UnicornsOnLSD/finamp 0.9.24-beta

Finamp Beta Update 0.9.24 - The Home Screen Update

on GitHub

Hi everyone!
It's been a while since the last update again, so long actually that Apple forced us to push out a new update to keep the Testflight build from expiring...
But good news: we managed to finish up two major features just in time for this update!
We finally completed the initial version of the home screen (after working on that on and off since March of last year). And Finamp now supports Apple's CarPlay, joining the existing support for Android Auto.
Keep on reading to learn about all the new changes!

TL;DR

New Features:

• New customizable "Home" tab for quick access to your music
• CarPlay support (iOS only)
• Siri voice commands
• AMOLED theme

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed skipping tracks and play/pause on Pixel Buds & others
• Fixed broken playback on some devices
• Properly discover server addresses using custom paths (e.g. /jellyfin)
• Fixed scroll-to-letter for album artist
• Fixed startup failures on older Android devices

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

Home Screen

So yeah, Finamp has a home screen now! More specifically, a home tab.
After some back and forth with the design we decided that implementing the home screen as a new tab is the perfect balance between adding a long-awaited feature, without breaking the existing simple UI many of you have come to appreciate. Since the home screen is a tab, you can customize it like any other tab: reorder it, or hide it completely. This means you can still make the app open to your list of albums, or even disable the home screen completely, don't worry.

But let's take a look what we actually created:

The home tab is composed of two main areas.
At the top you find what we call "Quick Actions". Those are customizable buttons that let you jump into music with a single tap, or quickly open Finamp's most important screens. You can have as many (or as few) of these quick actions as you want.
Below that, you'll find a list of sections. Each section is a horizontally-scrolling list of items, and can contain all kinds of things. Any combination of tab (albums, tracks, etc.), sorting (by name, play count, date added, etc.), and filters (only favorites) is supported. The section shows the first 20 items, but you can tap the arrow/chevron at the top right of each section to view the full list. You can also directly play each section, or shuffle it to the queue.
We've created many section presets to choose from, but you can also build your own sections and give it a name.

By default, the home screen contains 4 quick actions and 6 sections. Our selection for these defaults, as well as for the existing section presets we created, is based on the survey we posted in the previous release notes, where over 300 people let us know what actions and sections would be most important to them. Thanks to everyone who participated!
Not all of these sections are available offline. Most sections require the contents to be downloaded, and some sections aren't supported offline because they depend on play counts, which aren't supported when Finamp is offline. Keep that in mind when going offline.

But we have some more changes related to the home screen that deserve a mention:

New App Header

Finamp's header received a visual refresh, and also became more organized. All filters are now moved into a dedicated sort & filter row that is hidden on the home tab.
The tabs also have a new look, and the home tab shows your user avatar/image, if you have one set up in Jellyfin.

Sort & Filter Row

Changing the sorting, the sort order, or active filters now happens via this new sort & filter row, which sits at the top of each tab and most lists of items.
Tap anywhere in the row to open the sort & filter menu, or use the buttons on either side to change the configuration.

Grid Mode Improvements

Since the home tab is mostly grid-based, we finally brought some much-needed improvements and fixes to grid mode in Finamp, on all tabs!
Names and subtitles are now shown below the image (if you have text enabled), avoiding previous issues with low contrast. The text is also smaller, so that the full title can actually be shown, not just the first three words.
We've also updated how the grid size is configured. You now have a slider that controls the size of grid items, and the items roughly keep their size when you flip to landscape mode or resize the window on desktop.

Due to these changes you might have to adjust the grid size to your preferences once again.

Improved Main Menu

Finamp's main menu/drawer is now wider, shows more information, requires less scrolling, and looks nicer. All functionality has remained the same.
We might tweak the size of the menu in future updates, particularly on tablets.

CarPlay Support (thanks @APIUM!)

One of the oldest feature request has finally been addressed, Finamp now supports CarPlay!
Just like on Android Auto, you'll now be able to control playback, play a specific track, or shuffle - all without touching your phone (provided your car supports CarPlay).

