Android app feature requests

[benster]

- Unless it's just me, I'm not getting a landscape view. I recently got a car dock for my Droid so it's just now becoming an issue
- Improved searching. Bringing back more results would be nice. Being able to tap on an artist or album in the search results would be even more awesome. However, Subsonic seems to be very folder-based so if that's the case it might be difficult to figure out where all of an artist's music is or where an album is. I could be wrong there, though.
- Increased control over caching (upper size limit? scheduled cache deletion - or maybe as the upper size limit is reached you delete the oldest songs in the cache and that would be plenty?)

Those are my main requests. The app is phenomenal and I send along my thanks for it...

benster

[sindre_mehus]

Hi,

All the things you mention are likely to be implemented in later versions of the Android app.

Thanks,
Sindre

[milkman001]

One little problem I've noticed with the Droid is that when downloading music that's in flac format the Subsonic app names them .flac or .complete instead of .mp3 which doesn't play nice with other music players. Any plans to give us an option to batch rename with .mp3?

[sindre_mehus]

One little problem I've noticed with the Droid is that when downloading music that's in flac format the Subsonic app names them .flac or .complete instead of .mp3 which doesn't play nice with other music players. Any plans to give us an option to batch rename with .mp3?

I'll fix that in the next version so that it saves transcoded files with the proper suffix. (I though I already did that but I must have forgotten to implement that).

Thanks for pointing it out!

Sindre

[benster]

Awesome - thanks for the response, Sindre. Any timetable for it? I'd guess that it might be a little while as there was a flurry of activity to get to 1.1 and I imagine you turned your attention to other things for a bit. I'm in no hurry - it's working very well for me.

Thx again...

benster

[sindre_mehus]

After Subsonic 3.9 (which will be ready within a month hopefully) I'm planning to make an Android bugfix release. So it shouldn't be too long into the future.

[dNj]

Any future plans for implementing a explorer like folder tree view? I have a decent music collection (a little over 1TB) and the way all my music is thrown into a single bucket just doesn't work for me. On my PC I have my music broken up into four folders: Vinyl, LP's, Compilations and Traxs. On the browser version of Subsonic I can easily get to these folders which makes finding music to play fast and easy. I would love to have this same flexibility on the Android side.

[myonlyeye]

It would be nice to have access to the downloaded podcast in Subsonic from the Android app.

Subsonic is a -great- app (both on Android and as a webservice)!


MyOnlyEye

[sindre_mehus]

It would be nice to have access to the downloaded podcast in Subsonic from the Android app.

If you move the podcast download folder inside your configured music folder you can access it.

For instance, if your music root folder is "c:/music", change the podcast folder to "c:/music/Podcasts".

Cheers,
Sindre

[myonlyeye]

I did something even better (so that I didn't give Subsonic write access to my personal areas on the linux file server) - I just added /var/subsonic/podcast to the "music folders"...

Somehow I didn't think that far

Thx again!

[jm9843]

One little problem I've noticed with the Droid is that when downloading music that's in flac format the Subsonic app names them .flac or .complete instead of .mp3 which doesn't play nice with other music players. Any plans to give us an option to batch rename with .mp3?

I'm still seeing similar behavior with the latest version of Subsonic (3.9) and the latest version of the Android client (1.2).

Specifically, when queuing an album to play, the songs are downloaded but finish with a file extension of ".complete" or ".partial". The ".complete" songs show with orange asterisks in Subsonic for Android and play fine.
Renaming them with a ".mp3" extension makes them appear in Subsonic for Android with a green asterisk and the song is then also playable in the standard Android music player.

File List View:



Subsonic View:



Thanks!

[sindre_mehus]

I see your point, and I'll consider changing the naming scheme in the next version.

The thought behind the current naming scheme is that temporarily cached files in Subsonic shouldn't be recognized in other players.

If you select "Save on Phone", however, they are named properly (and the shared music database on the phone is updated with metadata).

Thanks,
Sindre

[jm9843]

I see your point, and I'll consider changing the naming scheme in the next version.

The thought behind the current naming scheme is that temporarily cached files in Subsonic shouldn't be recognized in other players.

If you select "Save on Phone", however, they are named properly (and the shared music database on the phone is updated with metadata).

Thanks,
Sindre

Ahh! Now I see your point as well.

I wasn't drawing a distinction between the "Play" option and the "Save to phone" option, but with your comment I now understand the approach. Does that mean that if you select "Save to phone" then those files won't be deleted by the "Delete cached music" option under settings?

Another thing that would make a distinction between cached versus downloaded files would be if you could set the max size of the file cache under settings. Old items would be deleted from the cache to make room for new ones and "Save to phone" items would not count towards the max cache size or ever be deleted by Subsonic. Unless, perhaps, if the user explicitly did so with a long press "Delete" option. Similarly, cached items could be "saved" from the cache by the user with a long press "Move to downloads" option. Cached versus downloaded items could continue to be identified by the color of their asterisk as you do now, or maybe with some dedicated icons to distinguish between the two.

Just throwing some ideas out there that might make it more apparent to the user while also giving them more control in managing their music.

[sindre_mehus]

I wasn't drawing a distinction between the "Play" option and the "Save to phone" option, but with your comment I now understand the approach. Does that mean that if you select "Save to phone" then those files won't be deleted by the "Delete cached music" option under settings?

Yes.

Another thing that would make a distinction between cached versus downloaded files would be if you could set the max size of the file cache under settings. Old items would be deleted from the cache to make room for new ones and "Save to phone" items would not count towards the max cache size or ever be deleted by Subsonic.

Yes, automatic cache management is planned for a later release.

Unless, perhaps, if the user explicitly did so with a long press "Delete" option. Similarly, cached items could be "saved" from the cache by the user with a long press "Move to downloads" option.

Both things are already possible. Just select More > Delete from phone or More > Save to phone, respectively.

Regards,
Sindre

[trondis23]

Is there any reason why Subsonic isn't available for HTC Tattoo? It works. I found a link to v 1.1 in these forums, and I have installed it. So why isn't it in the Market?