More Music controls options

[glass sand]

I edited the stock music app and added a menu settings.
with two options.
To hide the volume control and to hide the progress bar.

Note: Im on iOS, can't have something similar like MusicBoss for Android users.

https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/pull/525

Unsure if it will be merged or not.
Ideas or advice related to this plz tell me..

[azure storm]

looks good to me (design-wise)

i will say i don't get the use case

you can bypass the ellipse menu by holding the select button instead of tapping, and i don't understand why you'd want to remove volume or progress bar altogether

[glass sand]

From my personal use:

If you have the watch walking around play music and in the Music app screen.

Having the progress bar moving numbers etc consume some extra battery for something that Im not looking.

If the player is reproducing in your phone and then you go to the Music app the default keys are back/next and elipses.
I want to immediately pause ,why I have to click two times the middle button?

If the player is pause and then you go to the Music app the default are back/next and play.
If I click play then backs to elipses again.

And for volume control, I hardly use it, so Im okay sacrifice that.

[azure storm]

you can directly play/pause, skipping the menu, by holding the select button

[spring sigil]

That does seem to take longer than just double-pressing select though

[glass sand]

sometimes for me its buggy and holding does't pause or play it just changes the mode to volume mode or skip/next mode.
and holding is kind of a hard task takes more time to press, you have to do more strength on the buttons

[eager edge]

I also disable the progress bar on a private fork I maintain

I like this option and hope it is merged

[spring sigil]

Maybe have that as a user setting, I'm almost certain there are people that do like the progress bar

[eager edge]

I also don't really like the cassette icon and wish the space would be used to stop artist / title from overflowing into "..."

[glass sand]

its optional for default its set as it was designed by pebble.
I added a new menu inside the "Settings" of the pebble, where you can hide the progress bar or hide the volume controls.

[eager edge]

It is a configurable setting in this PR, which is way better than me hard setting hide_layer = true

Just pulled the PR and built and flashed it. Works great.

[blissful talon]

fun fact: my involvement in any of this Pebble stuff started when I DMed Katharine and asked if I could sign an NDA and get commit access to add features to music, and she changed the UI to be the way I wanted it

[eager edge]

You would not want to see what I have done to the music player. My condolences to bastardizing your work

[solid mica]

I find the cassette charming, but I'd certainly love to be able to see the whole title/artist. Kind of the opposite of the topic at hand since it would affect battery life, but I'd love to see a version of the player that marquees/animates the text instead of (with pretty much everything I listen to) cutting it off 🥲

[eager edge]

An animated waveform would be sick, but yeah would rip through battery life. I shut off my progress bar and timer to save battery

Scrolling text would be okay I guess, but I find the cassette takes up an inordinate amount of room

It looks like it's almost 1/4 of the screen

[humble vine]

TIL after 10y lol

[eager edge]

You can also long press track control for volume

[glass sand]

@eager edge im thinking of adding in the right side of the cassette/pause symbol the time bigger
Since the time above the screen is too tiny
Did you ever did that?

[eager edge]

No, but that would be a good addition. Could also get rid of the symbol, shift everything down a bit and make the time larger

[glass sand]

Mm draw me something of that

Are you on iOS right?

[eager edge]

No, Android

[glass sand]

Oh why no use MusicBoss app? Has a lot of customization for music player

[eager edge]

I used to, but it's just very convoluted to configure and busy

I should have loaded it and played with it on my last flight, but have better things to do than fuss with something I think has a terrible design

[eager edge]

Like, I can patch the firmware faster than trying to figure out what half these "buttons" do, or if they are even buttons that are pressable

[river drift]

Could the music app have extra functionality like shuffle status or current track #? Might be possible and I'd love that

[azure storm]

i could see these fitting in as small icons at the bottom

shuffle, repeat, and track number

controls-wise it is already saturated, though. any new features would have to go into a menu, and then you need to allocate a button for opening a menu, and then you no longer have a simple quick muscle-memorizable music remote

unless we wanna add a touch panel on CT2 or something

sketch

[glass sand]

Not sure if android/ios share the shuffle/repete status by bloothoo

[azure storm]

my pixel watch will show me shuffle, repeat, a thumbs up icon, and a list of upcoming tracks

depends on the app, though. i think on android theyre exposed as part of the media session. not sure about iOS

[eager edge]

