A small rant about Poweramp's UI

[BooFar]

Here's a non-exhaustive list of UI-related annoyances I found while using Poweramp:

• When using simple seekbar there's an awkward amount of space between the VTRS buttons/album art and the seekbar.
• The album view will not display the full album art, only a cropped version of it. I need to play one of the songs in order to see it.
• In the now playing view, clicking on an artist will not bring me to the artist.
• Clicking on the title will bring me to the album, but only if I have started the song from the album view.
• I can't swipe a track to queue it in library view
• Instead, swiping in either direction will transport me to the previous view. Why? I already have two different ways of doing this, namely the back button on the navbar, and the one on top.
• But it's not really the previous view either, it's the "hierarchical predecessor" or however you want to call it. And again, the back button has the same functionality. So unlike every other android app, you can not rely on the back button to actually bring you back. This is particularly annoying while I'm browsing some unrelated album and have another playing track, and I want to, say, toggle shuffling. I go to now playing and now there's no way to go back, because both the back button and swiping down will bring me to the album of the currently playing track (which, again, is already possible by clicking on the title!).
• Disorienting, slow, and needlessly fancy animations while browsing. When I swipe down now playing, I don't need to see how the track slides into the track list and how the album art moves away in another direction. This is the kind of thing that could wow you in a video, but not something that's actually nice to use. There's a reason why many of the most popular apps do not have this despite millions of dollars spent on UI. It's not because they lack imagination or "don't care", it's about minimizing confusion and focusing on the content rather than the animations surrounding it.
• What do I have queued? I don't know, peeking by swiping the album art in now playing will only show me what's next ignoring the queue. Instead, I need to press the library button in the bottom, then go to the queue (which is also approximately one button press too many for such an important function).
• No more queued items? Well now there is literally no way to know what's next unless you remember what was playing before the queue. Peeking will simply show "Leave Queue". Not good!
• When I click on the previous song button, I expect to hear the previous song, regardless if it was one that I manually queued or not. This is not what happens. As soon as I exit the queue, the prev. song button will go back to whatever was playing before the queue.

Overall, using Poweramp feels like what I imagine piloting a huge container ship is like after somebody crossed the wires in the control panel. I struggle to think of another app with a UI so unintuitive. I admit - I don't play music on my smartphone each day. I can sometimes go for months without using a player. But somehow, when I open any other app, even if it's one I use far less, I never struggle as much with navigation as I do while using Poweramp. It's all a big shame because everything else about it is great. I really hope the dev(s) decide to take a look at a usual android app and realize that maybe some parts don't need much experimentation. And before anybody accuses me of trying to make PA "just like every other app" (because I've seen a lot of this under almost every post about these issues), please consider that I can strawman your arguments as well and that a red square obstructing the view, while certainly unique, is not something an android app needs.

[andrewilley]

Rather too much in one post to address everything individually, but many of the points you make about duplicate functionality came about when new features were added (especially at the point of adding Material Design elements) but old methods were also retained for compatibility and existing user comfort. Hence there now being multiple routes to the same end. I do agree that left and right swipes in category lists both doing the same thing is counter-intuitive by the way - maybe that's something that could be looked at in future releases? The Back button has always been used to move up category hierarchies, but again maybe that's something that could be looked at in the future to make it an option? See also the Frequently Requested Features list which covers some of these requests.  

Re: Empty space in skins if you hide the waveseek feature. Yes, this may look a bit gappy if you hide a large UI element, especially on taller screens. I have both modes enabled on the same screen by the way, but that is only available via third-party skins.  

You should always be able to see the whole of any given album cover (even if the artwork is in a non-square ratio). Build 963 has a minor bug showing coverall artwork in album lists, which will be addressed in the next beta release.

Animations between views just add a bit of visual flair to the app, and are common for transitions in other apps too. They take up a negligible amount of time to effect the transition, so I can't really see a problem with them.  

