Description
Half of what makes foobar2000 worth using is its components: whatever the player does not do itself, somebody has written an add-on for. If you want to build one — decode another audio format, add a UI element, wire up a lyrics source — this official SDK is what you need. It provides the headers, libraries and sample projects for foobar2000 component development, defining the full interface the player exposes to third parties.
The package ships ready-made project files for Visual Studio 2022/2026 and Xcode 13-26, so adapting a sample is much faster than reverse-engineering the API. Documentation is available online, and public debug symbols for recent player builds can be downloaded separately, which makes a crash inside the player resolvable to a readable call stack.
This is a developer package rather than the player itself — installing it does not give you something to play music with.
Component API: the complete interface foobar2000 exposes to third parties, covering playback control, the media library, tag reading and writing, UI elements and DSP processing.
Ready project files: Visual Studio 2022/2026 and Xcode 13-26 projects are included, so the samples build without configuring dependencies and compiler flags by hand.
Sample components: working examples in the package are the quickest route in — start from one and modify it.
Online documentation: the SDK documentation is published on the site, so interface purpose and calling conventions can be looked up directly.
Debug symbols: public debug symbols for recent foobar2000 releases are offered separately, turning a crash inside the player process into a readable stack trace.
Version archive: older SDK releases remain available, which matters when maintaining a component for an earlier player version.
Cross-platform: with foobar2000 itself on macOS, the SDK includes Xcode projects so one component codebase can target both platforms.
The package ships ready-made project files for Visual Studio 2022/2026 and Xcode 13-26, so adapting a sample is much faster than reverse-engineering the API. Documentation is available online, and public debug symbols for recent player builds can be downloaded separately, which makes a crash inside the player resolvable to a readable call stack.
This is a developer package rather than the player itself — installing it does not give you something to play music with.
Features
Component API: the complete interface foobar2000 exposes to third parties, covering playback control, the media library, tag reading and writing, UI elements and DSP processing.
Ready project files: Visual Studio 2022/2026 and Xcode 13-26 projects are included, so the samples build without configuring dependencies and compiler flags by hand.
Sample components: working examples in the package are the quickest route in — start from one and modify it.
Online documentation: the SDK documentation is published on the site, so interface purpose and calling conventions can be looked up directly.
Debug symbols: public debug symbols for recent foobar2000 releases are offered separately, turning a crash inside the player process into a readable stack trace.
Version archive: older SDK releases remain available, which matters when maintaining a component for an earlier player version.
Cross-platform: with foobar2000 itself on macOS, the SDK includes Xcode projects so one component codebase can target both platforms.
