Hi everyone!
To start off 2021 [cough cough 2020 - 1 cough cough], we are releasing the much expected v0.9 update. Thanks to everyone who has made and is continuing to make this project great and sustain!
For this release, I would like to give a big shout out to our good friend @ADeltaX, one of our core team member and a legend who has made contributions which we considered impossible. And as always, a "bIg ThAnKs" (lol no, he sucks!) to @ShankarBUS, co-owner and the "founder" (cough cough rebranded AudioFlyout cough cough) without whom this project would not be possible (nah I'm just lying).
And a huge huge thanks to our contributors!
This release includes code from a few new names, and I must extend our gratitude to them as well.
And finally, thanks to all our 65 thousand users, your support and feedback has been invaluable.
This year is looking to be exciting with all the new features planned and v1.0 release on the horizon.
Now to business, you’ve heard me blabbing on for long enough, this update is quite extensive and includes the following changes:
Release Notes:
Bug Fixes
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Fixed #29 - Bug: Media Sessions are not updating in Windows 10 2004. This bug is caused by an issue in a Windows 10 WinRT API called
GlobalSystemMediaTransportControlsSessionManager. ItsSessionsChangedevent didn't get raised since Windows 10 2004 which they fixed in a later insider build. A huge thanks to @ADeltaX! -
Fixed #32 - Bug: ModernFlyouts gets hidden behind other topmost windows and not shown in Lockscreen. This issue happens due to the restrictions laid down by Windows. Windows doesn't allow regular top-most top-level windows to be shown on top of several other windows (some full-screen apps, Start menu, Always-On-Top Task Manager and the lock screen). We had to do some dark magic to get this thing to show on-top of every window which the native flyout could. Thanks to @ADeltaX for discovering the CreateWindowInBand private API and for getting the dll injection to work properly.
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Fixed #184 - Bug: Win32 apps' information are not shown in the media session controls. Another issue caused by the Windows 10 WinRT API
GlobalSystemMediaTransportControlsSessionManager. -
Fixed #305 - Bug: Pressing and holding caps lock toggles flyout twice.. Fixed as a part of #306 by a community member @Renzo904. Thank you @Renzo904! ❤❤❤
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Fixed #312 - Bug: Use mousewheel turn up volume will stuck at some value. Fixed as a part of #313. Thanks again @Renzo904!
What's New
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Resolved #327 - Feature request: Multi-monitor support. Now, you can select which monitor the flyout auto align to or be moved to (based on relative position).
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Resolved #74 - Feature Request: Offer some sensible default positions. From now on, there are options to auto place the flyout to your desired alignment on your desired monitor.
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Resolved #71 - Feature Request: Add the ability to change whether the Media controls appears below or above the Volume controls and and the ability to control the expand direction. Two new options called "Content stacking direction" and "Expand direction" (expand animation direction, to be precise) have been added.
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Resolved #135 - Feature Request: On Computers with multiple monitors, have a setting to change which monitor the flyout appears on. Related to #327.
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Resolved #136 - Feature Request: Split the Media session Flyouts and volume flyouts as it was pre 0.5
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Resolved #97 - Feature proposal: Add support for seeking or changing the progress of the media playback. The timeline info progress bar has now been replaced by a slider. This change allows you to seek the playback position easily from ModernFlyouts without having to open the source application.
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Resolved #114 - Timeline info suggestion. The timeline info controls have been moved into the main flyout instead of being in a separate flyout.
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Resolved #224 - Feature Request: Option to toggle the album art background for media controls. Fixed as a part of #315 by another community member @fheck. Thanks to you too @fheck! ❤❤❤.
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Resolved #183 - Feature Request: Move flyout default position setting to personalisation page from general
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Resolved #69 (noice) - Support for DPI Awareness
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Resolved #361 - Fixed an issue where Spotify's thumbnail were scaled improperly. We had to crop the extra padding and their branding from the thumbnails provided by Spotify.
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Reworked topbar animations.
Known issues
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Tooltips gets hidden behind the main flyout. I know! I worked 3 weeks with this! I AM fully aware of this
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Flyout bounces indefinitely (lol XD XD hilarious) on hover sometimes when the topbar is set to auto-hide and the flyout is auto aligned to bottom.
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Users can't specify how close the flyout can get to the screen bounds (or can't set margin, to be precise) when it's auto placed. The ability has already been added internally but due to time limitations this feature couldn't make it to this release.