Tapping on the artwork or title will take you to the current song within the currently playing category. To see it in another category view, long-press on the artwork (or tap the three-dots menu icon - it's another dual access route) and choose Album, Artist, Folder, or Genre. Also available from the Info/Tags display. I agree that it might be nice for that functionality to be duplicated (somewhat ironically!) by tapping on the Artist or Alum title in the Player Screen. 

Re: Queue. I think you perhaps misunderstand Poweramp's Queue: it is not the primary playback method, it is merely a way to temporarily pause and jump away from normal playback (of albums, folders, etc) to listen to a few specific songs (or more if you wish) before returning to regular listening. You can see the list of queued songs by either selecting 'Queue' in the Library view, or if the Queue is currently playing you can just tap on the album artwork. Once the queue is finished, the expired songs won't be revisited unless you manually select them from the history kept in the 'Queue' Library Category. 

Andre

[MotleyG]

I would think with such a long list of gripes, it may be an indication that Poweramp just doesn’t meet your expectations. Good thing the trial was free.

[andrewilley]

@MotleyG You do have a point there. When a new user writes a 10+ bullet point (non-exhaustive) list of things they don't like about an app, you do start to wonder whether it's the right app from them...
 

Temporarily putting a "new user" hat on for a moment though, there are a couple of points I do agree with:

We could do with a 'Back means Back' option, so pressing the Back button uses a history of the screens previously visited to correctly recurse back through them. I'm sure I'd struggle a bit at first with muscle memory when performing Library view operations (after all, it's been this way for 15 years or so!) but let's face it there are several other methods to simply go up one level in the Library hierarchy - top button, left/right swiping - so having the Back button do the exact same thing could be regarded as a wasted opportunity. 

And on the subject of left-right swiping in Categories, I agree that it makes no intuitive sense for swiping in either direction to do the same thing. I would like left-swipe to do what it does at the moment and go up one level in the Library hierarchy, but right-swipe should do the reverse and return you to the view you were previously using - which again would need a history memory to support returning to the same place. So in a Songs list, swipe left would take you to the Albums level, then Artists, etc just as at present. But swiping right at Artists should return you to the most recently viewed Artist>Albums list, and then the next right-swipe to the original songs list. Basically just make horizontal swiping a reversible action.

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley I really hope there will be a "feature" for the back button to behave normally. Together with the queue this is my biggest problem with the UI. But it seems that users have been asking about it for a while to no avail.

Regarding the queue, it's a fairly standard feature in music apps, desktop or mobile. Poweramp's queue is harder to access (there should probably just be a button in now playing), and limited inasmuch as it only shows what has been manually queued rather than every upcoming track. There's this peeking issue in now playing I mentioned as well. I don't think having a normal queue would be detrimental to any use case simply because it just does more. Well, I guess going to previous or next track would be different as the queued items wouldn't disappear anymore as soon you exit the queue, but that can be an option as well like in GoneMAD. Even without such an option you'd be able to remove the previous manually queued tracks by editing the queue.

Also, I really think there should be an option to disable (navigation) animations. I find them very distracting.

@MotleyG Actually, I've been using Poweramp for a while and I do have the full version. I'm only a new user on the forum. I didn't bother to write about it before because I thought I'd get used to it, but here I am. We all know that PA has features unrelated to its UI which make it good, but that's exactly why I'm so frustrated by the UI. GoneMAD is another player I like, but it just doesn't sound as good, and I have no idea what kind of equalization wizardry Poweramp is doing behind the scenes. I wasn't able to recreate it in V4A.

[andrewilley]

As I said before, I personally agree that the option to make the Back button behave as a simple Back function would be quite welcome. However I seem to recall this has been requested from time to time since well prior to PA v3's first release seven years ago, so I'm guessing it's not been considered a priority.

Personally I don't see any problem with brief animations, they are a quick and unobtrusive indication of what content is transitioning between the screens. I know Max put a lot of work into honing them, and without them screen changes could be rather abrupt and jarring.

I think you still misunderstand what the Queue is for in Poweramp. It is not a regular playback method, but a way to temporarily pause and interrupt your normal album/folder/etc session in order to listen to some specific track (or tracks) without losing your place in your regular playback category. It is a stand-alone listening option, before returning to your regular listening.

