Rewound is a new app that turns your iPhone into an iPod

If you’ve always wanted an iPod click wheel on your iPhone, a new app is helping to bring Apple’s iconic music player back into the modern touchscreen era. Rewound is a basic music player app that’s available in Apple’s App Store. It uses downloadable skins to transform the app into an iPod or more, and it syncs to an Apple Music library. It even includes haptic feedback so it looks and feels like a classic iPod.

Rewound’s developer, Louis Anslow of Rethought agency, has been working on the app for a year. The idea is to bring back the idea of buttons and the nostalgia of devices like the iPod. “You can program physical appearance of a device,” explains Anslow in an interview with The Verge. “It could become anything.”

Although Anslow isn’t marketing Rewound as an app that will transform your iPhone into an iPod, that’s the primary purpose right now. The way the app has been built has allowed it to be published in the App Store, as skins are simply downloaded after the app is installed. It’s a clever workaround as long as Apple doesn’t pull the app, and it will mean others will be able to create additional skins in the future.

Rewound only supports Apple Music right now, but there are plans to support Spotify in the future. Anslow tells The Verge that he’s even working on an iOS widget that will work as a mini-player. Perhaps you’ll be able to have an iPod Nano accessible from the lock screen.

Anslow isn’t the only developer working on apps that turn your iPhone into an iPod. Elvin Hu, a design student at Cooper Union college in New York City, revealed recently that he is working on a similar app that includes the click wheel and Apple’s Cover Flow user interface. Hu is still working on the app, and it’s not clear whether Apple will allow it into the App Store without some equally clever workarounds.