JukeCab is a build-it-yourself jukebox interface inspired by Fruitbox, DW Jukebox, and SK Jukebox. Like those classic programs, JukeCab lets you design your own jukebox experience, but it goes well beyond traditional title strips.
With JukeCab, your media library can be displayed in multiple modes, including Songs/Tracks, Albums, Artists, Genres, Decades, Videos, and Playlists. These modes can be shown as classic jukebox title strips, artwork-based grids, or mixed views, giving you the freedom to create anything from a retro wallbox-style interface to a modern touchscreen media browser.
The idea is simple: move through your library using buttons, a keyboard, game controller, or touchscreen input regions. For example, in Artist mode, you can select an artist, drill down into that artist’s albums or tracks, choose an album, and then queue the songs you want to hear. This process is called “drilling down” into the final view. Prefer something simpler? A skin can also be locked down to behave more like older legacy jukebox software, showing only tracks and keeping navigation straightforward.
JukeCab also includes two companion apps. The first is an artist artwork scraper that helps you download artist portraits and logos for use inside JukeCab. Since MP3 files do not normally contain dedicated artist artwork, this tool scans your music library and helps fill in the missing visuals. The second companion app is a volume normalization tool that scans your media and non-destructively creates a database of normalization settings for each supported file. JukeCab then uses that data during playback so loud and quiet tracks play back at a more consistent volume. Why companion apps and not built-in? JukeCab was not built with the intent to be a media player or to act like one. It’s main goal is to display and play your media, not do a bunch of tasks in the background.
JukeCab supports dual-screen setups, touchscreen control, and XInput-compatible game controllers. A built-in menu system gives you access to a wide range of settings, allowing you to customize playback behavior, display options, controls, skins, and more without editing files by hand. Enhanced Serial and Audio Level output allow you to connect to external hardware such as Arduino boards to control custom cabinet hardware such as VU meters, LED light effects, reactive lighting systems, custom visualizers and animated cabinet hardware.
Supported media formats include .mp3, .flac, .wav, .m4a, .wma, .aac, .mp4, .mkv, .avi, .mov, .wmv, and .m4v.
Features
| Feature | Free | Registered |
|---|---|---|
| Limited to 100 songs. | ✓ | 🚫 |
| On-the-fly skin changes. No restarting the software is needed to change skins. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Touchscreen ready. Every skin is touchscreen capable. Some skins may not be optimized for touch, such as not having on-screen input for particular functions, but every title strip or art grid item can be touched and selected out of the box. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple view options allow browsing by legacy title strips or art mode. The final album drill-down view can use title strips, art, or the album details view. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Intuitive drill-down browsing. Browse Artist → Album → Album Tracks, Genre → Artist → Album → Album Tracks, or Decade → Album → Tracks. The drill-down timeout or back button returns you to the top-level mode view. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto play and attract modes are available in the menu. Attract mode moves the pages automatically. Auto play randomly plays songs within the current mode. For example, auto play enabled while browsing the Country genre will randomly play country music. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-mode capable. Use flat, tracks-only legacy-style browsing or go deeper with Artists, Albums, Genres, Decades, and Playlists modes. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Create and import playlists. Browse Top Songs and Favorites playlists. Adding a folder as a playlist keeps it separate from the main music folders, which is useful for temporary music collections. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Easily curate favorites by song, artist, album, genre, or decade using a long press. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Capable search tool that can search globally or within selected modes for tracks, albums, artists, and more. Includes a built-in on-screen search keyboard. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Track and album sorting options allow sorting by title, release year, artist, album artist, or shuffle. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Crossfade settings available in the menu. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Built-in keyboard input mapping. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Smart mouse controls. Left click selects an item, while right click acts as a back button. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deep menu packed with configuration options. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Artist artwork scraper companion app for finding artwork that may not be included in your media tags. It downloads artist portraits and logos for use in compatible JukeCab skins. | 🚫 | ✓ |
| Video playback. | 🚫 | ✓ |
| XInput controller support. | 🚫 | ✓ |
| Dual-screen support. | 🚫 | ✓ |
| Volume normalization. | 🚫 | ✓ |
| Integrated skin development tools. | 🚫 | ✓ |