Hi everyone!
Not even three weeks since the last update!
The upgrade to Jellyfin 10.9 seems to have been relatively smooth for most of you, at least when it comes to Finamp and the new features. If something isn't working correctly, please let us know!
It seems like we're slowly picking up the pace for the beta updates. There have been tons of improvements under the hood in recent weeks and months, so hopefully we can continue with some more visual design updates soon.
If you're a designer or developer and want to help out, please reach out! We need all the help we can get <3
The beta is a work-in-progress, there are several new features already, but we will be adding more features over time.
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!
If you're not using the beta yet (how to join) (click to expand)
On iOS, join the beta on TestFlight.
Keep in mind that all of the text in the beta hasn't been translated yet, so it will be shown in English no matter which language your device is set to. We're not able to add more translations to the beta just yet (it's not as easy to configure as we'd hoped), but we'll let you know once you can help translating all of the new stuff!
What's New
New Playlist Management Flow (contributed by @Komodo5197 and @Chaphasilor)
We have reworked the playlist and favorite management for tracks in Finamp a bit, to be more versatile and closer to popular music apps (e.g. Spotify, YouTube Music).
The like/favorite/heart button (on the player screen, mini player, and queue panel) now has a new default behavior: it opens a playlist action menu. This menu gives you the ability to quickly add the track to one or even multiple playlists. It also lets you remove the track from the currently playing playlist (if you're listening to one).
Aside from that, it is also possible to add/remove the track to/from your favorites.
If you can still quickly toggle the favorite state of a track, now by long-pressing the heart button.
The button will also still reflect the favorite status by being an outlined or filled-in heart.
I hope that this new behavior is easy and natural for you to pick up, if not definitely let us know!
Additionally, it is now also possible to download information about your playlists for offline mode, without downloading the tracks within the playlists. This means that if you have downloaded a few tracks, and some of them are part of a playlist, you can now listen to that part of your playlist in offline mode.
This also helps with adding tracks to and removing them from your playlists in online mode.
You can download the needed information in Settings > "Download Settings" > "Show all playlists offline".
Caveats:
- Jellyfin doesn't (yet) allow us to easily check which playlists a track is part of. That's why by default, Finamp only shows a dashed icon for the available playlist, since there's no way to tell if the track is already part of that playlist or not. Only after you add the track to a playlist (or change your mind and remove it again) Finamp can tell for sure if it's part of the playlist or not, and will then show a non-dashed icon.
- Downloading playlist metadata, as described above, allows Finamp to show more concrete info about which playlists a track is already part of, and is recommended
Faster image loading (contributed by @Komodo5197)
Similar to the official Jellyfin web app, we now use so-called blurhashes as an instant preview for all images, instead of showing a blank square. This should make the app look nicer and feel faster, at least that's what we hope!
To make image loading even faster, you can now also cache images for your albums, artists, genres, and playlists! You can find this option in Settings > "Download Settings" > "Show all playlists offline", and this will download these images for the currently active library. If you have multiple libraries, you can simply switch between them and repeat the caching for each one.
Once the images are downloaded (you can check the progress on the downloads screen), they will be used even in online mode to speed up image loading and reduce the overall data usage of Finamp. Rest assured that if you update any images in Jellyfin, Finamp will not use the cached image anymore, but instead fetch your new and shiny image from the server instead.
Keep in mind that if you update any images in Jellyfin for media that you already downloaded in Finamp, you'll need to "repair" your download in Finamp to download the new images. You can start a repair from the downloads screen (middle icon in the top right corner), and that will cause Finamp to first re-download all metadata for your existing downloads, then check for changes, and finally re-download any changed files.
New Settings
- You can now disable the progress animation on the now playing bar / mini player at the bottom
- Settings > "Layout and Theme" > "Show track progress on now playing bar"
- The progress animation is enabled by default (unchanged)
- As mentioned above, you can let Finamp synchronize the favorite status of your library for offline mode, meaning that if you mark something as favorite that you already downloaded, it will also be marked as favorite in offline mode.
- Settings > "Download Settings" > "Sync all favorite statuses"
- Favorite status sync is enabled by default
- You can choose if you want an instant mix to start when tapping a track from the tracks tab or search results, or instead want to just play that selected track
- Settings > "Interactions" > "Start Instant Mixes for Individual Tracks"
- By default, instant mixes are used (unchanged)
- Disabling this setting will revert the behavior back to how it worked in the stable/non-beta version
Other changes
- Added favorites-only filter in offline mode (contributed by @Komodo5197)
- To make this work reliable enough, Finamp will sync favorite metadata in the background
- You can disable this feature by turning off "Sync all favorite statuses" in Download Settings
- Show a small indicator for tracks that have lyrics available
- Renamed "song" to "track" throughout the entire app (contributed by @lukaslindnermusic)
- Fixed missing negative sign for iOS base gain input in Volume Normalization settings
- Fixed wrong bitrate shown for downloaded tracks
- Finamp will now also download tracks that don't belong to any album or playlist (contributed by @Komodo5197)
- Thanks @flloschy for reporting the issue!
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:
- 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
- Android Auto / Automotive Support
- I'm planning to release this with the next update, it's almost done!
You can take a look at the full list and current progress in the Redesign project.
The resonance we've gotten so far with the beta has been incredible! Many of you have come to the Discord server to say thanks, and that makes me really happy!
I also want to give a big shoutout to @Komodo5197 who has been consistently contributing massive improvements and new features to the beta! Many of the things in the last updates are their work, and I really hope that many more improvements are coming down the road.
But still, we can't do this alone, so if you are able to help out in any way, please do so!
Thank you for using Finamp!
- Chaphasilor
Download Links
- Google Play: Join the beta
- TestFlight: Join the beta
- F-Droid: not available, see above
- APK: see below