I suspect what you may be looking for though is more in line with an existing Frequent Request for a 'Now Playing' (or 'Now and Next') feature that will show you a long list of upcoming songs (scrollable back to previous songs too):

On 4/28/2022 at 11:05 AM, andrewilley said:

• '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 ]

Andre

[samuelawachie]

Whatever you do, please DON’T change the way the Queue operates. It’s one of the reasons I feel PA is superior to many players. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by samuelawachie

[andrewilley]

52 minutes ago, samuelawachie said:

Whatever you do, please DON’T change the way the Queue operates. It’s one of the reasons I feel PA is superior to many players. 

Any potential future changes to the Queue's operational process would be optional, you would have to choose to use that redesigned method. If you didn't enable the new feature, the Queue would still operate in the current "temporary interruption to normal playback" manner.

Andre

[BooFar]

@samuelawachie Why though? I genuinely can't think of any use case where PA's implementation of the queue would be superior to a regular one like in Spotify.

[maxmp]

@BooFar we can't change it for existing users. Also Poweramp focus is a local storage playback, optimized for the huge libraries (which can be shuffled/played as a whole), with ability to play target lists directly, while queue based players are focused on the shorter playlists.

[andrewilley]

13 hours ago, BooFar said:

I genuinely can't think of any use case where PA's implementation of the queue would be superior to a regular one like in Spotify.

In Poweramp, the expectation is that the user has a neatly curated collection of their own personal choice of artists and music - unlike Spotify's 100+ million random tracks, 95% of which you probably won't like. PA's design philosophy is to provide ways to listen to that music collection in some sort of logical progression. 

This philosophy broadly results in three methods of listening:

1) By Library Category, ordered by the user's pre-defined choice of sorting method. This might mean listening to a specific Artist with their albums arranged chronologically and the tracks occurring in original order from the CD. Or perhaps a specific Genre, with randomly chosen Albums from that genre. Or listening to all of the songs from a particular Year played completely at random. The options are pretty limitless to be honest, but the order of what you hear is defined by the Library Category that you chose along with the Shuffle/Repeat modes in use.

2) Using a Playlist containing a specifically curated group of songs for a particular purpose. Perhaps you have all of the albums by ABBA, or Ultravox or Ed Sheeran, but you save playlists of your favourite 25 songs from each so you can listen to your own personal 'best of' collections. Or you want to build a list of quiet ambient tracks to listen to at night before you go to sleep. Or six hours of themed music for a party - the equivalent of your own personal Mix Tape - which you might choose toi play shuffled, or in the order you pre-defined. Again, uses are pretty limitless.

3) Finally there is the Queue, which is a way to temporarily break away from the regular listening mode to hear something different for a short while. So while you are listening to your 'Best of Ultravox' playlist something reminds you of a Blondie song that you loved, and you decide you want to listen it - or even the whole Parallel Lines album. You can add that Song or Album into the temporary Queue, which will cause PA to break away from Ultravox for a while to listen to Blondie (or anything else you might want to enqueue) and then you will be returned to your Ultravox playlist right where you left off afterwards.

If none of the above meet your requirements though - and I really can't see why, but everyone is different of course - then perhaps there are other media players out there that might suit you better?

Andre

[MrBertie]

@andrewilley Please could you add the above explanation of Category, Playlists, and Queue to the User Guide -- that was golden!

[andrewilley]

43 minutes ago, MrBertie said:

@andrewilley Please could you add the above explanation of Category, Playlists, and Queue to the User Guide -- that was golden!

It should all be covered in the relevant Guide anyway....

But if you think my more example-based post from yesterday was helpful, I could merge some of it into the above Guide?

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley I still don't understand.

