Finamp (github version) 0.9.20 beta

Hi everyone!
Welcome to the seventh Finamp beta update of the year!
It's been a while since the last update, with many of the core contributors being busy with life. That doesn't mean we don't have some exciting new features and improvements in store for you, though!
Check out the full release notes below for all the details!

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TL;DR

New Features:

• Edit playlists, including reordering tracks
• Redesigned playback options
• Custom accent colors

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed automatic offline mode not resuming in some scenarios
• Fixed playing wrong track when sorting randomly while offline
• Fixed gray overlay when reordering tracks
• Fixed lyrics not updating during a downloads repair
• Fixed various startup errors

Keep in mind that not all of the text in the beta has been translated yet. If you're missing a translation, you can now contribute it on Weblate!

Bug Fixes

• Fixed 🔗 Automated Offline Mode not resuming after overriding it once while in "Local Network" mode (thanks @flloschy!)
• Fixed colored bars appearing at the top and bottom of the screen in some cases when scrolling (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Fixed wrong track being played when tapping a track on the "Tracks" tab when using random sorting in offline mode
• Fixed gray/white overlay when reordering tracks in the queue (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Fixed gain (volume) not resetting properly for tracks without normalization data
• Fixed the new "album gain" (for consecutive tracks from the same album, when in "Dynamic" mode) when Finamp is in the background (thanks @HeroBrine1st)
  • Finamp would stop fetching some metadata while in the background, causing the wrong gain to be applied
• Fixed download errors after updating media images (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Fixed lyrics not updating during a downloads repair
• Fixed various startup errors (thanks @Komodo5197!)
  • When user-installed certificates can't be trusted
  • The database compaction file already exists
• Fixed finamp:// links opening in a broken second instance on Windows
• Fixed local server address sometimes not saving after editing it

What's New

Playlist Editing (thanks @F-4Dev for the initial implementation!)

One of Finamp's long-standing limitations as a music client has been that it wasn't possible to reorder the tracks of a playlist.
While we've recently added the ability to change the sorting of playlists within the apps, this is only temporary and not synced with other clients.

So we're happy to let you know that this is finally possible, using the brand new edit playlist screen!
If your user account is the owner of a playlist (and you're not offline), you should now see a new option in the top bar and menu of playlists that lets you edit the playlist. This will open the playlist in an edit view where you can change its name, visibility, image, and tracks.
You can rearrange tracks, remove them, and also restore them from the bottom if you removed them by accident. In the future we'll also give you a away to easily add more tracks to the playlist, for now you'll have to use the menu of the item you want to add for this.

Keep in mind that in order to update the playlist image, your user account needs to be able to change media metadata in Jellyfin, which is tied to the administrator permission ("Allow this user to manage the server"). The Jellyfin team recommends not using admin accounts in normal clients (like Finamp), so you might still want to use the Jellyfin app to manage your playlist images.

New Playback Row Interaction (thanks @lukaslindnermusic!)

In a previous update we've simplified Finamp's menus, integrating all options for playback into a single, horizontally-paged row that lets you play, shuffle, and queue up an item.

In this update, we've extended this to the actual album, playlist, artist, and genre screens as well.
Instead of having two large, colorful buttons for play and shuffle, you now get this "Playback Row" that has all former options and more, and will remember the last-used "target" for playback (i.e., adding to queue, to Next Up, or starting playback right away).
As part of this, we've changed the categories for the playback row, from "Play" and "Shuffle" to "New Queue", "Play Next", "Append Next", and "Play Last", with options for playing in order or shuffled in each category.

All of this should make playback options more apparent, make Finamp's design a bit more coherent, and reduce needed taps for frequent actions. The menu button has moved to the top right of the screen as part of this change.

We hope you like this new interaction!

Custom Accent Color (thanks @likhithpraveenk!)

While Finamp lives from its adaptive colors based on media images, there are some parts of the app that were always a certain shade of blue. This is Finamp's default accent color.

With this update however you can now change this accent color to whatever color you like! The accent color will then be used to create a cohesive theme that is used in all parts of the app that aren't adaptively themed.
Right now this is limited to one single, static color, but we hope to integrate Android's adaptive "Monet" theming (based on the device wallpaper) down the road. We appreciate any assistance with implementing that :)

Play Individual Discs of Albums (thanks @HeroBrine1st!)

Since albums disc are sometimes split into different types of tracks (acoustic versions, instrumental, etc.) we've now added the ability to play just a single disc of an album. The disc header can now be tapped, swiped, or long pressed, just like a track can be. And similar to albums, you can play, shuffle, add to Next Up, and so on!

Word-by-Word Lyrics Highlighting! (thanks @Maxr1998!)

