Now playing list/Queue Feature

[Wall Tair]

Any updates on the topic?

I am planning to purchase PA but this missing feature is the only thing that is stopping me from purchasing

[Kamalpurkait]

@Wall TairTair i don't think developer is interested in adding this feature, it's still great though but i have to admit it's annoying not being able to control current playing order.

[andrewilley]

It is on the radar to-do at some point, but I don't know when I'm afraid.

Even when it happens, I think it will just be a simple flattened list of all the music PA is scheduled to play and what has been played (even in shuffled orders). You won't be able to delete items or change the order, as that would break the fundamental List Options sorting that PA is based on. I can't see why you shouldn't be able to re-position the playback position within the list though.

Andre

[Kamalpurkait]

@andrewilley all we can do is request a feature and wait for it , and the wait is what i am doing ,,, besides PA still the best with or without the said feature

[maxmp]

@Kamalpurkait it's definitely in the future features list and Poweramp will have this mode. It requires a lot of changes, so we want this not to affect users which are comfortable with the current (direct) playback methods.

[Itchi Ruiz]

+1 Poweramp version 4 with now playing + sync LRC😀😀

[andrewilley]

Not really big enough changes to warrant a major version change. I'd prefer for these sort of things to appear as minor feature additions to the current v3, rather than waiting a long time until v4 eventually needs to become a thing.

Andre

[Poweamps biggest fan]

+1 from me! I absolutely love Poweramp and created this account just to say that I'd love to see this feature. Poweramp is one of the most polished apps I've ever seen and I'm always amazed it's made by one guy! Keep up the great work, Max!

[Michael Sojka]

This is the most basic feature and seemingly simple request.   I am constantly frustrated not being able to see what has recently played and coming up.   

[kickles22]

Also making an account to request this feature! It seems mainly useful when shuffling all or shuffling a large playlist, you already know the songs being played but it will be nice to see what order they are in or even make changes to what's now playing.

Interestingly enough, when using PA through Android auto I noticed there IS a "queue" button that shows the order of songs currently being played. When using the app from my phone that's when I saw it isn't a regular feature.

[rcdc]

On 1/26/2022 at 2:23 AM, Wall Tair said:

Any updates on the topic?

I am planning to purchase PA but this missing feature is the only thing that is stopping me from purchasing

Hi! Exactly the same here. This is the only thing keeping me from purchasing. I'd love to see this feature because it's pretty much the only way i use music players. I've seen someone saying earlier on this topic that this wouldn't be useful because you can create playlists but i completely disagree. Using a music player without this feature just doesn't work for me which is too bad because i loved everything else about PA. I'll be waiting to see if this feature comes out.

On 1/26/2022 at 3:39 PM, andrewilley said:

It is on the radar to-do at some point, but I don't know when I'm afraid.

Even when it happens, I think it will just be a simple flattened list of all the music PA is scheduled to play and what has been played (even in shuffled orders). You won't be able to delete items or change the order, as that would break the fundamental List Options sorting that PA is based on. I can't see why you shouldn't be able to re-position the playback position within the list though.

Andre

It's pointless to make this feature available and not give users the ability to change the order/delete songs to be played. The main point of having a queue like that is really to be able to delete or move songs up and down the queue as you please without having to spend a few minutes creating a playlist and deleting some songs because you might never want to use that playlist again if that makes sense. Imagine doing that everytime you open up Poweramp.

Also, I think this feature should be called "queue" like every other music player calls it and what Poweramp calls queue should really just be named temporary playlist/on the go (like on older ipods if im not mistaken). Better that that merge those two features together how about that? That would work perfectly, i think.

This last option would basically change the contents of the already existing queue playlist on Poweramp everytime you played a set of songs songs/album/etc. changing it's contents automatically.

For example you're listening to all the songs in your library on shuffle. This already existing playlist would then show all the songs in your library in the order they'll be played in giving you the option to tweak the playlist. Imagine you want to listen to one album but this time with shuffle turned off. You'd see only the songs in the album in their correct order which you could tweak to your liking. Add a few songs and they show right after the songs already there. Hit shuffle, the whole thing shuffles. So easy and so simple. 

Whatever you decide to do, this feature is already within the app. The information is already there and it seems can be accessed through android auto like someone just said. This is a BASIC feature. Why not make it available? You can tweak so much within the app why is this feature off limits? I would even pay extra for this.

