Toddler Music Player

A simple media player for toddlers, preschoolers, and grandparents alike.

I built this simplified music player for my 3 year old, who was having trouble understanding the many modes (album view, track view, playlist view) of the other media players. This simple media player has only one mode -- albums on the left, tracks on the right -- and plays albums through to the end like a conventional CD player.

In addition to being easy to use for my 3 year old and my mother alike, this app has helped encourage my 3 year old's pre-reading skills as he now looks at the letters of the track titles to find his favorite music.

I hope that it may benefit others as well.

Some caveats:

This app does not feature a "child lock", meaning that the app can be exited by your child (or whomever is using it) if they know how to exit apps. I leave my device in "airplane mode" whenever my child is using it to avoid accidental e-mail sending, web browsing, video watching, etc., but you can also download a flexible child lock application, such as Kiddoware's Kid's Place.

A common problem with many media players on Android is that the album artwork does not appear. If your album artwork does not appear in the default music player, it won't in this one either. You can resolve this by searching the store for album art grabbers. After grabbing the artwork for your albums you may actually need to reboot your device.

This app is designed for landscape mode. It works best on a tablet, where you have plenty of space for track names. On a phone you may find that a lot of track names are truncated.