THE WHOLE DAMN THING, EXPLAINED
if your question isn't here, open an issue on github with the tag "FAQ" and it gets answered and added. simple as that.
the app is yours, content is yours, data is yours. you own it all. the client stores everything locally on your device, and the server is just a tool - a proxy for youtube and a cache for your data. not a middleman.
yes - as long as you've used the app for a while and have songs cached, offline mode lets you browse and play all your cached content with zero connection. the app is built to keep working when the server isn't.
server's fault. every image and every audio requested gets stored to disk - next time anything asks for it, the server streams it straight from disk instead of going back to youtube. plus the server got rebuilt in nodejs, keeping only yt-dlp and ytmusicapi in python.
the client caches automatically while you listen - in the background, while you do your business. and if you go offline, the smart-queue skips straight to the next cached song, so the music never stops.
batch cache. while the current song plays, the app pre-caches the next (and previous) 8 tracks in the background. by the time you hit skip, the next track is usually already sitting there ready.
no. it uses youtube as a source, but the code is written from scratch - its own design, its own features, its own way of thinking about things, way beyond simple playback.
no - by design. the client never talks to youtube directly, it only ever speaks to the server. one url, one switch, the whole app follows. so "running your own starl" really means running your own backend.
whatever the server thinks is best: usually 128kbps AAC from a youtube video, 256kbps AAC from a youtube music track. both play flawlessly.
cached data on the device? poof, gone. but your account data, settings and history live on the server, so logging back in syncs it all back - and the server probably still has your songs cached, so streaming is instant again.
app stores are a legal inferno. here, if you have a problem you report it and watch the whole fix happen in the open. how can it be more accessible, transparent and trustworthy than this?
not planned anytime soon - no apple hardware, no wish to fight the apple ecosystem. android is the target, a browser/desktop client is the someday-stretch.
gray area, honestly. it's a tool - it's up to you to use it and host it, nobody's incentivizing anything. not intended for commercial use, use at your own risk.
"i'd rather own a broken tool that belongs to me and my friends, than a perfect tool that belongs to a corporation, asks me for money for basic features and uses my stuff against me."
plus, we can add funny stuff and invent features that never existed before.
frameworks trade control for tools you might not need - bloat, not necessarily in size but in complexity. i like control, and i like simplicity. learn the tool, not a framework that might die or change under you.
I JUST LOOOVE STARZZZ heheheh :3 - everything about them sparks something inside me.
empathy.
no. but yes for listening stats - needed for the recommendation system, and you can erase all your data and disable it anytime. your choice, always.
the public server runs on the creator's own bare hardware - no cloud, no bills to pass on. control, and this time also privacy: no cloud service sitting between your data and the one person responsible for it.
no. ever. voluntarily not. everm4iva denies. really serious about this. aka: NEVER
stable, self-hosted, the most open, well documented and easy to use music app possible - so one day the users can keep using it, understand it and change it without anyone's permission. including the creator's.