[andrewilley]

@rcdc

TL;DR : Poweramp's entire playback system is based on Library Categories and their pre-defined List Options sort order. The exceptions to this system are Playlists and the Queue,  both of which can be manually re-ordered song-by-song.

Remember that Poweramp's underlying playback system is pre-organised via the Library Category that you have chosen to listen to. The order is based on the specific sorting order that you have defined for that category using List Options - e.g. you might listen to Albums sorted by their Year/Title/etc, then the songs within those albums sorted by Title/Track#/etc. You can't simply start moving random songs around that ordered list or deleting stuff as that would break the entire category ordering system, which by design contains every song in your music library exactly once.

This particular Feature Request is to allow viewing and skipping around that already-defined playback sequence, not rebuilding Poweramp's playback system from the ground up. This is similar to the Android Auto screen that you mention, but that currently only shows the same song list which you'd see in the main Poweramp interface if you tap on the cover art area (i.e. one category's worth of songs, such as the current Album).

What you can do though is to use either of the two special Categories that are already designed to be manually adjusted because they are simple sequential lists - i.e. they have no overall List Options sorting order, they simply play one song after another in the sequence they've been assigned. 'Playlists' are something permanent which you save and can return to use again later, or otherwise there is the temporary 'Queue' which you can add to and change at will (again, because it has no pre-defined List Options sort order).

As to your example above, that is exactly what the Queue is designed for: while listening to your All Songs list in random order, if you suddenly fancy interrupting that random playback to listen to a particular album you simply find that album in the Albums list, long-press on it and tap to add it to the Queue. That album (and anything else you add in the meantime) will then be enqueued to be played in its entirely, and you can manipulate the Queue at will. When finished, your previous shuffled All Songs session will resume. By default (I think?) the Queue is played in the song order in which you assigned it, but there is an option which instead respects the currently chosen main Shuffle mode (to use it, turn off Settings=>Library=>Queue=>Ignore Shuffle).

Andre

[ihaspei]

so why not everytime we play anything it adds it on that queue list and play it from there? then would be add a shorcut to that list with a longpress on the track counter on the player ui.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, ihaspei said:

so why not everytime we play anything it adds it on that queue list and play it from there?

Because when you select anything to play (perhaps a track from an Album) you are telling PA to continue to play your whole music collection in that assigned order until you tell it to stop. You wouldn't just be adding one track or one album to the Queue, but the whole library.

Andre

[ihaspei]

ohh i get it... welp, let's just wait till the feature gets implemented i guess. it will takes some time but at least in this app any new feature it's always perfectly done.

thanks for the explanation @andrewilley!

[R-Lad]

This feature request has been open for this long and still has not been implemented or commented on from the developer? Are there at least 3rd party things that tackle this issue? I'm sorry if it was covered above but I read a lot of what was mentioned in 2019/2020, and it seems things in Poweramp have changed significantly since then. 

 

Thanks in advance! @andrewilley

[Fitzian]

1 hour ago, R-Lad said:

This feature request has been open for this long and still has not been implemented or commented on from the developer? Are there at least 3rd party things that tackle this issue? I'm sorry if it was covered above but I read a lot of what was mentioned in 2019/2020, and it seems things in Poweramp have changed significantly since then. 

 

Thanks in advance! @andrewilley

Was covered a year ago by the dev, on this very same page of thread comments.

[Dev] definitely in the future features list and Poweramp will have this mode. It requires a lot of changes, so we want this not to affect users which are comfortable with the current (direct) playback methods.

[w3wilkes]

On 1/26/2022 at 10:43 AM, maxmp said:

@Kamalpurkait it's definitely in the future features list and Poweramp will have this mode. It requires a lot of changes, so we want this not to affect users which are comfortable with the current (direct) playback methods.

Really excited to see this new mode implemented. Sounds like a "Queue only mode" that would be in addition to the current default "Category mode".

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, w3wilkes said:

Sounds like a "Queue only mode" that would be in addition to the current default "Category mode".

Not really, although there is already pretty much that sort of facility anyway. If you set 'Stay in Queue' as the 'On Queue End' option in Settings=>Library=>Queue, and also enable Settings=>Library=>Lists=>List Item Click Action=>Enqueue and Stay in List, then the Queue will never be exited unless you request it, and tapping on a song within a list will add it to the Queue rather than starting to play it in Category mode. And you can manipulate the Queue to your heart's desire as it is just a flat list of song names - like a temporary playlist - rather than having any album/artist/folder/etc granularity.

