Roon Server

What is Roon Server?

Roon Server's sole function is to manage your music library and audio devices. Think of it as the brain of your Roon system. You can learn more about our full Roon Architecture here. 

Roon Server runs in the background and has no user interface. It’s controlled using the Roon application (on Windows and Mac), or the Roon app (on iOS and Android). You can also use Roon Arc to connect to Roon Server when you want to stream music on the go.

Roon Server runs on Linux (x64), Mac OS X, Windows (x86 and x64) and RoonOS. 

Ready to set up Roon Server?

For Mac/Windows users: you can download Roon/Roon Server from our website here. 

For Linux users: read and download Roon Server here. 

For the do-it-yourselfers: here's more info on ROCK and RoonOS.

The 'Launch at startup' option

On both macOS and Windows Roon Server has a "Launch at startup" option so that Roon Server will start up automatically when the user logs in.

On Linux, Roon Server runs as a service. You can manually start/stop it if needed. You can disable the service if (for whatever reason) you do not want it to load at startup and enable/start it manually afterward.

Why is Roon still playing music after I've closed it on my computer?

If you were previously running your Roon Core on Mac or Windows, quitting Roon would stop your music, whether it was playing on your laptop or in any other room of the house. 

With our recent update, we’ve moved Roon Server into its own process that runs in the background. This means you can close the Roon interface and continue to listen to music on your laptop or other audio devices around your home. 

We recommend leaving Roon Server running in the background, but you can always close Roon Server from the menu bar (macOS) or the system tray (on Windows) if you’d like to stop playback completely.

How do I quit Roon Server?

If you ever need to stop Roon Server, you can do so from the System Tray on Windows or via the Menu Bar on Mac OS. 

You can still stop playback by hitting pause on any of your connected Roon devices, it isn't required for you to quit Roon Server every time you want to stop playback.

Want to learn more about why Roon decided to create a server? Click here. 

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