Basic QoL fixes that are needed

[stych]

v3 has been bothering me since it's release due to the lack of some settings.

1: The ability to turn off gesture control.

2: Track cue position when switching tracks.

3: To have the player interface as the default screen when loading into Poweramp.

4: The ability to turn off animations.

5: To not have album art displayed

My few gripes in the v3 builds of Poweramp. 1: The forced gesture control is the most bothersome of them. Having to leave PA before swiping down my notifications & settings so I don't change windows or tracks is rather annoying. 2: Then we have track cue position. I have hundreds of Old Time Radio episodes on my phone, track times range from 15 minutes to 28 minutes each. Getting several minutes into a track and deciding to listen to something else is a pain because the next track selected starts at the time cue that the previous track was at when I switched. 3: Every time I leave and come back to PA, no matter what screen I was on, it always loads into the track list. 4: I use very few apps on my phone and have it set up to use as little battery as possible, all animations are turned off by default. But not PA, it has the ability to override a basic system setting. 5: Another setting for a minimalist set up, I generally use PA at night and am really not a fan of being blinded by album art when changing tracks.

 

That's it, my top five complaints of Poweramp v3. The first two definitely need to get fixed. The other three are minor annoyances.

Lg V30 Android 8.0

[blaubär]

28 minutes ago, stych said:

3: Every time I leave and come back to PA, no matter what screen I was on, it always loads into the track list.

That's strange, normally it starts with the main playing screen. There is one option in Settings > Look and Feel > Start at Library, have you tried that ?

[andrewilley]

1. I tend to prefer button controls too, and would also like to see gestures removable. However swiping down from the top of the screen to pull down Notifications is not a problem as long as you make sure you start the swipe from the top edge of the screen (a technique which applies to every app in the Android ecosystem). The one I find more annoying is the single-tap anywhere on the album art to go to the library view, it's far too easy to trigger by accident and I'd prefer that to be a long-press or swipe-only action. Making the gestures customisable (including being able to disable each one separately) would be a nice long-term idea though.

2. Settings > Library > Store/Restore Per Track Progress. You can define the duration of tracks where you want this feature to enable.

3. Settings > Look and Feel > Start at Library (un-select this).  You must have changed this yourself at some time in the past, as the default action when installed is to start in the Player screen.

4. Why? They seem quick and slick to me, they look good, and they don't get in the way of anything.

5. This one has been requested by a number of people, especially in library views where art may not really be relevant (such as in the Genre list, or the compact songs view where the extra space for text might be more useful). It's actually a more complex change than you'd think though, as that area of each item entry is also used for the multi-selection tickboxes, so it would need quite a bit of re-coding to provide an alternative for that.

Andre

[blaubär]

36 minutes ago, stych said:

4: I use very few apps on my phone and have it set up to use as little battery as possible, all animations are turned off by default. But not PA, it has the ability to override a basic system setting.

Do you mean the Visualization ? That can be permanently disabled with the button on the left below the album art.

[stych]

12 minutes ago, andrewilley said:

 

3. Settings > Look and Feel > Start at Library (un-select this).  You must have changed this yourself at some time in the past, as the default action when installed is to start in the Player screen.

4. Why? They seem quick and slick to me, they look good, and they don't get in the way of anything.

 

3 is broken, no matter which way the toggle is flipped, it always starts in the library. And 4, I personally don't need my phone to look slick. When you are someone who wears special sunglasses indoors because you can see the florescent lights flicker (and everyone thinks you got a doctor's note just to look cool at work), a minimalistic set up is nice and easier on the eyes.

 

Thank you for the help with cue position.

[andrewilley]

2 minutes ago, stych said:

3 is broken, no matter which way the toggle is flipped, it always starts in the library

There is something wrong with your system then. If force-closing the app or a device reboot does not resolve, I suggest uninstalling and reinstalling Poweramp (and its unlocker for good measure) to get a clean start.

Andre

[blaubär]

1 hour ago, stych said:

5: Another setting for a minimalist set up, I generally use PA at night and am really not a fan of being blinded by album art when changing tracks. 

You can do that on a per album basis by choosing "No album art".

[blaubär]

1 hour ago, andrewilley said:

It's actually a more complex change than you'd think though, as that area of each item entry is also used for the multi-selection tickboxes, so it would need quite a bit of re-coding to provide an alternative for that.

One could leave the area as it is and just optionally don't display the album art.

[andrewilley]

45 minutes ago, blaubär said:

One could leave the area as it is and just optionally don't display the album art.

True. Not sure what that would gain for anyone though.

Andre

[andrewilley]

2 hours ago, stych said:

 I generally use PA at night and am really not a fan of being blinded by album art when changing tracks.

You can turn the track-change animation off for automatic track changes by the way, in Settings > Look and Feel > Player UI. Although realistically I would have expected the screen to have gone to sleep long before then anyway, so it is perhaps a bit of a moot point as to whether or not animation occurs when the screen is blank anyway.

Andre

[blaubär]

2 hours ago, andrewilley said:

True. Not sure what that would gain for anyone though.

Andre

There are users whose eyesight demands less non-essential content. A black area might then be less obtrusive.

Besides, a lot of users just don't want to display album art in lists, for whatever reason, why not accomodate them with a simple option, let's say Settings > Library > Lists > No Album Art in Lists, which would replace the album art with the background color ?

Or let's revel a bit in V2 nostalgia 😀 : a customizable brightness !