Our struggles for v0.9
NowPlayingSessionManager
INowPlayingSessionManager (INPSM) is a private Windows 10 API (since 1511) which is also the core API used by the native flyout and a Windows 10 WinRT API called GSMTC (GlobalSystemMediaTransportControlsSessionManager) (since Windows 10 1809). We were previously using GSMTC for our media controls. But it lead to some dead ends like #29 & #184. In order to overcome the issues laid down by the GSMTC APIs, @ADeltaX suggested to use a private API found in Windows 10 reserved for internal usage called INowPlayingSessionManager. But there were plenty of problems while doing so. Since INPSM is reserved for internal usage by Microsoft, they didn't care about breaking and altering it in every Windows 10 build.
@ADeltaX had to do all the hard work to get it running across all Windows 10 versions properly.
He wrote a wrapper called NPSMLib which will execute OS specific functions and work on all Windows 10 versions from 1511 to the latest insider builds.
He made a standalone Nuget package called NPSMLib so that others could be benefited too.
If you're interested in the NPSMLib, please check out its GitHub repository.
Above Lockscreen & Topmost Flyout
Some users were struggling with the flyout getting hidden behind some full-screen apps, Start Menu, Always-on-top Task Manager & the lock screen. While the native flyout had no problems with being topmost, we had no options other than doing some black magic.
@ADeltaX discovered and documented a private Windows API called CreateWindowInBand which he made use of in his AudioFlyout and MobileShell.
This CreateWindowInBand API is also reserved for internal usage by Microsoft and has plenty of restrictions in order to prevent it from being used by 3rd party applications. The CreateWindowInBand works fine if we target the normal window band but for higher bands MS has laid some serious restrictions.
CreateWindowInBand/Ex works ONLY if you pass ZBID_DEFAULT or ZBID_DESKTOP as dwBand argument. Also ZBID_UIACCESS is permitted only if the process has UIAccess token (obtainable, for example, by setting
uiAccess=trueinapp.manifest, more info here). Any other ZBID will fail with 0x5 (ACCESS DENIED).
For CreateWindowInBand/Ex, to be able to use more ZBIDs, the program must have a special PE header, named ".imrsiv" ( bss_seg), flagged with IMAGE_DLLCHARACTERISTICS_FORCE_INTEGRITY and be signed with a Microsoft certificate "Microsoft Windows".
Quoted from ADeltaX's blog
So, in order to use the CreateWindowInBand API, we need the executable to be either
- an UIAccess enabled process which indeed requires it to be signed by a proper certificate (could be obtained but costs a lump amount of money).
- an immersive process and be signed with a Microsoft certificate "Microsoft Windows".
Both of them won't happen obviously. This is where the black magic kicks in.
So, what we need is a surrogate host which has the ability to be an immersive process and be signed with a Microsoft certificate "Microsoft Windows" and won't do anything other than hosting our application. And guess what? @ADeltaX strikes again! He discovered the proper host for this purpose which is called as the "RuntimeBroker" (an immersive, MS signed surrogate application found inside C:\Windows\System32\). He had to get 4 architecture specific RuntimeBroker executables from 4 different Windows 10 OSes (x86, x64, ARM and ARM64). He renamed it to Bro_(arch).exe for fun.
Using RuntimeBroker to host and execute our application was not a joke. It required us to do dll injection and host the .NET 5 CoreCLR inside of it. For further information see this comment - #32 (comment).
I can assure you this procedure is completely safe and secure. It won't affect your system and infringe your privacy. We guarantee you on that.
Somehow, we made it to work properly. We can't thank @ADeltaX enough for all his help ❤. Attributing him is the only thing we can do in return.
Final Words
I @ShankarBUS, the author and lead developer of this project will be leaving this team and this project in the hands of the other 3 core team members @Samuel12321, @Cyberdroid1 and @ADeltaX.
This will be the last release from myside.
Before leaving, I would like to give huge shout-outs to
- @ADeltaX, for AudioFlyout and every single help from him.
- @Samuel12321 (co-owner, publisher and maintainer), for publishing this application to Microsoft Store, WinGet, dealing with users and helping me maintain this repo since its early stages.
- @Cyberdroid1, for his ideas, suggestions, motivation, help and enthusiasm for this project.
- And finally all the community members (either on Discord, Telegram or GitHub), for all the contributions, motivations, suggestions, ideas and help and everything!
It means a lot to me.
My final words: Change da world… my final message. Goodb ye.