Hi everyone!
Sorry about the long wait since the last update. While we had some nice contributions, a few of them are bigger changes and will have to wait until the next update, as they're not quite ready yet.
Overall many of us haven't been able to dedicate a lot of time to Finamp lately, so if you want to help ensure that Finamp receives regular updates, please help out by contributing!
You can reach out directly via GitHub by opening or commenting on issues, or even directly open a draft PR for further discussion.
Alternatively, you can join our Discord server for development-focussed discussion: https://discord.gg/xh9SZ73jWk
Anyway, we of course have some new features in store for you in this version, so please enjoy this update!
Note
We are currently running a survey to understand what content people want on the upcoming home screen, so it would be great if you could fill that out! It only takes a few minutes to complete:
Click here to open the survey
Caution
Since work on improving performance for Jellyfin 10.11 is still ongoing, we still recommend to wait with upgrading to Jellyfin 10.11.x a bit longer!
This is especially true if you have a large music library or low-powered hardware, and use Finamp a lot.
The Jellyfin team is actively working on improving performance, for example via this PR: jellyfin/jellyfin#16062
Feel free to look at that PR, but please refrain from commenting or even brigading it. Improvements will arrive once they're ready.
In the meantime, if you really want to give Jellyfin 10.11 a try, we recommend you to either take a manual backup of your current Jellyfin installation, so that you can revert back to 10.10 if you're not happy, or alternatively set up a separate installation of Jellyfin 10.11 alongside your current one, for testing.
Take a look at the official instructions for manual backups of Jellyfin: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/administration/backup-and-restore#manual-backup
Be sure to use the manual backup method, since built-in backup support was added in 10.11, and therefore isn't available on older versions.
We will of course inform you once our recommendations change.
TL;DR
New Features:
- Multi-Channel Bitrate Controls for Transcoding
- Desktop Keyboard Shortcuts
- Linux on ARM Support
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed volume normalization on Android
- Fixed duplicate tracks being generated in the "Continuous" radio mode (thanks @Komodo5197)
- Fixed UI glitches for some languages
- Avoid restoring queues after something else started playing
How to join the Beta (click to expand)
The beta is free and open to everyone, but we'd like to get as much feedback as possible. So please do try it out and then let us know what you think!
- Join the Finamp Beta Testers Discord server
- This step is optional, but since we're looking for feedback, it would be great if you could join!
- Alternatively, there's a discussion for the beta right here on GitHub: Redesign Beta discussion
- Take note of your current Finamp settings, since this is a beta it could happen that the update changes some of them.
- Downloads should be migrated, but since the new download system is completely different, there might be inconsistencies.
- On Android, join the beta on Google Play or download the APK file from below.
On iOS, join the beta on TestFlight.- We're currently not able to offer a beta on F-Droid (more info here), but you can use an app like Obtainium to automatically download the latest APK from GitHub.
- Open Finamp and enjoy!
Note
Throughout the release notes you will find links marked with the 🔗 icon; these links will open Finamp to the relevant screen, so that you can play around with the new settings right-away!
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!
What's New
Multi-Channel Bitrate Controls / Downmixing (thanks @mihawk90!)
If you're transcoding files containing 3 or more audio channels, you can now choose how Finamp handles this.
🔗 "Multi-Channel Transcode Handling" gives you three options:
- "Downmix all to Stereo" will combine the channels down to stereo, so that the quality for the selected transcoding bitrate matches the quality of regular stereo tracks.
- "Only downmix Lossy to Stereo" does the same, but only when transcoding to a lossy codec. When transcoding to FLAC, the channels remain unchanged, since the bitrate control doesn't apply here anyway. This is the default.
- "Never downmix" will keep all channels, which means that the total bitrate will be distributed among all of them. This will reduce the overall audio quality for such tracks, unless you manually increase the transcode bitrate to compensate for it.
Desktop Keyboard Shortcuts (thanks @cuikho210!)
Finamp on Desktop now supports some basic shortcuts for controlling playback.
These are available whenever Finamp's window is focused, although not all shortcuts will work in every scenario (e.g. "space" for pause won't register while in a text field).
