Si64

I use the large Widget for PA, but I like to have the album art set to Fit, so it's square, rather than vertically stretched. But I also like rounded corners, and when I try to use this option with album art set to Fit, it doesn't work well, and the 'corners' stretch all the way down the side of the album art. So, is there a way to get nice rounded corners with square album art?

I've found and rectified the problem. I needed to enable Album Art on the Android Lock Screen, in Lock Screen settings. Then it was blurred so I had to untick Blur. Given I'm using the PA lockscreen, I'm surprised this had any effect, but clearly it did as all working OK now.

OK, I'll have a look at the settings, but it works on every other music player app, so I can't really see how it could be anything to do with the device.

Has anyone managed to get their album art displayed on a car stereo over Bluetooth? If so, can you please post your setting for this? I have a 2022 Seat Ateca with fully updated software. Android Auto is not used. I've tried all the various settings within PA relating to Sending album art, but nothing seems to help. In fact, why are there several settings which seem to apply to this? Are all these settings needed? It seems to me that perhaps it might just work if it was made simpler!

@andrewilleyI can't play with it at the moment as I don't want to disrupt the Queue which is currently working and playing correctly. I've only got 3996 tracks to go so I'll let you know when I get to the end. 😄 I've added tracks when the queue is playing and when it's stopped (paused) and these seem to add shuffled as expected. I've not tried adding tracks to a new Queue which hasn't started playing yet. Not sure why you would want to anyway, but is that what you're getting at?

@andrewilley As a matter of fact, the Queue, and adding shuffled into a playing Queue seems to be working perfectly for me. I've added several albums worth of tracks into a Queue of (currently) 4652 tracks and I'm on track 656 without experiencing any issues. Obviously some of the new tracks I've added haven't played yet, but a number of new tracks have played soon after resuming play of the Queue, which indicates to me that the shuffle function seems to be working correctly. This is on PA build 967 and Android 13.

So, does 'Play Next' add to the separate Queue, or the regular Now Playing queue? I had assumed that the separate Queue wouldn't be touched by 'Play Next', as it doesn't seem to be when you select a track or an album outside of the Queue.

I'm loath to mess about too much now, as I'm a good way into my Queue and don't want to disrupt it as it seems to be behaving as expected, following initially sitting it up as a pre-shuffled Queue then playing it in normal mode. One observation - should Play Next actually interfere with the Queue at all? I thought the Queue was a separate playlist to the Now Playing tracks, so if Play Next adds to Now Playing, it shouldn't affect the separate Queue, should it? I've come out of the Queue and played other tracks, but those weren't added to the Queue. Indeed, if you press the Play button it starts again at song one, but once shuffled, the shuffle order seems to be retained, and the last track played is highlighted in the Queue list, so it does remember where you were, it just doesn't resume automatically from that point, without scrolling and selecting the track.

How would you resume play in a Queue, once you've left it? If I leave the Queue at song 200 and play another album, my only way back to the Queue is via the Library menu, yes? When I select the Queue, the Now Playing track is still the last track played outside of the queue. If I click the Play button in Queue, it starts the Queue again at the beginning, so the only way to find your past place is to scroll down to it. Maybe if the Queue was included in the Category (<<< and >>>) buttons it would then resume where it left off?

@andrewilley I've only been adding an odd two or three tracks here and there to my playing Queue, but they're certainly not clustering towards the top like they were before. In fact, if I added a single track before it would appear as the next track to be played, and that isn't happening now. This is with a 'pre-shuffled' Queue (ie, select all tracks from a Playlist > Add Shuffled to Queue), then the queue is playing in 'normal' mode (ie, with Shuffle off), as the tracks are already shuffled. I like this because if I come out of the queue and go back into it, the tracks are still in the same shuffled order (if that makes sense) as they were before. Although, this is why I asked for a Resume / Memory function, as obviously the more tracks that are played, the more scrolling you have to do to continue where you left off, if you leave the Queue and play something else.

Indeed, but if you pause playing a current Queue, which is, say, on song 2025 of a 4000 song playlists, and you've played something else, you've got to remember where you were in the Queue, and then scroll to find it. I know it's pure laziness, but it would be easier if there was a Resume function of some sort. Doesn't the List Position Memory provide that function in Playlists?

Is there any chance of adding a Delete Duplicates function to the Queue, and also a way to easily Resume a Queue from the last play position? Thanks, Simon.

@andrewilley Thanks for the full explanation. I'm still not sure why PA isn't importing the playlists like it did last week (which it did without any file name appendages), but I can work with things as they are. As an observation, the playlists PA deleted were those stored in the Playlists folder in the Internal storage. I believe the actual *system* playlists are stored somewhere inaccessible within the murky depths of Android.

