Frequently Requested Features Index and Voting List

[andrewilley]

This is an index of the most commonly discussed Feature Requests to help new users find existing conversations and try to avoid duplicate threads. Please do not add any specific request discussions to this thread as that should still happen in the individual subject threads (see links) and any follow-up comments here may be moved/deleted.

There is now also an opportunity for users to upvote their favourite features for developer consideration. Use the [VOTE] links below to see more details and upvote/downvote. Voting is available to registered site members only, with one vote per person per subject. There is no point in simply voting for everything as that would make each of your individual votes statistically meaningless. CLICK HERE to see the current leaders.

Note: New members cannot Vote immediately, or view individual topics. 2 days membership and 2 valid forum posts are required for voting. You can still view the overall list though.

Player Screen Interface Elements

• [VOTE] User-defined Title and Artist/Album text fields (customise the two lines of information in lists and Player screen using %tagname% formatting). Also allow similar customisation of metadata notes in lists. [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] A-B Repeat, including the ability to (optionally) include an out-point in Bookmarked songs so a repeat cycle can be revisited later. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3  LINK4 ]
• [VOTE] Improve wording of the Repeat button to avoid confusing terms like 'Advance Category', thus: Play One Song | Play Category | Play All Categories | Repeat Song | Repeat Category | Repeat All Categories.  [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] Add extra increments to Sleep Timer and a more gentle fade-at-end feature, and include an activity-based reset (e.g. go to sleep 15 minutes after there have been no further user interactions). [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] Add option for the metadata line to display the current Category - e.g. "Playlist: <playlist title>", "Album: <album name>", etc.
• [VOTE] Add an icon to indicate if the source file is high-resolution - e.g. no icon under 88k, 88k to 192k as high-res, and above 192k as very high res. Dim the icon a little if the current Output mode is not sufficiently high-res for the file contents.
• [VOTE] Customise swipe/tap gestures on cover artwork, plus allow editing the functionality of the four icons below the cover area: Viz/Sleep/Repeat/Shuffle [ LINK1  LINK2 ]
• [VOTE] Option for the Android 'Back' button to always go back to the previously viewed screen, only acting as a library navigation tool if that's where you previously came from [ LINK ]
• [COMPLETE] In Settings and elsewhere, the Player Screen is variously referred to as the "Player User Interface", "Player UI", or "Main Screen". Suggest "Player Screen" be used consistently throughout to avoid confusion.
• [VOTE] Add an optional layout for larger horizontal screens featuring the player interface and controls on one side, and the Library song list on the other. [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] Provide tickboxes in the Save/Assign feature in the Equalizer screen to specify which items to store in the preset - EQ, Tone, Preamp, Balance, Tempo, StereoX, Reverb, etc [ LINK LINK LINK ] 
• [VOTE] Support adaptive text colouring or drop shadows, so text without a background box remains visible against any adaptive background colours. [ LINK ] 