My music player of choice is MusicBee on the desktop and most of my listening happens on an album basis; I listen to full albums, but the order of the albums themselves may change. Thus creating a playlist or organizing your files in a specific way is not an option. In MusicBee there's a view called "Playing Tracks" or "Upcoming Tracks", which is essentially the type of queue I was describing. If you play an album or playlist, all of its tracks will appear there in a neat list. You can reorder or remove them to your liking. On the one hand if, like you say, I am reminded of some other song while listening, I can temporarily interrupt normal playback with "Queue Next", which will insert the song immediately after the current one. On the other hand, I can queue the next album as well with "Queue Last", which will append the tracks to the end of the list (In mobile players there tends to be only one of these two options, but as long as you can easily reorder queued items it's fine). If I want to play my entire library in order, I can do that as well by selecting all albums and clicking play. Then all songs will appear in the list, and again, if I want to play an album after the current one, or after the next 5 or whatever, I will use "Queue Next" then simply drag the tracks to where I want them to be. And when playing shuffled, you can actually see the resulting order of the songs and skip ahead by clicking a name in a list rather than having to press "next song" several times. You can even start by queuing arbitrary tracks without an album or playlist, although I don't do that very often. Etc.

The point is that such a queue is useful regardless of your specific listening habits, and it seems to be superior to PA's queue in every way. Everything that has been mentioned in this thread I can do with a normal queue as well without any added overhead. Even if you always listen to your library in the exact same order, it's still nice to just have a view of all playing tracks.

[andrewilley]

@BooFar While still not considered to be the main playback method, Poweramp's Queue can already do much of what you discuss. You can add whole Albums (or Folders, etc) into the Queue in one operation, or even a multi-selection of items, using the '>>Queue' button. You can choose to insert the new content into the Queue at the start (i.e. for immediately playback) or at the End, or Shuffled. You can view the whole upcoming queue (Library=>Queue) and move items up and down the sequence manually - although currently that is only possible one song at a time, but there's a Feature Request to allow moving multi-selections as a block. You can even re-order the whole Queue by various sorting criteria using the 'Re-Sort' menu option, including fully shuffling the order which makes a permanent and visible change to the list (unlike simply changing the Shuffle icon in the Player Screen).

And if you don't want to drop back into Poweramp's normal Category-based playback after your enqueued tracks are finished, you can choose to stop at the end if you prefer, via the options in Settings=>Library=>Queue.

But I do agree that Poweramp is not MusicBee, not is it ever likely to be. In the same way that Samsung TVs are not Sony TVs or LG TVs, and their operating menu sequences are all different. And some cars have Reverse at the top-left of the shift stick, others have it at the bottom-right, and others are Automatic. Use whatever works best for you. 

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley Yes it's possible to do it, but you have to always queue everything in order to make use of these features. Doesn't help that the queue is harder to access than it should be.

No PA is not MusicBee. Nor is it any other music player. In fact, in terms of UI it is so unique that (by this analogy), it has the pedals in a different order than every other car manufacterer.

[MotleyG]

55 minutes ago, BooFar said:

No PA is not MusicBee. Nor is it any other music player. In fact, in terms of UI it is so unique that (by this analogy), it has the pedals in a different order than every other car manufacterer.

I also use both Poweramp and MusicBee, but have to disagree with this view. I have never had any challenges using either to play exactly what I want at any time. As a long time user of Poweramp, I do not want this to change.

What you have asked for here (several times, since your original lengthy list of personal gripes was posted) is a full disruption to how Poweramp implements it’s native method of the current playing list, and the additional temporary Queue. And the responses, including one from the developer, have repeatedly been that this isn’t going to change.

I’d suggest that you consider your current workflow. If you really are such an occasional user of a music player (sometimes months without need?) then certainly your Strawman arguments for change carry no weight in a community of serious everyday power users of this premium player that have a very different view.

There are many players apps available (like the cars analogy). It’s up to you to find one that fits your needs.

Edited June 25, 2023 by MotleyG

[BooFar]

@MotleyG No, what I'm suggesting is not really a disruption of anything. I have already explained why. Or maybe you can find something that PA's implementation can do unlike the queue I'm suggesting? All these vague platitudes in this thread, but I've yet to see a concrete example of how it's better in any way. Seriously, what exactly would you lose with a queue like that? At any rate, it can (and should, so as to avoid complaints from users like yourself) be made optional.

