Making navigation to the now playing screen easier

[mixmix]

Hello, love this app, but I primarily use it while driving, so a few UI decisions make things difficult at times. I am using the Ducktamine Minimal Skin, but I think this applies in general to the app?

THE ISSUE:

When navigating albums, and then playing an album, a small pane appears at the bottom of the UI - I have to tap on this to bring up the 'now playing' screen, where I can swipe to change songs, pause, etc. 

My issue is that clicking on this is quite difficult when driving, as it's so very small. Is there -

1. a way to make this larger, or

2. have this automatically open when an album is played (ideal).

secondly, is there a way to hide album art for individual tracks? In the screenshot below, it's kind of horrible to see the same album art repeated 5 times LOL - once at the top is definitely enough!

[andrewilley]

First, make sure you have  Settings > Library > Lists > List Item Click Action set to 'Play and go to Main UI' (which is the default, but you might have changed it).

Then once you have opened an album page (i.e. the page you have shown above) just tap on whichever song you want to start listening to - mostly likely just the first song in the list. Note: if you instead use the 'Play' or 'Shuffle' icons in the header area, PA will start playback but remain in the list rather than going to the Player Screen.

As to your second question, there are about ten different display styles for each category and level, including several text-only list formats. Just two-finger-pinch in or out to change them. You can also select specific ones directly by using (menu) > List Options.

@maxmp This question just reminded me: a while ago there was a request to make those two 'Play' and 'Shuffle' header icons respect the user's choice of 'List Item Click Action', just like tapping on a song does. I think that would be a very good idea, as there's no reason for them to behave differently.

Andre

[mixmix]

@andrewilley THANK YOU. The amount of options, settings, etc is overwhelming at times. I did not know about the pinch zoom option to change the list display. brilliant. I was definitely pressing the play icon rather than the first song in the list - my mistake!

Random follow up, I often play all songs on random. every now and then a song is about to end and I REALLY want to hear the next song that would normally play on that album. Right now I then navigate out to the album, scroll the song list, and play that song, only to have to go back to random after.

Is there a smarter way to 'toggle random off' like I am trying to accomplish the painful way?

I do this on desktop with winamp - the playlist is all albums in order, so if I toggle random off, it'll just play songs in order, then move to the next album.

[andrewilley]

On the Player Screen, tap the Shuffle icon to cycle through the available shuffle modes - or turn it off completely, which will mean songs then play in their normal Category order (e.g. folders, album, All Songs, or whatever other mode you commenced playback). There are five options, so if you want to get more easily to 'Off' you can long-press on the Shuffle icon and choose 'Off' from the whole list.

This FAQ may help explain the different options:

One extra tip: if you want to change playback mode - say you started playing from the 'All Songs' category, but you now want to have a look at all the tracks in the current song's album instead - you can long-press on the cover artwork on the Player Screen (or use the three-dots menu) and choose to view a new Category - Folder, Album, Artist, or Genre. Then tap on the currently playing song within that list to return to the Player Screen but with playback continuing in the new order instead of 'All Songs' order. 

Andre

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, mixmix said:

Random follow up, I often play all songs on random. every now and then a song is about to end and I REALLY want to hear the next song that would normally play on that album. Right now I then navigate out to the album, scroll the song list, and play that song, only to have to go back to random after.

Another option for this is to long-press the album art on the now playing screen. A menu will pop up allowing you to choose to see the song’s associated Album, Artist, Genre, etc. So in your example you can choose “Album” and then play just those tracks. I find this very handy after listening in shuffle mode, when a track from a really good album prompts me to give the rest a listen.

[mixmix]

@andrewilley @MotleyG thanks again! working as I wanted

A request I'd make to the dev would be the ability to disable some of those shuffle modes - I only want to toggle between off and all songs, but need to long press or tape multiple times. still, what an app!

[andrewilley]

I know Max has plans to make that whole row of icons (Visualizations, Sleep, etc) user-configurable, with multiple different options and separate tap / long-press variants.

That would hopefully allow an old suggestion of mine to be implemented, which was to make tapping on the Shuffle icon a simple on/off toggle, while long-pressing could still be used to change modes (which is required a lot less frequently).

Andre

[mirko77]

On 9/28/2021 at 8:36 PM, andrewilley said:

This question just reminded me: a while ago there was a request to make those two 'Play' and 'Shuffle' header icons respect the user's choice of 'List Item Click Action', just like tapping on a song does. I think that would be a very good idea, as there's no reason for them to behave differently.

Hi, @andrewilley was this ever addressed? 

[maxmp]

@mirko77 no, the header functionality was not changed, nor I have any requests regarding this in the backlog.

[MotleyG]

6 minutes ago, maxmp said:

@mirko77 no, the header functionality was not changed, nor I have any requests regarding this in the backlog.

On 9/28/2021 at 2:36 PM, andrewilley said:

@maxmp This question just reminded me: a while ago there was a request to make those two 'Play' and 'Shuffle' header icons respect the user's choice of 'List Item Click Action', just like tapping on a song does. I think that would be a very good idea, as there's no reason for them to behave differently.

@maxmp There have been a few topics on this, asking to have the two "Play" and "Shuffle" icons go to the Now Playing screen when selected, similar to the other choices using the "List Item Click Action" function. I agree this would be useful.

Edited March 8, 2023 by MotleyG

[maxmp]

@MotleyG this is a small change so I can guess it can be added for the next builds. Thanks for the request!

[andrewilley]

<erm, cough> Max, this suggestion was actually in that summary of that dozen or so "easyish to code, but useful" feature requests that I summarised a couple of weeks ago, it was number 5.

Andre

[MotleyG]

16 hours ago, andrewilley said:

<erm, cough> Max, this suggestion was actually in that summary of that dozen or so "easyish to code, but useful" feature requests that I summarised a couple of weeks ago, it was number 5.

It was definitely your quote that I referenced there!👍

[andrewilley]

8 hours ago, MotleyG said:

It was definitely your quote that I referenced there!👍

I was actually referring to a very much more recent email conversation that I had with Max, about the idea of trying to pick off a number of the easier "low hanging fruit" requests, and summarising some likely contenders. But yes, I did comment about it in this thread too, back in Sept 2021.

Andre

[mirko77]

Thanks all, sounds great!