Core App Features

• [COMPLETE] Synced/scrolling Lyrics from tags, including LRC file support. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ] <-- Feature added to PA build 948
• [VOTE] Allow editing of embedded Lyric data via the Info/Tags Editor. Also support auto-display of Lyrics (if present) on the main Player Screen - e.g. overlaid over the Album Art area. [ LINK ] 
• [VOTE] 'Now Playing' list view, showing a flat scrollable list of the history of what has been played so far, and upcoming planned tracks (not editable, but tappable to change to a new position in the long list). [ LINK1  LINK2 ]
• [VOTE] Allow changing the order of master Category items for the top-level Library view (using thumb sliders to move items up and down in the List Options menu).
• [COMPLETE] Insert into Playlist/Queue at start of the list, or in shuffled order [ LINK1  LINK2 ]  <-- Feature added to PA build 934
• [COMPLETE] Move multi-selected items up and down in Playlists or the Queue as a block, rather than just moving single songs [ LINK  LINK ].  (Note: third-party app Music Playlist Manager app can help with this)
• [VOTE] Provide extra choices for the 'Play' and 'Shuffle' icons at the top of lists (via long-press). e.g. Play could also offer Play One Album or Repeat One Album, and Shuffle could offer different Song/Category choices.
• [VOTE] Make the 'Play' and 'Shuffle' icons at the top of lists respect the user's choice of 'List Item Click Action', for example opening the Player Screen when playback commences if that's what the user has chosen.
• [VOTE] More category sorting options, such as Genres>Artists>Albums>songs or Artists>Albums-by-Year>songs-by-Track#. Also for Playlists/Queue, Re-Sort by path/filename, by Artist>Album>Track#, and allow simple Reverse to invert the current order. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] List Options tickbox for 'smart' sorting of any alphanumeric fields - e.g. human-style sorting of long numbers (1,2,3,10,11,12,100,101,102), improved sorting of non-English characters, ignore punctuation marks at the start of text tags, etc. [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] Support BPM (Beats Per Minute) tag, and allow it to be used as a sorting method. [ LINK1  LINK2 LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] In the Library>Playlists view, add a 'List Options' choice to hide filename extenders (.M3U, .PLS, etc), instead using a small ‘file’ icon to distinguish between Internal and External playlists. Possibly support any title info included in the Playlist file.
• [VOTE] Show the 'Unknown' category entries ("Unknown Album", "Unknown Genre", etc) at the end of each Category list, as an appendix-style entry, rather than filing them under 'U'.
• [VOTE] In the Info/Tags screen, list any Playlists for which the current song is a member. Allow tapping on a Playlist name to go straight to the relevant view (same way as happens with Artist, Album, etc link).
• [VOTE] Include separator breaks (sub-headers) in appropriate list layouts, such as Disc# breaks within Album lists, Year headers when sorted By Year, and "Today", "Yesterday", "Last Week", "Last Month", etc when sorted by Date Added / Modified [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] Smart / Dynamic Playlists (support for wildcards in folder/filenames in M3U playlists, auto-filtering, and updating of lists ' on the fly' by pre-defined criteria) [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] Statistics via a Library item (total songs/albums/artists with durations, overall play count this week/month, etc) [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]   
• [VOTE] Support for reading and sorting yyyy-mm-dd dates instead of just Year. Should apply to long-format TYER tags, but also need to check if TDAT is present. No need to display full mm-dd data, just use it for better sorting accuracy.
• [VOTE] Add user-definable Article wording (e.g. support for users to ignore "The", "An", "A" in their own languages). 
• [VOTE] Reading/writing of Rating information (e.g. POPM tags) in physical audio files rather than only maintaining a local database [ LINK  LINK  LINK ].  (Note: third-party app Music Playlist Manager can help with this)
• [VOTE] Provide a tickbox to assign manually downloaded cover artwork to the current track only, not only to the whole album.
• [VOTE] Writing selected Cover Artwork back into files as embedded data [ LINK  LINK  LINK  LINK ]
• [VOTE] 'Queue Only' mode, where playback occurs only as songs are added into the Queue, and there is no return back to a "complete-Library" system based on listening by Category. [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] 'Favourites' Library Category, where you would be able to add your own selections either as individual songs or Category items (such as a folder, an album, a playlist, etc) by long-pressing within the Library views. Should be possible to manually re-order and/or remove items. [ LINK  LINK ]
• [VOTE] Improve the usability of the Settings=>Audio=>Output menu, so you first see a list of physical devices (Speaker, Wired Headset/AUX, USB DAC, Bluetooth, Chromecast) and then underneath each device you select what audio method you wish to use for it (OpenSL ES, AudioTrack, Hi-Res, etc). The current method of choosing the method first, and then selecting what devices should use it, seems counter-intuitive and trips up some new users. 

Audio Features

• [VOTE] 'No Resample' mode (sometimes misnamed as "bit perfect") where the output is adjusted automatically to match each source file's frequency. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] Pitch changing in addition to the current Tempo feature (e.g. for 432Hz re-tuning). [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• [VOTE] Dynamic Normalise feature (to automatically raise and lower the volume on-the-fly as songs play - not just a per-track gain adjustment like the existing ReplayGain).
• [VOTE] Segue / "Radio" Crossfade option (to prevent crossfades occurring which fade across abrupt endings or hard-starts of songs). Also increase available length for crossfades.
• [VOTE] DSP support for Crossfeed (partially mix left and right channels to reduce very wide soundstage panning of stereo images). [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] Replay Gain scanning of Library content directly from within Poweramp, rather than requiring files to be pre-tagged.
• [VOTE] Add a 'Smart' option in Replay Gain menu, so Album Gain is automatically applied when listening to Albums, but Track Gain is used when listening to All Songs, Playlists, Queue, etc.
• [VOTE] Output to other products (DLNA or UPnP devices, smart speakers such as Sonos, etc). [ LINK ]
• [VOTE] Library access to local sources (e.g. playback of songs from home DLNA or NAS servers, SMB/FTP access, Jellyfin, Plex, etc).
• [VOTE]  Playback of users' cloud-stored content (e.g. playing your music from Google Drive, Dropbox, or other online locations).
• [N/A] Access to commercial streaming services (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc).   <-- Note: unlikely to happen due to licensing restrictions

[andrewilley]

@6b6561 Now Playing/Upcoming/History View thread added to list.