This was actually already implemented in 0.9.19, but we're including it here since coincidentally the new Jellyfin update 10.11.x just got released, which is required for this feature to work.
If you have synced lyrics in the required format (with word-level timestamps), Finamp will now use these to highlight the current word in proper Karaoke fashion!

*Please keep in mind that we don't recommend upgrading to 10.11 at this time (see the top of these release notes). However, if you're excited for this feature, it should be working just fine.

When is the Home Screen finally coming?!?

At the end of last release notes we noted that discussion was still ongoing. We've now settled on an improved design, that stays very close to Finamp's existing structure and navigation, while still introducing the home screen as a central hub for browsing suggestions.
So while this update does not, the next update will include the new home screen. This will most likely be the last major change before this beta version transitions to the stable channel. Thank you for being patient with us!

Other Changes

• Reduced the amount of errors queued up, limiting them to unique errors and silencing some common but unproblematic errors completely
• Finamp now correctly reports the transcoding status to the server
  • Due to some limitations in the Jellyfin API, not all infos (target codec, bitrate, reason) are reported, but it doesn't say "Direct Playing" anymore when it's actually transcoding
• Added a setting to toggle favorite state on tap instead of opening the add to playlist menu (thanks @HeroBrine1st!)
  • 🔗 "Add to Favorites When Tapping Heart Icon"
• Added a setting to automatically start playing restored queues (including on startup!) (thanks @Komodo5197!)
  • 🔗 "Automatically Play Restored Queues"
• Enable the "Fast Scroller" (alphabet bar) when sorting by album artist on the albums and tracks tabs (thanks @Maxr1998!)
• Disabled adding items to "Next Up" (or playing them next) on Windows and Linux
  • This currently isn't working due to a bug in a library we use, and it's causing bugs and confusion
• Updated the base volume normalization gain on iOS and desktop, to increase the default volume for most libraries
• Finamp now remembers the last state of the previous tracks section in the queue panel, so that the next time you open the queue the previous tracks are still expanded, if they were expanded before you closed the panel
• Scroll bars on the lyrics screen are now only shown when manually scrolling (thanks @ios7jbpro and @Komodo5197!)
• External downloads now use an improved directory structure and the original file name for downloaded tracks
  • This change does not apply to already downloaded media
• When trying to add a download location in an unsupported location, Finamp will now warn you about potential issues (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Many more improvements to details and performance that you might notice (mostly contributed by @Komodo5197, thanks!)

New Settings

• Toggle between opening add to playlist menu or adding to favorites when "liking"
  • The alternative action is always available via long press (or right click)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Interactions" > "Add to Favorites When Tapping Heart Icon"
  • Default is disabled (unchanged)
• Automatically start playing queues that have been restored (manually via "Restore Now Playing", or on startup)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Audio Service" > "Automatically Play Restored Queues"
  • Default is disabled (unchanged)

Changed Settings

• Default of "Base Gain" changed
  • Default is now +6.0 (changed from -2.0)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Volume Normalization" > "Base Gain"
  • You'll have to apply the new defaults manually (if you want to use them)
• Default of "Show text in grid view" changed
  • Default is now off (changed from on)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Layout & Theme" > "Show text in grid view"
  • You'll have to apply the new defaults manually (if you want to use them)
• Default of "Download Worker count" changed
  • Default is now 1 (changed from 5)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Downloads" > "Download Worker count"
  • The maximum value has been decreased from 10 to 5
  • You'll have to apply the new defaults manually (if you want to use them)
• Default of "Max Concurrent Downloads" changed
  • Default is now 5 (changed from 10)
  • 🔗 Settings > "Downloads" > "Max Concurrent Downloads"
  • The maximum value has been decreased from 100 to 25
  • You'll have to apply the new defaults manually (if you want to use them)

Upcoming Features

We have a lot of features planned for the future, and we're always open to new ideas. Here are some of the things that we're planning to add:

• A proper home screen
• Radio modes for continuous playback
• Desktop Support
  • This is now in a "soft release" stage, where it might already be available for your platform. An official release will happen in the future, but is currently not a priority.
• ???

You can take a look at the full list and current progress in the Redesign project.
We also have a more up-to-date hackathon project board: https://github.com/users/jmshrv/projects/5

Let's hope we can push out the next update a bit faster, on our way to the finish line of a proper stable release!
We're still looking for new contributors and hope that you'll help us make this app even better!
Thank you for using Finamp!

- Chaphasilor

New Contributors

• @ios7jbpro made their first contribution in #1371
• @likhithpraveenk made their first contribution in #1406

Download Links

• Google Play: Join the beta
• TestFlight: Join the beta
• Android .apk: see below
• F-Droid: not available, see above
• Flathub: Download the alpha
• macOS .app: see below for the alpha version