And you know, if the smartphone music player experience wasn't this bad, maybe I'd use it more. But you're right, I'm not one of the twenty "power users" who like to tell people off for suggesting that the app could be improved in any way (that does not involve adding another niche feature) whatsoever. Just one of a thousand paying customers whose opinion is irrelevant.

Edited June 25, 2023 by BooFar

[MotleyG]

1 hour ago, BooFar said:

Just one of a thousand paying customers whose opinion is irrelevant.

Not irrelevant, I think there are plenty of features that have been added and updated by recommendation from users. And there is a whole list of other regularly requested ones that may or may not get integrated some day.

I never said any of your points did not have some merit. But it probably wasn’t the best approach for a first post to list a dozen issues that didn’t meet your needs, and expect some friendly banter in response. And then to rebuke the replies from those that are most engaged with the development here (not me) because your suggestion didn’t get immediate attention is the part that likely buries it.

And I’d also suggest your numbers may be well off the mark as well. Perhaps by a factor of 50,000 or so. 

 

[BooFar]

@MotleyG This has already been suggested multiple times in a friendlier tone, so I figured I'd try something else. I was hoping for either an explanation of why it should remain this way, or an acknowledgement that it should definitely be improved. And not even @maxmp has been able to provide either. I wasn't counting on it at all though, so no hard feelings.

[andrewilley]

6 hours ago, BooFar said:

I was hoping for either an explanation of why it should remain this way, or an acknowledgement that it should definitely be improved. 

I have explained in detail how Poweramp works, and that is how it is intended to work. Which part would you like me to clarify?

Otherwise, we do seem to be descending into the territory of having visited a Chinese restaurant with loads of other happy customers and insisting that it ought to serve pizza and pasta instead for you.

Andre

[BooFar]

@andrewilley  I argue that everything you mentioned can be done with a normal queue. I can already use it to "temporarily break away from the regular listening mode", and it would not make it in any way harder to use PA like you do right now. It'd be useful in many other ways as well, which I mentioned in one of my above replies. PA's implementation does not offer any advantage.

[andrewilley]

What is a "normal queue" ? Is there an official spec for it somewhere? Or are you merely meaning you like the workflow process MusicBee has implemented? PA is not going to simply plagiarise the operation of other apps, it is its own entity - and has been for the best part of 15 years now.

That said, in various other Feature Requests threads there has been discussion of introducing an optional "Queue Only" operating mode, where the current queue system becomes a full-fledged playback category in its own right that never gets exited. See this thread:

But as a TL;DR, if implemented the request discussed in the above thread would basically mean that all playback control choices would affect only the Queue, which I suspect is what you mean by "normal queue":

• Tapping on any song in a list, or using the Play or Shuffle icons at the top of lists, would simply add the new item(s) to the queue of waiting songs, nothing would get played immediately. This is already partially available via Settings=>Library=>Lists=>List Item Click Action.
• Also as per existing functionality, the added content (such as songs, Albums, Artists, Folders, etc) could be placed at the End, inserted at the Start, or Shuffled within the Queue - and you can later move stuff around manually, delete items, or Re-Sort the whole Queue by different criteria. Hopefully an existing Feature Request to be able to move multi-selected songs as an entire block, rather than just dragging individual songs, would already have been implemented in the meatime.
• The Queue would remain active permanently, there would be no returning to listening to another existing Category. PA would stop playing at the end and remain waiting for more stuff to be enqueued. This is already an option via Settings=>Library=>Queue=>On Queue End.
• On the Player Screen, Shuffle would become a simple On/Off toggle (no category options) and Repeat would only act offer Play Queue, Repeat Queue, Play One Song, Repeat Song. There would be no '<<<' or '>>>' buttons on the player screen to move to the next/previous Category, as there would be no other categories available, just the list of individual songs in the Queue.