@w3wilkes BPM & Smart Playlists added to master list. 'Queue only mode' doesn't seem to have attracted any other requesters or discussion though, so doesn't really fit here as a common request. But it's still a Feature Request of course, so maybe Max will look at it at some point.

Added Segue / "Radio" Crossfading

@Mark89 Added Smart / Dynamic Playlists. (I thought I'd done that one already - I remember writing the text, but I must have forgotten to re-save the post).

Added suggestion by @monkeybutt for a Statistics page, presumably in the Library Categories list.

@rayark9 Suggestion for Selecting and Moving multiple tracks up or down in playlists instead of one track at a time added.

Skin requests are not really applicable here, this thread will be for core app features.

Note: Comment posts will be removed or moved elsewhere for clarity once the suggested item has been added to the main list. I don't want this turning into a discussion of its own, please follow-up in the related threads.

Andre

[andrewilley]

For anyone following this, I've just updated the above 'Frequently Requested Features' list with a few new items, including some smaller things that I hadn't included before but which would help answer fairly common queries and user-confusions.

As always, any comments on regularly requested items (ideally with links) that I've missed are welcome.

Andre

[maxmp]

I will open the forum voting area quite soon (for all registered members) so we can prioritize things from this list. Most of the Poweramp features were requested by users, but previously they were randomly picked from the list of the requests.

[andrewilley]

Replying to another thread made me think that there ought to be an element of "time-involved" built into any voting system. Some requests could possibly be done in a few minutes/hours (wording changes in menus for example) while others might take several days to a week or more, and yet others would need a lot more extensive coding and testing time. While a lot of people might vote for supporting SMB/DLNA/uPnP/cloud storage, implementing that could take as long as adding dozen of smaller more trivial requests - the sorts of things I've previously referred to as "low hanging fruit" tasks.

Perhaps there could be three categories of request for member voting: quick, medium, and long-term. That way, minor requests that could be knocked off the list quickly can be prioritised separately from major projects.

Andre

[maxmp]

Added the voting section here: https://forum.powerampapp.com/ideas/category/6-poweramp-player/

You can now vote for your favorite features.

It's filled with the relevant not-yet-implemented requests from this topic. The section will be further polished with more useful fields and tags.

[andrewilley]

I'll add links into the master post too, to make it easier to find the items that you want to vote for, should have it done by tomorrow.

[Done. You can now go to the voting page from any item in the above post] 

Andre

[andrewilley]

We've removed the ability for users to add items directly to the Voting list, as it could quickly get out of hand and become unmanageable. However when existing Request threads get a lot of traction from multiple users, or there are multiple different threads on the same subject, new items may be added here and a matching voting topic created.

Comments to Votes are disabled, please continue any related discussions in the existing subject threads.

Andre

[andrewilley]

I've removed (for the time being at least) the ability to downvote Feature Request topics, as that option was becoming almost a "spite tool". This voting process is meant to allow people to indicate their personal favourite feature requests, not to knock other people's equally valid choices in batches. 

Andre

[Mark89]

I have some questions regarding idea voting.

1. Is there any time limit for voting?

2. What will happen to idea on 3rd or 4th place?

3. Is there any deadline for idea to get implement?

4. All(?) popular ideas will go to "Feature package" eventually? So why we voting? And will there be an addon app we must pay in order to use certain feature package?

 

Thanks

[maxmp]

@Mark89 1. Until idea feature is planned to be implemented
2. they will move up when higher voted ideas get implemented
3. the deadlines are not possible
4. if it's possible technically - yes. The voting helps prioritize one features over other. No addon app is planned.

Spoiler

Poweramp has absolutely no any trackers or anything that spy on user actions in the app so it's not always possible to guess what's really needed first. Other players may send clicks on each button and any action on any screen of the app to understand user behavior and preference better.