PlayZX

Baltazar Studios, LLC

About this app

PLEASE READ THIS TEXT IN FULL BEFORE INSTALLING:

Select from thousands of Sinclair ZX Spectrum games and play them through the headphone jack to load them onto your Speccy. You can also select your local (on the device) TAP or TZX files, convert them to sound files and play them. This way you can load games for not only the ZX Spectrum micro but also any other retro computer that have compatible audio jacks.

IMPORTANT:
1. This is not an emulator, *it* will not play those games! You need an actual ZX Spectrum.

2. If you cannot browse and select your own files, it is likely caused by new Android permissions that Google changed with their newer development kits.
Please try this: Go to "System" -> "Apps & Notifications" -> Select "PlayZX" app -> scroll down to "Permissions" and allow "Storage" permission.

3. Make sure that your Android device is *not* connected to USB (for example, to charge it), while using this app. (Electrically, its ground needs to be floating with respect to the ZX Spectrum power supply)

4. Put your Android device in "Do Not Disturb" mode (*not* the Airplane mode as it needs internet access). This will prevent random notifications to disturb the signal output.

5. Use a good quality, preferably short, audio cable. For best results, use a stereo cable and turn the option to invert one stereo channel. Play with the volume: you may get different results on your phone vs. on your tablet, for example.

Ratings and reviews

Brilliant App. But the 3.8 version is broken. It won't output sound over USB-C headphones adapter. Reinstalled V3.7 all works ok again. Have disabled auto-update now. A+++

An excellent app. I've used it for years and has all the options you need. I noticed one odd thing. I'm using a small Ahenod Android MP3 player and it loads once but on the second load, everything is messed up and skewed. I found a workaround. if you clear data and cache, open the app, go to settings, enable bottom space and then click back to exit and say yes when asked it displays fine from then on. Mine is an edge case device and it's probably due to the small size but it works great now!

Loads of games in the database. Only problem I have is that it doesn't find my local files on huawei mate 20 pro. Edit. Thanks for the quick response, worked a treat. For those complaining about this app, I suggest you take a little time to work out what it's for. "long time to load" yep it emulates a tape recorder. "can't open the game after it downloads" nope because it's a tape emulator, not a Speccy emulator. "getting loading errors" that's because your phone isn't loud enough.

What’s new

What's new in 3.9
- Settings page: pick any detected audio device (USB DAC, Bluetooth, speaker…)
- About page now shows the app version
- Fixed stereo setting getting stuck in stereo after playing a ZX81 .P file
- Playback errors (bad WAV, etc.) now surface in the UI instead of failing silently
- Player progress timer stops when nothing is playing — lower idle battery draw
- Qt 6.10.3, Android 15/16-ready (16 KB page size)
- Misc. cleanup: memory leak on repeated plays, minor robustness fixes