independent desktop software studio

Beautiful software for the computer you own.

Northlane Studio is an independent studio making desktop software that runs on your machine and works with your own files — careful, fast, and a pleasure to use. We started with music. We are not stopping there.

See our work Get in touch
ID Project Platforms Status
NL-01 Solaris Music player Windows Private release
NL-02 Unannounced
NL-03 Unannounced
NL-04 Unannounced
One design system · one Northlane account across every app shippingnext
Shipping
1
app in release today on Windows.
In the works
3
projects on the bench, unannounced until they are ready.
Team
1
person designing, building, shipping and answering the email.
Ads
0
in anything we ship. Not now, not later.
01The studio

A small studio making the careful version of desktop software.

Too much of what runs on our computers is dated, cluttered, or built to harvest attention. Northlane Studio exists to make the other kind: fast, local-first apps with real design behind them, made by someone who uses them every day.

P.1

Independent, and small on purpose

One person designs, builds, ships and supports everything. That keeps the work focused: fewer things, finished properly.

P.2

Local-first, by default

Your files stay on your disk, in standard formats. Accounts and sync are optional add-ons, never the point of the app.

P.3

One family, one design system

A shared shell, shared components, one Northlane account. Learn one of our apps and you already know the next one.

P.4

Ships on a schedule

Small, self-updating builds instead of a big yearly reveal. Things keep moving, and you can see them move.

02Work

One app shipping, more on the bench.

Everything we make shares the same principles, the same foundations and the same design system. Projects stay unannounced until they are ready to show.

NL-01 Private release

Solaris Music player

Your local library and your SoundCloud in one fast, quiet player. Our first app, and the one the studio's foundations were built on.

Windows Visit Solaris
NL-02Unannounced

Something is in the works.

NL-03Unannounced

Something is in the works.

NL-04Unannounced

Something is in the works.

03Zenith

One design system. Every Northlane app.

Zenith is how everything we make looks, moves and reads. Light on graphite: calm dark surfaces, silver metal, and a single warm point, the sun, that marks what matters right now. Learn one of our apps and the next one already feels familiar.

Palette

Light on graphite

Four shades of graphite, a silver for the marks, and nothing else. Surfaces are separated by tone and space, never by lines. Two appearances: Zenith Dark and Zenith Light.

The sun

One warm colour

The sun is the only warm colour in the interface. It marks what is happening now: what is playing, what is loading, what you picked.

Type

Geist, one scale

Geist for everything, Geist Mono for the technical. Seven sizes, four radii, three shadows. If it is not in the scale, it does not exist.

The sky

The background follows your sky

The backdrop takes on a faint tint from your local time: a warm dawn, a neutral midday, an amber dusk, a deep blue night. You feel it more than you see it. This page is doing it right now.

The icon

A family you can spot

Every icon shares the graphite plate, the faint grid and the sun at the zenith. Each app adds only its own silver glyph.

Releases
AtacamaMauna KeaParanalLa PalmaTeideNamib

Releases named after the clearest skies on Earth

Every big release across the studio, the one that brings the new things, is named after one of the world's best skies for watching the stars. In between, each app keeps shipping small builds. An app can launch on the newest sky or on one that came before. The first is Atacama, the clearest sky on the planet.

03Where we're headed

Directions, not promises.

The ground the studio is working through. Some of it will become new apps, some will grow inside existing ones, and some will not make it — but all of it follows the same rules.

F.01 Shipping

Sound & media

Players and libraries for the media you keep on your own disk. Solaris is the first; there is a lot more to do here.

F.02 Exploring

Local intelligence

An assistant that runs on your own PC and helps you organise your files and your work — without sending your life to someone else's server.

F.03 Exploring

The desktop itself

Deep, safe customisation for Windows, so the computer you use all day finally looks and works the way you want it to.

F.04 Exploring

Going further

For people who want more than a settings panel: tools to create your own visualisers, extend the apps, and get deeper access across the family.

Nothing here has a date. A project gets a name on this page when it is ready to show.

04How a project moves

From idea to release, at its own pace.

Every project goes through the same four stages. It launches publicly when it is finished — not when it is announced.

  1. 01 · Explore

    Research and private prototypes. Most ideas start here, and plenty of them end here too.

  2. 02 · Build

    Designed on the shared system, then profiled against real workloads until the numbers hold.

  3. 03 · Private release Solaris is here

    Self-updating builds in real hands. What people actually do with it shapes what ships.

  4. 04 · Public launch

    Open to everyone, on every platform it supports, with the rough edges already gone.

05How it is built

What every Northlane app has in common.

Different subjects, same rules. These hold across the family — they are the reason the apps feel related even before you notice the shared buttons.

  1. 01

    Measured, not guessed

    Tuned against real workloads — real libraries, real files, real machines — not a demo. Every optimisation earns its place with a before-and-after number.

  2. 02

    Self-updating

    Every build checks for its own updates. You install once; the app keeps itself current and tells you what changed before it does.

  3. 03

    Private by design

    No ads, no data sold, and no account needed to use the app. The little that leaves your machine is anonymous and kept to a minimum; an optional account only syncs what you ask it to.

  4. 04

    Honest pricing

    Free versions that are genuinely complete, and paid upgrades that are clearly priced and clearly worth it. No dark patterns, no surprises at checkout.

  5. 05

    Yours to keep

    Standard file formats, data written where you can see it, plain exports. If you ever leave, you leave with everything and nothing held hostage.

06Say hello

Questions, ideas, or just curious?

One person runs the studio, and email gets read. Feedback, bug reports, press, collaborations, or a hello are all welcome.

Email us
Who reads it
The person who builds the apps
Looking for Solaris?
Go to the Solaris site