Feature Road Map

[cyanChill]

Roadmap Overview

This discussion post aims to list out most the features/improvements that we've planned.

Click here to skip to the comment in this post containing the list of potential features that may be added in the future.

Note

In the future, we might change the overall strategy by pinning an issue for the next version and listing out our plans there.

v1.1.0

Note

This is what I have planned for this release. The actual features/changes implemented may be different.

• Refactor code.
• Refactor player logic to use only react-native-track-player (instead of expo-av with react-native-track-player).
  • This should also allow for the Glyph Music Visualization feature to work.
  • This should also close some issues caused by using the 2 packages together.
  • Automatically delete the tracks we find unplayable when encountered when playing them.
• Prepare for i18n support (do some research, simplify some text, create a translations folder, etc.).
  • Probably have a Localizations screen (add it under the "Features" section) where we'll allow the user to change the language along with credits to the translators. Will currently only have "English" for now.
• Add light/dark theme (synced to system preferences).
• Add marquee for some text (will remove the ellipsis in some places). Planned locations for use are: the mini player, current track page, album/artist/playlist pages.
• Add shuffle/repeat/play/pause buttons on the "Tracks" tab.

v1.0.0

v1.0.0-rc.12

The "hotfix" patch (I plan on releasing the APKs early and let the Play Console auto-release the update this time instead of synchronizing them).

• Fix the "double splash screen" issue seen with Android 12+ (fix: Double Bootsplash #65).
• Missing MEDIA_LIBRARY permissions on Android 12 (fix: Missing MEDIA_LIBRARY permissions. #64).

v1.0.0-rc.11

• Utilize native modules package for getting metadata (and support a wider range of files) and see if it's a performance improvement vs the current JavaScript method (perf: Improved track saving speed #47).
• Adjust saving strategy to be less prone to overload (chore: Updated saving strategy #54).
• Add sentry for logging errors in production (chore: Better Error Handling & Reporting #51).
• Add some "smart" filtering to the FOLDERS tab to not display any folders with no tracks nested down in them (26e28a6).
• Experimental whitelist of top-level Music folder on SD cards (Music folder casing matters) (feat: Experimental support for music on SD card #49).
• Fix weird back gesture behavior with /folder breadcrumb in some scenarios (ie: after clicking a segment in a long breadcrumb, when we do the back gesture, we don't move to the previous breadcrumb in the list which is unexpected) (feat: Experimental support for music on SD card #49).
• Simple allowlist/blocklist feature (directories in blocklist take priority). For now, changes will be applied on next app launch to make getting this feature out faster (feat: Allowlist & Blocklist #59).

v1.0.0-rc.10

• Folder structure support (display folder-like structure for finding tracks). Will be in a new tab in the home screen (feat: View tracks in "Folder" structure #38).
• Allow support for untagged audio - fallback to filename for name field in Track schema (feat: Support tracks without tags #35).
• Potentially switch to using @dr.pogodin/react-native-fs instead of expo-file-system if it ends up being slightly faster (fd75508).
• Indicator on "Insights" page telling user if the image indexing is finished. (chore: indicator if we've saved all tracks #29)

v1.0.0-rc.6

• Exporting a file containing information about the favorite tracks & playlists saved in the app to import onto a different device with this app (or from moving from the APK to Google Play Store app once implemented). (feat: Data Backup #15)

[cyanChill]

Feature Idea List

This comment lists out all the features/improvements that might be added to this app in future updates.

If they get implemented in some sort of way, they will get removed from this comment and added to the post above.

Note

For a list of things that might not get added, refer to the App Goals & Ideology document.

Performance / Logic

UI

• Waveform slider instead of basic slider. Will either add it to @missingcore/react-native-metadata-retriever or create a different native module that converts the file to bytes and figure out the amplitude values.
• Better design for large screen layouts (ie: foldables/tablets).

UX

• Some sort of search feature.
  • Have some sort of floating side buttons on the side of the "tracks" & "artists" screen to skip to the first track of a certain character.
• Automatically check for new tracks when we unfocus/refocus into the app.
• Custom track ordering in playlists (ie: not alphabetical).
  • Maybe add some sorting options on the TRACKS tab (ie: based on the "modification time")
• Interface for adding tracks to a playlist while inside a playlist screen.
• Some gesture controls/interactions with parts of the app.
  • On the playlist screen, press the cover to change/remove it instead of having it inside the current modal.
  • On the /current-track screen: swipe up to pause, left/right for prev/next.
  • Maybe multi-select tracks & albums and have options for them (favorite all, add all to same playlist/playlists, etc.)
    • See if we can use the page-transition stuff in react-navigation to translate the list of tracks/albums into the page with the list of multi-select options.
  • Need documentation for all of these behaviors/interactions.
• Volume control slider on /current-track screen, independent of the hardware controls.
• More options of controlling what gets saved or shown such as:
  • Option for hiding albums with less than "x" tracks.
  • Ignore saving short tracks (duration determined by user).
• Hiding tracks that get indexed that we don't want display. To un-hide a track, we might add a new section under the "Features" section in the settings page.
• Add option to add all tracks in an album to a playlist.

Extras / Nice to Haves

• Display more info in the track modal (ie: file extension, name, path, last modified, length, bit rate, etc.)
• Make custom widgets? (https://github.com/sAleksovski/react-native-android-widget)
• Set up some quick actions (long press the app icon interaction).
• Support for Chromecast & Android Auto (might separate into different issues/PRs).