Meld 0.8.1 — I'm back! 🎧

First of all, I owe you an apology. For the past few months I had to step away from Meld for personal health reasons, and development slowed to a stop. I know many of you were waiting on fixes, and I'm sorry for the silence.

The good news: I've recovered, and I'm back to actively developing Meld. 🎉 Thank you for your patience, your kind messages, and for sticking around — and a special thank-you to the contributors who kept things moving while I was away. It means the world.

This release brings a big round of performance work, a lot of bug fixes, and several community contributions.

⚡ Faster and smoother (Spotify)

• Songs start playing noticeably quicker — the app no longer makes you wait while it builds your radio queue in the background.
• The home screen and your library load faster by fetching things at the same time instead of one after another.
• Shuffling a large playlist or your Liked Songs is now much quicker.
• Smoother scrolling and lower data use on the home screen thanks to smarter image loading.
• The app feels more instant when you reopen it, and wastes less time re-downloading data you already have.

🔒 More reliable

• Fixed playback errors (the "403" issue) that could stop songs from playing — thanks @ufoptg (#199).
• Fixed some tracks being slow to start or failing to play (YouTube playback path reworked).
• Fixed a rare issue that could match the wrong song or misbehave while loading big queues.
• Logging out now fully clears your data, so logging back in (or switching accounts) always shows the correct library.
• "Stop music when the app is closed" now works reliably when you swipe the app away.
• Your Spotify Liked Songs now play in the correct order.
• You can now like a song from the notification even if it wasn't downloaded yet.
• Fixed a crash on the Stats screen, a sudden volume jump when another app started playing, and the app needlessly running in the background after a reboot.
• Fixed a startup error related to Listen Together.

🎨 Nicer to look at & listen to

• Sharper, higher-quality album artwork in the player — thanks @alexanderfrit (#214).
• Synced, scrolling lyrics for YouTube-sourced songs (instead of a static block of text).
• Improved Last.fm scrobbling, including surfacing scrobbles that were previously ignored — thanks @sangimed (#218).

🛠️ For contributors

• A Docker-based development environment and contributing docs to make it easier to build and help out — thanks @sangimed (#219).

🙌 Thanks to this release's contributors

• @ufoptg — playback 403 fix (#199)
• @alexanderfrit — album artwork quality (#214)
• @sangimed — Last.fm scrobbling fixes (#218) and the Docker dev setup + contributing docs (#219)

👀 What's next

Now that I'm back, I'll pick development up properly — reviewing pull requests, fixing bugs, and continuing to improve the app. Found something broken? Please open an issue on GitHub.

Thank you again for your support. It's good to be back. 🙏