Highlights

This version features improved text rendering using DirectWrite for several built-in panels, including colour emoji and variable font support.

It also includes numerous other improvements and bug fixes.

All changes

Features

• Text in list views (such as the playlist view, playlist switcher, Filter panel and Item properties), Item details and in the status bar and pane is now rendered using DirectWrite. [#897, #904, #910, #913, #915, #919, #924, #925, #926, #936, #947, #953, #967, #969, #974, #976, #981, #989, #1030, #1031, #1037, #1039, #1042, #1060, #1064, #1070]

  This includes colour font support on Windows 8.1 and newer (allowing the use of, for example, colour emojis).

  Tabular figures (numerals) are now also used for supported fonts that default to proportional figures (such as some Segoe UI variants).

  Customisation of variable font (such as Segoe UI Variable) axes of variation is supported on Windows 11 23H2 and newer.

  Some customisation of DirectWrite text rendering is available on the new Text rendering tab on the Colours and fonts preferences page.

  Note that there may be slight differences in line heights for these panels compared to previous versions, depending on the font, font size and system display scale (DPI setting).

• A new DirectWrite-based font picker was added to the Colours and fonts preferences page. [#916, #919, #927, #943, #1015, #1060, #1064]

  This features better grouping of font families and now allows the entry of non-integer font sizes (to one decimal place).

  Note that some font styles will revert to the closest supported GDI equivalent when used with a panel that doesn’t use DirectWrite and the latest Columns UI API.

  Some legacy font types that aren’t supported by DirectWrite are also no longer selectable. Furthermore, some previously hidden fonts may now be visible.

• New $set_format() and $reset_format() title formatting functions were added to Item details. [#1004, #1011, #1018, #1023, #1062]

  These serve as replacements for the older $set_font() and $reset_font() functions.

  Documentation for $set_format() and $reset_format().

• The $set_font() Item details title formatting function now allows non-integer font sizes to be specified. [#947]

• Message boxes now have a consistent appearance, and are dark themed when dark mode is active. [#1041, #1043]

• The positioning of tooltips in list views for centre- and right-aligned columns was improved. [#910]

• Ctrl+Tab and Shift+Ctrl+Tab can now be used in Tab stack and Playlist tabs to switch to the next and previous tab respectively. [#817]

• An option to make clicking on the Artwork view panel open the displayed image in the foobar2000 picture viewer was added on foobar2000 1.6.2 or newer. [#853]

  This is now the default for new installations.

• A command was added to the Artwork view context menu to open the displayed image in the foobar2000 picture viewer on foobar2000 1.6.2 or newer. [#849]

• Clearing the Filter search toolbar now returns all items in the media library if there are no Filter panels in the layout. [#857]

  This makes the behaviour consistent with what happens when there are Filter panels in the layout.

• When using inline editing on multiple tracks in the playlist view and Item properties, existing values are now included in the edit box after the text «mixed values» when the current values of the field differ between the tracks. [#871]

• The way metadata changes are saved in Item properties and Filter panel was improved. [#863]

• Deleting layout presets in preferences is now a two-step process to avoid accidental deletions. [#891]

  (The confirmation dialogue box can be bypassed by holding down Shift while clicking the button.)

• Deleting the last layout preset is now prevented instead of reseting layout presets to the default preset. [#1053]

• References to ‘notification area’ were changed to ‘system tray’ to align with the current Windows terminology. [#1035]

• Some diagnostic logging to the foobar2000 console was added when unexpected errors occur. [#916]

Bug fixes

• A bug sometimes causing the playlist view vertical scroll position to show incorrectly after switching playlists was fixed. [#866]

• A bug with inline editing in the playlist view, Item properties and Filter panels where it wasn’t possible to click on autocomplete suggestions was fixed. [#886]

• A rare drag-and-drop crash was fixed. [#1067]

• A bug where files copied in File Explorer couldn’t be pasted in the playlist view using the context menu was fixed. [#873]

• Different handling of ampersands in system tray icon tooltips in Windows 11 compared to previous versions of Windows was worked around. [#1040]

• Various rendering glitches in Playlist tabs and Tab stack when dark mode is active were fixed. [#851]

• Flickering of scroll buttons in the Playlist tabs and Tab stack when resizing the panels was eliminated. [#1033]

• When switching tabs, the Tab stack panel now updates the keyboard focus to the first focusable element in the new tab. [#817]

• A Windows bug causing visual glitches after running a full-screen game with certain monitor configurations was worked around. [#843]

• Support for high contrast themes on recent versions of Windows was improved. [#847]

• A bug in the Buttons toolbar where item group ‘None’ caused the context menu command not to be executed was fixed. [#889]

  Note: An item group of ‘None’ is used to execute a context menu command without any tracks, which isn’t normally useful.

• Item details now updates when it’s tracking the current selection and a component indicates a custom title formatting field has changed. [#912]

• The Item details options dialogue box now respects the current dark mode setting when opened from the Layout preferences page. [#909]

• Item properties now updates when a component indicates a custom title formatting field has changed. [#912]

  (Although Item properties doesn’t use title formatting, this change makes the panel update when things like playback statistics change.)

• The vertical item padding in Item properties and some list views in preferences now scales with the system display scale (DPI setting). [#925]

• A bug where the status bar may crash when using a very small font size was fixed. [#935]

• A bug where dynamic internet radio artwork may not have been immediately shown after changing the ‘Displayed track’ in the Artwork view panel was fixed. [#854]

• A bug where the ‘Alignment’ label in the Columns tab of the Playlist view preferences page was clipped for some display scale values was fixed. [#959]

• A bug where the playlist view did not always re-render correctly when toggling the ‘Show column titles’ option was fixed. [#983]

• Command-line help was updated to include previously undocumented export commands. [#1048]

• Concurrent modal dialogue boxes are now morely consistently avoided in line with foobar2000 conventions. [#1050]

Internal changes

• Handling of fatal unexpected C++ exceptions was improved in some scenarios. [#1049]

• Various dependencies were updated. [#920]

• The component is now compiled using foobar2000 SDK 2024-12-03. [#833, #972, #1050]

• The component is now compiled with Visual Studio 2022 17.12.

• Some internal changes were made to clean up and modernise code.