The offline features in Plexamp are very well-developed, but it’s hard to tell which tracks are downloaded or cached. Tracks that are downloaded should show a small icon to denote that they can be played without a connection, and that icon should change depending on whether they were explicitly downloaded or just cached from the user’s previous listening. Albums/Artists/Playlists that contain tracks available offline should also have an icon, and if the device itself is offline, the main view should only show those (instead of an error).
Here’s a very rough mockup of what I mean with albums having icons.
that’s a decent request and i actually think the normal plex app does this, however there have been multiple requests for several things to be displayed… e.g. codec, if assigned to a playlist, what server/library it’s playing from…
there’s only so much info the small screen/row can display. i can also see people struggling with home only showing only downloaded content when offline, posts like “where’s all my music???”… but i guess that would be a learning curve.
you can go to the Download Tab and do this exact thing.
Not that exact thing. At least to me, it feels more like a download manager, than a library view like the normal Plex app has. Google Play Music also shows cached music in the downloaded only view, not just things you’ve manually selected to download.
when I’m using AA i use the download tab to browse only downloaded content… different views to different people. but i understand what’r getting at.
thing with cache is cache can constantly be updated. once items are played and at the bottom of the list, when a NEW item needs cached those older items are deleted (from cache). if you were to load a NEW play queue, it caches ALL new things (in the event of an already existing item i’m not entirely sure if it re-caches or recycle, i would guess recycle). So to me at least it be a lot of work to show what’s being cached when things can constantly being changed. it’d be like a moving target.
Not disagreeing with you, just trying to explain the tricks around caching. I’ve seen people with over 100,000 tracks… to display cached when browsing would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
maybe @OttoKerner, @elan or another knowledgeable user/employee can verify.
That’s fair. In my original idea, I suggested to have different icons for cached vs. non-cached.
For me, I don’t usually think to download media for later until it’s already too late. Showing cached music would help alleviate that, since I would always have something, from what I’ve recently been listening to. It’s not necessarily about permanence, it’s just having music in a pinch. And if I allocate a lot of storage to cache, I’d like to at least see all the music I’ve got on my device.
The layout of the downloads menu is a bit inefficient when many things are downloaded. Too much scrollng. And if a specific track/album/artist is downloaded as part of a larger playlist/station, I don’t think there’s any way to easily get to that.
you are correct. there have been other remarks about this… and also to NOT start playing when clicking/tapping on an album/playlist…there is no drill down.
