Stop Button or Clear 'Now Playing' at end of category

[Michael Glasson]

I see there are many posts related to ways to stop Poweramp and to clear the player. Despite having used Poweramp for many years, I still find it hard to know if something is really missing, or if I have just not found out how to do something. There is no stop button, so all I can do is play/pause the current category. My car player and probably many others do not have a stop button either and I think I get why people might think of a stop button as being redundant. At the same time, with the last song still on the screen at the end of a category a press of the play button will restart that song. In the car, a stray, car-initiated 'play' event on Bluetooth connection will start the last song. I would love the player to just have a clear, 'playing nothing' screen either at the end of the category (optionally I guess), or a stop button to clear the current category. As it stands, it seems there is no way to get to a 'clean slate'. A stop button would have the same effect - clearing the player back to not playing anything and not having any active category in the UI - but you could press it at any time.

So much of the time on my phone's home screen or in the player UI, I see that active category sitting on the last item, just waiting to be played again accidentally. When I am not playing anything, I would really like the player to be in a 'clear' state. Yes, I know that all I need to do to get rid of the 'now playing' list is to pick another category, but I would really like to have the ability for the player to be completely clear. It would prevent accidental plays, but it would also give me the confidence that when I press stop, the player is clear. Does this make sense? 

[MotleyG]

57 minutes ago, Michael Glasson said:

So much of the time on my phone's home screen or in the player UI, I see that active category sitting on the last item, just waiting to be played again accidentally.

I would think the same “accidental” play could happen just as easily while browsing through the library at any time.

There are more questions than answers with this potential feature request for a Stop function. What does a press of the Play button initiate from this state? What should be displayed on the Now Playing page while in this state? Where should the navigation Back function go?

As you did mention, almost all players in this age have done away with the traditional Stop button. With no physical media to actually stop, I can’t see what this would accomplish other than add at least one extra step to start playing again.

[Michael Glasson]

Thanks for your response, MotleyG. I can see I will get no joy from further persisting with the stop button idea, although I will say that my Plex player has a very nice stop button that clears the 'now playing' item, closes the player controls, leaves me with a clean library view and allows me to choose something else to play. Perhaps I may have better luck with a more modest proposal simply to have the option of closing the player UI (and any open home screen notifications) when the end of a category is reached and returning me to the library view. Would that make sense. If I had an option to do that, it would give me a clear cue that I have reached the end of my selection and might like to pick something else to play. It would relieve me of the need to look at the track count to see that I have indeed reached track n of n and have therefore reached the end of my selection.

In relation to the 'accidental' play, I have seen this mentioned in the forum by people who find that a car's music player issues a 'play' command to the player on Bluetooth connection. This is not remedied by turning off the 'resume playing on Bluetooth' toggle, as it is a car-initiated play command. The last thing I want to do when I get in my car is work out how to stop the music. I would prefer, when an album is finished, not to have the last track sitting in the player UI. That way, there would be nothing to play when the car sends the play command on Bluetooth connection. 

How about that?

[andrewilley]

Long-press on the Play/Pause button on the app Player Screen to Stop rather than pause.

The current track will still remain loaded on the Player Screen though (stopped at 0:00) as there is no way for the player screen to be empty; even on first app install it will default to the first song in the All Songs list.

Andre

[Michael Glasson]

Thanks for your response @andrewilley. Before I read your response, I did indeed reinstall Poweramp and saw that the first song in the All Songs list was all cued up and ready to go. I think I may have confused Poweramp's behaviour with that of PlexAmp, which I use when I am at home and in WiFi range. It seems that PlexAmp simply closes the player part of its UI either when the stop button is pressed or it reaches the end of its 'now playing' list. There are, of course, play buttons in the library and these buttons launch the player component. In some of those other products, there seems to be a slightly greater separation betweent the player and library components, a separation that allows the player to be closed on reaching the end of whatever it was asked to play. The stop button has the same effect - it stops and closes the player component. For some reason, I find that behaviour more intuitive than Poweramp's always-open player component.

It seems that there is no way that Poweramp is likely to provide anything like that kind of experience. To be fair, it may only be the in-car experience, where it seems the car issues a 'play' command when Bluetooth connection is established that is really inconvenient and is not remediable by toggling the 'resume playing on Bluetooth' setting.

I have been and will continue to be a keen user of Poweramp when I am on the move. Thanks again for your responses @andrewilley and @MotleyG.

[andrewilley]

Correct, Poweramp does not have a "no song" mode - if there is anything at all in your music library then something has to be the current song in the Player Screen. I believe there are a lot of bits of code that rely on that functionality, so I can't see it changing any time soon unless the occasionally mooted "Queue Only" operating mode ever gets implemented (in which case I assume that when all of the user's queued music is finished the player would need to enter a stopped/unloaded state). 

Andre

[w3wilkes]

On 6/12/2023 at 2:32 AM, andrewilley said:

unless the occasionally mooted "Queue Only" operating mode ever gets implemented (in which case I assume that when all of the user's queued music is finished the player would need to enter a stopped/unloaded state). 

And as you know, I'm a fan of what a great feature the "Queue Only" mode would be!

[Michael Glasson]

5 hours ago, w3wilkes said:

And as you know, I'm a fan of what a great feature the "Queue Only" mode would be!

I think I agree with you, @w3wilkes. "Queue Only" mode probably would do it, although, if @andrewilley is correct, to implement that mode the developer would indeed need to touch "lots of bits of code that rely on that [something has to be the current song in the Player Screen] functionality".

[andrewilley]

1 hour ago, Michael Glasson said:

to implement that mode the developer would indeed need to touch "lots of bits of code that rely on that [something has to be the current song in the Player Screen] functionality".

Not to mention a whole host of other processes would need re-working, such as Repeat, Shuffle, removing Next/Prev Category, and all sorts of other functionality that currently exists from the currently playing song to other places. 

Andre