In fact, most of the first three items above are already supported via options, but there would still be quite a lot of work and testing to do to ensure that any areas of code which handle Category changing are properly blocked.

Andre

[samuelawachie]

On 6/26/2023 at 10:24 AM, andrewilley said:

What is a "normal queue" ? Is there an official spec for it somewhere? Or are you merely meaning you like the workflow process MusicBee has implemented? PA is not going to simply plagiarise the operation of other apps, it is its own entity - and has been for the best part of 15 years now.

 

I have had almost a word for word replica of this conversation with the Foobar2000 developer and sister developers in their Hydrogenaudio board where they hangout. 
I had to resort to using “Playlists Attributes” component to achieve a workaround to what I believe is a deficient implementation of what a Q should be. I also studied Computer Science so I understand both implementations and how they differ well. 
In that discussion, I even used Poweramp as the shining beacon of how a queue should be implemented. 
Anyway, it’s good to receive reassurance from Max here that the implementation he chose isn’t going anywhere. Coz if it goes, I go. (;

[BooFar]

@andrewilley A normal queue is one that is found in most music players. Think Spotify, Soundcloud, GoneMad, the aforementioned MusicBee, FooBar, etc. They all do it fairly similarly (or have an option to, although it's usually by default). There's no spec, same as how there's no official spec for what the back button should do, yet still most developers have agreed to do it in a particular way. PA disagrees. Sometimes it's good to deviate from the norm, sometimes it's bad, but either way you should think carefully whenever you do that. To me it seems like the queue wasn't thought through because again, a normal queue does everything that has been mentioned in this thread. Although what you're describing is something else. I'll try again.

• Clicking on an item would play it immediately (depending on your configured "List Item Click Action"), but all upcoming tracks would be added to the queue. Same goes for Play/Shuffle. You can still queue tracks (long press, then "Queue") which would insert it in the queue immediately after the current song. The upcoming tracks would be simply everything that Poweramp would normally play. The added advantage here is that you get to see the upcoming tracks and to rearrange their order to your liking. But if you do nothing, then nothing changes, it plays everything in the order you're used to.
• Yes, the queue would remain active permanently. But due to the above point it would not make a difference for users who prefer the old system.
• The shuffle categories, repeat category, advance category and other buttons would remain. The usual music player does not implement these though, so admittedly you'd need to do a bit more thinking.
  • First assume the queue can not be rearranged – then it only acts as a (clickable) display for all upcoming tracks. There would be no need to change the way PA shuffles, repeats or plays your music, and you won't need to remove any functionality, as it's only a convenient view (it's only part of the front-end, if you will).
  • Now assume that you can rearrange as well. Note that rearranging does not make each track's category disappear; songs will still remain within their albums and folder, and they will keep their genre and artist. So let's say you start with the following queue: [(A, B, C), {X, Y, Z}]. Here, A,B,C,X,Y,Z are individual songs, and the curly brackets and round brackets indicate that A,B,C are in a different category than X,Y,Z. Let's say I go to the queue and move song X just after A, yielding a new list [(A), {X}, (B, C), {Y, Z}]. Now A,B,C and X,Y,Z are still in their same categories, but the two categories are partially interleaved in the list. However, there's no reason to remove any of these category playback modes. In this case for example, starting at A and clicking '>>>' several times would take you to A, then X, then B, then Y. Repeating category would play A,B,C, and then A again. And so on.
    This way, these buttons are not affected unless you modify the queue (which should keep long-time users happy). If you do modify the queue, they still do what they say.

To reiterate: If you don't modify the queue, the overall play order & behavior would remain exactly the same as it is right now. So if you're perfectly happy with how PA plays your music, only view the queue if you want to see the next songs or albums when you're shuffling.

@samuelawachie It's cool that you studied CS, I did the same. But I fail to see how this is pertinent to the discussion. CS won't give you any new insights here unless we're talking about the underlying code which we are not. I'm still waiting for a concrete example of PA's queue doing something that the queue I'm suggesting can't do.

Edited June 28, 2023 by BooFar