It should be part of AVRCP in BT

Oh they don't use AVRCP I guess?

https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/blob/main/src/fw/services/normal/music_endpoint_types.h

  uint8_t play_state;
  int32_t track_pos_ms;
  int32_t play_rate;
  uint8_t play_shuffle_mode;
  uint8_t play_repeat_mode;
} MusicEndpointPlayStateInfo;```

https://github.com/coredevices/PebbleOS/blob/main/src/fw/services/normal/music_endpoint.c#L127

  // play_state_info->play_shuffle_mode;
  // play_state_info->play_repeat_mode;```

[glass sand]

give me the icons files? do you know how to create them?

for now I did

[azure storm]

oh i just grabbed these off google material icons

[azure storm]

ohhhhh!

that's really cool

[glass sand]

I did something but not sure if its working
on iOS does't update the repete or shuffle need to check how to debug it
or maybe it will not work for ios.
check if you want on android

its on this branch https://github.com/asyba/PebbleOS/tree/music_settings

[glass sand]

damit apperanlty its needed code in the mobileapp to make it work, the mobileapp is not sending that info to the pebble

[eager edge]

Yeah you'd need a way to send to / query from the app on mobile device

[glass sand]

after a lot of debugging and testing for iOS is not possible
apple does't share the repeat/shuffle status

it can call it and trigger but does't share what is the status on the iphone.

so Im done with this haha.

for android is possible probably but requires edit the core app, and since I don't have an android to test I will not try to work on.

[radiant crystal]

When listening to podcasts or audiobooks, I would love it if the skip controls changed to icons for ‘seek forwards/back by x seconds’

This sort of thing:

I’d also like to see the tape icon removed which is cute but pretty useless. Replacing it with a music icon or a speech icon (for podcasts/audiobooks etc) would be cool.

I also often wonder whether the control bar down the side could slide off the screen or shrink to be really narrow when not in use. It would free up space to display track info.

And during playback, I think you could hide the counting seconds text after a few moments and only update the progress bar every 5-10 seconds. This would save a bit of battery.

[glass sand]

are you talking about iOS right?

the counting actually is not getting them from the phone its calculated by the pebble base on some startup information when play/pause actions.

[radiant crystal]

Well for either platform, but perhaps on iOS it’s not possible

[glass sand]

for Android is more easy there are already companion apps that have a lot of cutomization for media.

[radiant crystal]

Yeah I am in iOS

[glass sand]

for iOS I check and the BL apple API has a RemoteCommandIDSkipForward , RemoteCommandIDSkipBackward
but not garuantedd that they are using it.

to know the if its youtube/podcast etc , same not sure if API returns that info.

but anyway all of this will not be available in the oficial firmware from pebble core, since they are not going to merge it.
only way is to do a custom firmware to have this custom player.

the other way is to expose this info in the firmware, and if they approve it.
later can be use by watchapps to access this info.

but not sure if the media player stock vs a watchapps will work the same or will have some limitations

[radiant crystal]

In my experience on iOS, the behaviour of skipping forward/back by x seconds when listening to podcasts/audiobooks works correctly on the watch (it doesn't skip tracks). It is just that it still displays the skip tracks icons.

[glass sand]

oh well in that case the pebble sends the usual next/back but the podcast app takes that and do the 30/+- since does't support next/back the app I guess.

what about shopify if you are listening a podcast ? it will skip or do 30seconds?

[radiant crystal]

I guess you mean Spotify? I just tested it, and yes, when listening to a podcast in Spotify, the Pebble controls skip forward/back by 15 seconds, rather than skipping tracks.

[glass sand]

Yes that ok

But how we can detect if Spotify is playing a podcast or a music in the watch side to show seconds and not next symbol?

[radiant crystal]

I don’t know the answer to that. All I know is the controls on the lock screen of the phone switch to reflect the type of audio being played, and they also switch on the Apple Watch. Perhaps there is an api for this?

I wonder if there is anything in here that could tell Pebble the type of audio being played?: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer

[glass sand]

No
Apple doest allow that apps read other apps
For privacy

[radiant crystal]

Yeah, all I found was this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/mediaplayer/mpnowplayinginfomediatype

i’m trying to think of a non-Apple product that can do this but I admit I can’t think of one. CarPlay and Apple Watch can do it but perhaps they don’t allow third-party access to these things.