settings, where you choose Audify for the file types you want.

Want your music on your phone too? Settings → About → Audify on your phone shows a QR code: scan it with your phone's camera to get Audify for Android or iPhone. The apps don't sync with each other, so each device plays the files stored on it; to copy music to an Android phone, see how to move music from a computer.

Common questions

Sources

“Exclusive-mode streams seize the audio endpoint—all system sounds, notifications, and audio from other applications are silenced.”Microsoft Learn, Exclusive-Mode Streams

• Audify Player — Microsoft Store
• Exclusive-Mode Streams — Microsoft Learn
• Device Formats — Microsoft Learn
• KNOWNFOLDERID (Knownfolders.h) — Microsoft Learn

Read next

• How to play FLAC on Windows for free (and ALAC, APE, WavPack)
• How to use AutoEQ headphone profiles in Audify on Windows and Mac
• How to transfer music from a computer to an Android phone