Frequently Requested Features Index List

[andrewilley]

Something that I've been meaning to do for a while is create is an overarching post to provide consolidated links to some of the commonly discussed Feature Requests, to try to avoid duplicate threads getting started all the time. Regular readers here will know there are lots of them. To get the ball rolling, here are some starter subjects off the top of my head (more links to be added, no more than 2-3 example threads per item, although there may have been others over the years).

This post is NOT going to include every little one-off request, but just the things that keep cropping up. Also it is clearly not a to-do list or an app roadmap as some of these things may not even be on Max's radar at all.

User Interface Elements

• 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 ]
• A-B Repeat. [ LINK ]
• Improvement of the text descriptions in Repeat button to avoid new-user confusion with terms like 'Advance Category'. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• Add extra increments to Sleep Timer and a gradual fade-at-end feature, and include a user-activity based reset. [ LINK1  LINK2]
• Customise swipe/tap gestures on cover artwork, plus edit the functionality of the four icons below the cover area [ LINK1  LINK2 ]
• The Android 'Back' button should always go back to the previously viewed screen, only acting as a library navigation tool if that's where you previously came from [ LINK ]

Core App Feature Developments

• Synced/scrolling Lyrics from tags, including LRC file support. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ] <-- Feature added to PA build 948
• 'Now Playing' view, showing a flat scrollable list of the history of what has been played so far during the current playback session, and all upcoming planned tracks, as a flat list. [ LINK1  LINK2 ]
• 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 ]
• Insert into Playlist/Queue at start of the list, or in shuffled order [ LINK1  LINK2 ]  <-- Feature added to PA build 934
• 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)
• Increased customisation of category sorting options, such as supporting Genres>Artists>Albums>songs or Artists>Albums-by-Year>songs. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• Statistics via a Library item (total songs/albums/artists with durations, overall play count this week/month, etc) [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]   
• Support for reading and sorting yyyy-mm-dd dates instead of just Year.
• Display and sort by BPM (Beats Per Minute) tag. [ LINK1  LINK2 ]
• Smart sorting of alphanumeric fields (e.g. sort compound-numbers as whole numeric items, improved sorting of non-English characters, ignore punctuation marks at the start of text tags, etc). [ LINK ]
• Add user-definable Article wording (e.g. support for users to ignore "The", "An", "A" in their own languages). 
• 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)
• Writing selected Cover Artwork back into files as embedded data [ LINK  LINK  LINK  LINK ]
• '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 ]

Audio Features

• 'No Resample' mode (sometimes misnamed as "bit perfect") where the output is adjusted automatically to match each source file's frequency / bit-depth. [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• Pitch changing in addition to the current Tempo feature (e.g. for 432Hz re-tuning). [ LINK1  LINK2  LINK3 ]
• 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).
• Segue / "Radio" Crossfade option (to prevent crossfades occurring which fade abrupt endings or hard-starts of songs)  
• Output to other products (DLNA or UPnP devices, smart speakers such as Sonos, etc). [ LINK ]
• Library access to local sources (e.g. playback of songs from home DLNA or NAS servers, SMB/FTP access, etc).
• Library access to users' cloud sources (e.g. playing your music from Google Drive, Dropbox, or other online locations).
• Access to commercial streaming services (Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, etc).   <-- Note: unlikely to happen due to licensing restrictions

I will edit this post to add items over the next few days, but feel free to comment with suggestions of existing discussions that could be linked here, and I will insert suitable content into this post. Please do NOT discuss the actual requests in detail here, as that should still happen in the individual threads; this is merely going to be a bullet-point index thread to help new users find existing discussions.

For clarity, I will remove most of the follow-up comments from this thread once the content has been incorporated into this main index post, so any such discussions could be lost anyway.

Andre

[andrewilley]

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

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

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]

@DJK Added Segue / Smart "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). Yes, a popular request, but probably lagging behind improved lyrics support and "bit perfect" (i.e. no resampling of frequencies/bitrates).

Andre

[andrewilley]

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

Andre

[andrewilley]

5 hours ago, rayark9 said:

Selecting and moving multiple tracks up or down in playlists instead of one track at a time 

Suggestion Added.

By the way, it would be helpful to provide links to at least a couple of existing threads when suggesting items to be added to this List. Thanks.

Andre