Here's the list of current shortcuts:
space/⎵: Toggle playback (play/pause)ctrl + n/⌘ + n: Next trackctrl + p/⌘ + p: Previous track / rewind to start of trackctrl + ↑/⌘ + ↑: Volume up (+5 %)ctrl + ↓/⌘ + ↓: Volume down (-5 %)ctrl + ←/⌘ + ←: Seek +30 sctrl + →/⌘ + →: Seek -5 sctrl + l/⌘ + l: Change loop mode / disable radioctrl + s/⌘ + s: Toggle shuffle
Let us know if there are any other shortcuts you'd like to see, along with suitable keyboard shortcuts to trigger them!
Linux on ARM Support (thanks @Komodo5197 and @luigi311!)
Linux on ARM is becoming more and more popular, and now Finamp finally has support for it too!
Not much to say about this, since it works just like the regular Linux build, just download the right artifact.
However, it might take us a bit to make the ARM build available via package managers / distributors (Flathub / AUR), be patient (but also remind us if we take too long)!
For those of you wondering about Windows on ARM support, that's not quite there yet. Getting one of our main database dependencies (Isar) to compile on Windows ARM seems to be a bit more involved. Once compiling Isar works though, there should be nothing stopping us from releasing Finamp for Windows on ARM as well.
If you feel like giving the compilation of Isar on Windows ARM a try, feel free to open a PR or reach out!
Bug Fixes
- Fixed UI render errors for certain system languages (thanks @Komodo5197!)
- Prevent old queues from restoring after new playback has already started (thanks @HeroBrine1st!)
- Fixed duplicate tracks being generated in the "Continuous" radio mode
Other Changes
- Finamp's startup splash screen now properly adapts to the system theme (thanks @Haar)
- That's the OS-level theme (light mode / dark mode), not the theme within Finamp (since Finamp is still starting at that point)
- Fixed incorrect playback reporting like duplicate stop events, especially on iOS (thanks @vasudan and @StayBlue)
- You can now choose if the previous tracks section within the queue panel should be expanded by default, collapsed by default, or remember its previous state via the 🔗 "Previous Tracks Visibility in Queue Panel" setting (thanks @HeroBrine1st!)
- When viewing lyrics, the screen will now stay on by default, even when the device is not charging
- We now use a more narrowly-scoped self-signed certificate for the Windows msix release. More info about how to install that version here: https://github.com/UnicornsOnLSD/finamp/tree/new-readme?tab=readme-ov-file#windows
New Settings
- Control if the previous tracks section on the queue panel is expanded by default
- 🔗 "Interactions" > "Previous Tracks Visibility in Queue Panel"
- Default is "Like before" (unchanged)
- Control how Finamp handles files with 3 or more channels when transcoding
- 🔗 "Transcoding" > "Multi-Channel Transcode Handling"
- Default is "Only Downmix Lossy to Stereo" (changed from "Never Downmix")
Changed Settings
- Default of "Keep Screen On only while plugged in" changed
- Default is now disabled
- This was done because viewing lyrics is usually a deliberate action, and other apps like Apple music also behave like this
- 🔗 Settings > "Interactions" > "Keep Screen On only while plugged in"
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
- CarPlay support
- ???
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
A shorter update this time, but we have several bigger changes in the pipeline, the home screen and CarPlay support.
Once these have landed in the beta version and received some testing and potential fixes, the beta version will finally be promoted to the default/stable version, so stay tuned for that!
And please don't forget to fill out the survey at the top!
Thank you for using Finamp!
- Chaphasilor
New Contributors
- @luigi311 made their first contribution in #1521
- @mihawk90 made their first contribution in #1524
- @cuikho210 made their first contribution in #1493
- @vasudan made their first contribution in #1519
- @StayBlue made their first contribution in #1540
- @Haar made their first contribution in #1543
Download Links
Warning
The Google Play Store release is still under review, but the new update should become available there within a few hours! Please be patient :)
- Google Play: Join the beta (update still under review)
- 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