HOMEii Flow 5.7.0

HOMEii Flow 5.7.0 is the biggest release so far: a major community-driven update focused on Compact and Mini player modes, Home Assistant Section dashboard support, weak-device performance, Music Assistant safety, player/group reliability, screensaver polish, discovery improvements, and new community translations.

This release was shaped by real user feedback, screenshots, bug reports, and feature requests. Thank you to everyone who tested, reported issues, and asked for improvements. I tried to respond to almost every practical request and turn it into a better daily music experience without losing the premium feel of the card.

Major Highlights

• Rebuilt the Compact card for real Home Assistant dashboards.
• Added a new Mini player mode for small mobile/Section layouts.
• Added stronger performance profiles for weak devices: Full, High, Low, and Ultra Lite.
• Enforced Music Assistant-only player safety. The card no longer falls back to unrelated Home Assistant media players.
• Improved Home Assistant Section dashboard behavior, sizing, stacking, popup handling, and manual height support.
• Expanded screensaver controls and made screensaver surfaces more flexible and performance-aware.
• Added a much larger FLOW and Discover style catalog, closer to familiar Spotify-style genre/mood choices.
• Added Spanish, French, and Lithuanian translations.

Compact And Mini Player

• The Compact card now behaves correctly beside other Home Assistant cards.
• Fixed compact cards stacking above or below unrelated Section dashboard cards.
• Compact full-screen now opens as a true popup-style surface instead of resizing the card in place.
• Fixed clicks passing through the compact full-screen popup to the dashboard underneath.
• Fixed compact full-screen controls where only the close button responded.
• Improved compact mobile and tablet proportions.
• Improved compact album art sizing and cover browsing.
• Cover browsing selections in compact mode can now start playback.
• Replaced the old triangle expand button with a clearer full-screen icon.
• Added active-player access to the Mini card header.
• Added the new Mini two-row player mode for mobile dashboards where the regular compact card still takes too much space.
• Mini mode keeps artwork, title, artist, previous/play/next, volume controls, active-player access, and full-screen expansion in a smaller premium widget.

Performance Optimization

• Added clearer performance profiles: Full, High, Low, and Ultra Lite.
• Ultra Lite is designed for weak tablets, wall panels, older browsers, and low-power kiosk devices.
• Ultra Lite reduces expensive effects such as heavy blur, transparency, background motion, animation, dynamic visuals, and screensaver motion.
• Core controls remain available even in the lightest mode.
• Screensaver and opened panels now respect performance mode more carefully.
• Menus and panels use less transparency in Ultra Lite to reduce rendering cost.
• The goal is simple: keep HOMEii Flow usable on weaker devices without making it feel broken or stripped of its music experience.

Music Assistant Safety

• HOMEii Flow now requires valid Music Assistant players.
• If Music Assistant is missing, inactive, unavailable, or exposes no supported players, the card shows a clear setup message.
• The card no longer fills the player list with unrelated Home Assistant media players.
• This avoids accidental control of devices that do not belong to Music Assistant.
• Player exclusion is available from the visual editor.
• Player sorting can be alphabetical or custom.
• Custom player-order rows now match the real number of available players instead of showing a fixed long list.

Players, Groups, And Queue Transfer

• Improved active-player selector behavior across compact, mini, full, screensaver, and opened surfaces.
• Hardened group join, disconnect, queue transfer, stop, and clear flows.
• Improved behavior with newer Music Assistant beta versions and unsupported or idle devices.
• Reduced false success/error feedback when grouping or disconnecting speakers.
• Improved player group UI cards, selected state, and volume controls.
• Improved transfer queue and group control surfaces.

Quick Actions And Auxiliary Buttons

• Home was moved into the Quick Actions row.
• Home is now available even when the player is idle.
• Added Quick Action ordering in the visual editor.
• Fixed Quick Actions disappearing after playback starts and only returning after a page refresh.
• Irrelevant Quick Actions are hidden from the idle player view.
• Added multiple auxiliary buttons.
• Auxiliary buttons can use configurable names, Home Assistant icons, and actions.
• Added a dedicated search Quick Action that opens a clean search-only popup.
• Improved action menu tile sizing so labels and icons do not clip.
• Quick Actions can wrap into two rows on constrained layouts to preserve artwork space.