@andrewilley @maxmp - Last night I jumped in the deep end and added about 4600 tracks 'shuffled' to a new Queue. Once the queue was playing, I then shuffle added just another 3 tracks, and had to scroll down at least half way before I found one of them, so they certainly didn't float to the top. I will keep an eye on it for when I add another complete album, and report back. One thing I would like in the Queue settings is the ability to remove duplicates, like there is in Playlists. @andrewilley - How is your Shuffle Randomisation set? Mine is set to Full Random. Wonder if that makes a difference?

Update: actually, I've just found that Player Pro is also no longer seeing the Playlists in the Playlist folder, so I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe this isn't an issue with PA, in which case, apologies. Second update: The playlists had been deleted from the Playlists folder. I think this was when I allowed PA to see the folder, then deleted the Playlists with the .m3u appended to the file name in PA. I've restore them and all other apps now see them. I think this is probably just something I will have to live with as I clearly manage my playlists differently to the 'norm', and I think if this was an issue more people would have posted about it.

I have, but then you get .m3u appended to the name, so I then copy them into new playlists in PA as they can't be renamed without the file name appendage. I know I'm probably being difficult and trying to do something that isn't the 'correct' way to do it, but the point is, it worked up till the other day!

@andrewilley It's Android 13. The playlists are stored in a Playlists folder in the Internal Storage (no SD card), and all appear to be .m3u file formats. I have to admit, I don't really know if you would call these 'system playlists', as they've been generated externally and moved from phone to phone. With the playlists placed in this folder, I can import them into other music apps (Samsung Music, Black Player, etc), and other apps 'see' them automatically. When I add to them, I sort them using Black Player, as it sorts Albums by track numbers, then Export the updated .m3u files into the Playlist folder. Some apps then see the updated playlists automatically, but PA doesn't, and that's when I use to Import them using the method you described above. That Import process now seems to be no longer working, and coincidentally or not, the change coincides with the recent PA update.

Yes, that's exactly how it used to work, and how it worked last week. I've no idea what's changed to stop it working now. I think I've tried that before, and the problem is that other music player apps then tend to find duplicate playlists. I'll experiment with some new playlists, but as I said, it was all working OK last week and nothing has changed except for the PA update.

Hi Andre, But last week I could import system playlists and now I can't. I even renamed all the current playlists and it still failed to import the system playlists. The problem is, when adding to existing playlists, the tracks are not sorted (they appear at the top or the end), and there isn't an option to sort albums in playlists by track number. Therefore, every now and then I need to import the correctly sorted system playlists to get things 'straight' again. As I said, I did this only last week, and this issue has only appeared since the update yesterday. I've found a way round it. By clicking on the playlist .m3u file I can then open it with PA and it imports that way. But something has changed since last week.

Last week I imported my system playlists into PA: Settings > Library > Playlists > Import System Library Playlists. I've just tried doing it this evening, after the update yesterday, and it doesn't seem to work any more. I'm just getting Playlists Imported: 0. Nothing else has changed. My playlists are where they've always been, and other music apps are still seeing them. Is there a problem?

By Jove, I think he's only gone and done it! Thanks @maxmp, adding shuffled to queues and playlists now seems to be functioning well. 👍🙂 I know it's a different issue and mentioned in another thread, but is the missing album art when playing through Bluetooth on the agenda?

As I said, I reshuffled the playlist and it was more evenly shuffled, but I've just added another album to it, and once again, on checking the upcoming tracks, it's only playing the first ~10% of the tracks in the list, ie, artists A-D. I really want to use this player but I think I'm going to have to wait until the next release, when hopefully some of these bugs will be fixed. Edit to add: I just scrolled through to see if there was any pattern and indeed, after about 400 tracks, it did revert to the rest being properly shuffled. So, it seems something is happening when tracks are added to a playlist, when the playlist is already playing in shuffle mode. Edit to further add: The track numbers also change when adding new tracks to a 'shuffling' playlist. I'd expect the 'to play' number to increase with the number of tracks added, but the 'tracks played' number DEcreases, but by a lot more than the number of tracks added. All very weird!

Just to tag along with this, I would also like a sort option to sort by Artist > Album > Track # in playlists, rather than sorting albums within playlists alphabetically. Again, this seems to be something unique to PA as every other music app I've used sorts albums in playlists by track number by default. I usually get around it by creating the playlist in another app, then importing it into PA, but it would certainly be more convenient to have the requested sorting option.

Yes, the playlist is sorted alphabetically by artist, and I think it probably was only playing the first ~20%, in fact, probably only ~10% but I've no idea why. I've now done a reshuffle and checking the next few upcoming tracks, it seems more evenly spread now.

I'm experiencing another oddity now. I'm 117 tracks into a 4600 track playlist, playing the playlist itself in Shuffle mode, and I've just realised it only seems to be playing tracks from artists named alphabetically from A to D, so only the top portion of the entire playlist. PA certainly does seem to have some unique tricks that no other music app can manage, but can anyone explain why this could be happening?!