The discussion here was more about having some way to see the complete list of all the upcoming music in the current playback order (and also previously played songs if you scroll back). So it would allow you to be able to see everything that's planned to be played next, for hundreds of songs ahead, regardless of what Category you've chosen as your ordering method, and regardless of the Repeat, or Shuffle, etc mode. As a bonus, it would be possible to tap on an earlier or future song to shift the playback position to earlier or later in the fixed list.

When PA is playing music, it already knows the whole sequence that it plans to use right up to the end of the music library - even in Shuffle All Songs mode, where it will have built the entire randomised sequence in advance - but there's currently no way to see that whole list in playback order.

What would not be easily possible though would be to use such a flattened list to move tracks around or to remove them from the sequence, as any such list would only be a flat reflection of the existing underlying Category ordering process.

To make it an editable list would require a complete rewrite of the whole playback system, and to be honest the result would not be much more than a reworking of the Queue system anyway.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

On 2/16/2023 at 12:40 PM, andrewilley said:

If you set 'Stay in Queue' as the 'On Queue End' option in Settings=>Library=>Queue, and also enable Settings=>Library=>Lists=>List Item Click Action=>Enqueue and Stay in List, then the Queue will never be exited unless you request it.

However it won't Enqueue an album with "Enqueue and Stay in List" on the click of an album. @maxmp "List item Click Action" should apply to all lists, not just lists of songs.

[andrewilley]

7 hours ago, w3wilkes said:

However it won't Enqueue an album with "Enqueue and Stay in List" on the click of an album. @maxmp "List item Click Action" should apply to all lists, not just lists of songs.

'List Item Click Action' can only be applied to tapping on a single song, in the same way playback would normally be commenced by tapping on a song. When you tap on an album name, folder, or other higher category level, the relevant action is to open that list for viewing, not to play it.

However I do fully agree that the small 'Play' and 'Shuffle' icons at the top of any given list should obey the user's chosen 'List Item Click Action' setting. Currently, those two icons only start playback and remain in the list view, completely ignoring the user's chosen Click Action setting. I've asked in the past for these two icons to reflect the user's preference and go to the Player Screen when playback commences, but I guess it would also make sense for them to obey the third 'Add to Queue' choice too.

@maxmp This seems more like an minor oversight/bug rather than a Feature Request. It would be a great idea, with very little extra coding, to make the Play and Shuffle icons correctly reflect the user's chosen 'List Item Click Action' setting.

Andre 

[andrewilley]

I was just thinking about this 'Now Playing' concept for showing a list of what's coming next. In addition to showing a flattened list of previous songs and upcoming songs, I think it would be helpful if the jumps in Category levels were indicated too, which would break a very long song list up into more manageable chunks.

So if you were playing using the 'Years' Category you'd see break point where the category switches from 1999 to 2000, or in Genres when 'Pop' changes to 'Progressive Rock', etc. This would also have the advantage of making it more visually apparent that this is merely a view into what is currently playing, not an editable queue; for that, use the Queue, that's what it's there for. It clearly wouldn't make sense to be able to move a 2000 track into the 1999 category for example. 

As a simple mock-up example, when playing in Artists>Albums mode the scrollable content might appear something like this (obviously visual style and layout would be defined by List Options and the skin in use, but basically looking like the 'All Songs' list):

Andre

[maxmp]

@andrewilley Poweramp internally never loads whole list if you play subcategory. The whole list is loaded for All Songs or Shuffle All though.

[superluig164]

I know editing the list will be difficult.  However, I have something interesting to note.  On my WearOS watch, I can already see a queue of upcoming songs and even choose one in the past or upcoming to skip to.  I think all it would take to allow removing would be to allow a song to be marked for skipping.  As for adding songs to the list, I'm not sure how exactly it would work.  But, I think for the time being, adding a bit in the UI that just does the same thing I can do on my watch, would be enough for 90% of users, and further functionality can be focused on later.

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, superluig164 said:

On my WearOS watch, I can already see a queue of upcoming songs and even choose one in the past or upcoming to skip to.

Interesting, I don't see that on the default audio controller on my Galaxy Watch 5 (I don't see anything other than current track in fact). What control app are you using?

Andre