Media Controls And Volume

• Improved immediate feedback for play, pause, shuffle, repeat, previous, next, mute, and volume.
• Added optional plus/minus volume buttons.
• Volume step is configurable from 1% to 10%, with 5% as the default.
• Fixed plus/minus volume changing from the wrong baseline.
• Fixed volume slider and percentage not updating immediately after choosing a preset.
• Fixed compact volume preset popup appearing under other cards.
• Enlarged and balanced media-control icons.
• Improved shuffle and repeat visuals.
• Repeat badge now sits outside the icon center so it does not block the icon.
• Shuffle active state now uses border/glow styling instead of a dot that covers the icon.
• Tuned tablet media controls.
• Reduced mute button size.

Screensaver

• Added configurable screensaver button visibility.
• Screensaver buttons can include Flow Assistant, previous, next, play/pause, power, mute, and like.
• Flow Assistant now opens above the screensaver.
• Flow Assistant no longer exits the screensaver unintentionally.
• Removed the experimental screensaver_kiosk_mode option because it did not provide a useful difference in Home Assistant chrome behavior.
• Screensaver can use a full-page surface similar to compact full-screen mode.
• Added gentle idle animation for no-content screens and idle players.
• Dynamic artwork color and ambient-light behavior continue updating during screensaver playback where Home Assistant/browser visibility allows it.
• Reduced screensaver motion and visual cost in Ultra Lite mode.

FLOW, Discover, Library, Search, Queue, And Lyrics

• Replaced fixed FLOW categories with a much larger familiar style catalog.
• Applied the expanded style catalog to Discover.
• Discover recommendations are less repetitive between opens.
• Discover can show the active player.
• Adjusted Discover recommendation orbs on narrow screens so they do not overlap.
• Added default library view setting: Grid or List.
• Manual Grid/List switching is still available inside library pages.
• Added grid mode inside playlist and album drill-in views.
• Improved library navigation to avoid unexpected returns to the main page.
• Added History play-all.
• Added like support to queue row actions.
• Queue like action now gives clearer feedback.
• Queue row actions were repositioned so like does not trigger row playback accidentally.
• Redesigned the lyrics panel with a more polished dynamic background, clearer typography, and better alignment across devices.
• Expanded Studio panels and media sheets so they use more of the screen instead of feeling like half-height panels.

Flow Assistant

• Added response/open-time limits so assistant panels do not remain active too long.
• Fixed assistant dialogs opening behind the screensaver.
• Fixed screensaver Flow Assistant so it opens over the current screensaver without exiting it.
• Fixed an empty Menu overlay that could cover the correct player selector after a rebuild.

Localization

New languages are now bundled:

• Spanish
• French
• Lithuanian

Thank you to the community translators and contributors:

• Daniel Eduardo Gonzalez (@danielxb-ar) for Spanish.
• Donatas / donatassmarterhome for Lithuanian.
• Julien Moreau Brousseau for the French translation work.
• Jingle Jew for French wording corrections.
• @gao19970120 for the Simplified Chinese contribution.

Also fixed French language selection staying in English after choosing French in the editor.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the library loading spinner loop reported in issue #19.
• Fixed the fixed-height/tablet Section dashboard regression reported in issue #17.
• Improved manual height handling.
• Fixed delayed media-control response and missing immediate UI feedback.
• Fixed idle player view missing the Home action.
• Fixed idle recommendations changing too aggressively while the idle page is open.
• Fixed overlapping elements in media/action menus and opened screens.
• Fixed broken-looking small icons, including the library icon treatment.
• Fixed tablet and mobile intermediate layouts losing access to controls.
• Fixed compact popup sizing on phones.
• Fixed player selector from Mini/compact opening the wrong tiny surface before the real selector.
• Fixed volume dropdown/preset z-index from compact cards.
• Fixed screensaver Flow Assistant panel layering.
• Fixed Quick Action state mismatches after playback starts.
• Fixed French localization registration and release packaging.
• Fixed release localization cache busting for the expanded language package.

Upgrade Notes

• HACS users can update normally through HACS.
• Manual install users should copy the full dist/ folder and update the Dashboard resource query to:

/local/community/homeii-music-flow/homeii-music-flow.js?v=5.7.0