There are three main tabs: the home tab, a search tab, and a library tab. The home tab shows you a selection of your library to pick from, but is not yet customizable. The library tab allows you to browse by album, artist, track, genre, or playlist.
And on the player screen you of course get basic controls over they playback and queue.

At the moment, you might not be able to see all tracks/artists/albums when browsing the library, due to some limitations with fetching additional items. We're looking into fixing that soon.

Siri Voice Commands

Especially when driving, hands-free interaction is super useful. And Finamp now supports Siri voice commands for playing music without touching anything.
But Siri support works both on your phone and in your car - with or without CarPlay!

Try it out by asking Siri to "shuffle my music on Finamp", "Play [album] on Finamp", "Shuffle [artist] on Finamp", and enjoy the music.

The commands available are: "play/shuffle/search for [track / artist / album / playlist / genre] on Finamp". Note that saying "search for" will just play the search results instead of opening a search result screen, for now at least.

Bug Fixes

• Skipping tracks and toggling playback via some bluetooth headphones (like the Pixel Buds) should now work in Finamp! (thank @root-intruder)
• Playback should now work on some Android devices that previously couldn't play any track at all, by using volume-based instead of gain-based audio normalization (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Servers hosted on addresses using custom paths (e.g. /jellyfin) are now properly discovered during login (thanks @StayBlue!)
• Fixed scroll-to-letter when sorting by album artist (thanks @n-buck!)
• Fixed startup failures on older Android devices (thanks @Komodo5197!)

Other Changes

• There are two new tab types: Performing Artists and Album Artists
  • These are the same as selecting either option on the general Artists tab, but might be useful to you if you browse both types frequently, or only care about one of them
  • Both tabs are disabled by default, but you can enable them in 🔗 Tabs settings
• You can now use a pure black / AMOLED version of the dark theme, which makes most background colors completely black, thanks to @SchweGELBin!
• Finamp will now warn you if you changed a setting that requires an app restart to be applied (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• If you've updated the app theme in Finamp's settings, the app startup splash screen will now use that theme instead of the system theme (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Server connection checks are now more robust (thanks @Beedit!)
• @luigi311 made our build system more efficient through caching!
• @Komodo5197 added some initial integration tests that helps us catch bugs more early
• Logs are now zipped before exporting, drastically reducing the resulting file size (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Added support for Android's 16 kB memory page size (thanks @Komodo5197!)
• Finamp will no longer show a bit depth when lossy transcoding, but now shows the transcoded sample rate (thanks @Komodo5197!)

New Settings

• Home screen/tab settings

  • 🔗 "Home Screen"
  • Customize your quick actions and sections here, or add new ones. You can also long-press actions/sections on the home screen to edit them directly

• Use AMOLED theme when in dark mode

  • 🔗 "Layout & Theme" > "Use AMOLED Theme"
  • Default is disabled (unchanged)

• [Android] Use built-in gain effect to normalize volume

  • 🔗 "Volume Normalization" > "Use Gain Effect"
  • If disabled, Finamp's internal volume will be used to normalize volume levels across tracks, which doesn't work as well but does work on all devices
  • Default is enabled (unchanged)
    TODO

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:

• Tons of contributions we didn't have time to look at before this update!
  • To everyone who is waiting for their pull request to be reviewed: sorry, and thanks for being patient
• Global Search
• Sharing Menu
• ???

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

This is now the last major release before all the changes from this beta version land in the stable channel of Finamp. We'll focus on fixing any bugs that are still around first, and may or may not make another release with fixes before the transition.
Either way, please let us know how your experience with the new home screen and CarPlay is, and especially if anything isn't working (at all, or how you'd expect)!
Thank you for using Finamp!

- Chaphasilor

New Contributors

• @SchweGELBin made their first contribution in #1562
• @Beedit made their first contribution in #1595
• @root-intruder made their first contribution in #1598
• @StayBlue made their first contribution in #1600
• @n-buck made their first contribution in #1623
• @APIUM made their first contribution in #1516

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