I think this behavior is by design, but want to make sure:
You start an album or playlist by pressing the Play icon. If, during play of the album or playlist, you add another album or playlist to the queue by using “Play next” it will begin that album/playlist after the current song is complete. If you add to the queue by using “Add to queue”, it will add to the end of the album or playlist you originally started. This is all expected behavior IMO.
However, if Plexamp adds items to the queue automatically using “Next album” or “Sonically similar album” or " radio" smart features then those button behaviors change and basically operate identically: “Play next” will play after the current song completes, and “Add to queue” will also play after the current song completes.
I think this is intended behavior - the user didn’t specifically add the next/sonically similar album to the queue so their expectation of what happens may be different. However, all the tracks from the automatically added item are visually appearing in the queue, so this throws me off. I have to keep track of whether I’m currently listening to something I specifically added or something that Plexamp added automatically.
If it is intended behavior, I’d like to suggest some subtle visual cue to help a user understand that tracks in the queue were added by smart features and therefore are not considered “part of the queue” when the user adds tracks manually.
Obviously, if this is not intended behavior, then this is a bug report
I think it is “expected” but I don’t think it should be how it operates. It means the queue becomes a bit useless if you want to keep building out the queue after you you’ve gone as far along autoplay as you want to.
Use case: Artist X has 4 albums. I play Artist X’s first album and let it autoplay the rest. Once the 4th album starts, I can’t queue up anything else after that album until it gets to the last track. That is, I have to change the autoplay queue card to silence, wait for the last track to come on, then put into the queue what I want next.
I find it annoying but it hasn’t changed since autoplay was introduced so I’m guessing it’s here to stay.
Yes, it’s disruptive to me for that exact use case. I like to see what “smart” suggestion Plexamp comes up with, and then decide if I want to add something else to the queue.
I’d like to see them use some kind of visual cue to indicate the “transient” tracks in the queue, and also allow you to add them permanently to the queue. Not sure how that would work, however.
It has to do with the fact that there’s an invisible “Up Next” region in the play queue, similar to what iTunes has/had. We’re considered changes over the years.
This definitely seems like a difficult design problem because different users expect different things. Having never used iTunes, is was unexpected and I thought it was a bug until I picked up the pattern. Regardless, I’d still advocate for a visual distinction for this invisible portion of the queue. I’ve seen other apps displaying a generated queue with decreasing opacity going down.
I also observed something which does feel like incorrect behavior: when Plexamp is still showing the swipe-able card at the bottom of the queue with suggestions, pressing and holding expands those items into the queue. To me this feels like an intentional user action, saying “yes, I want to listen to this” and therefore those songs should be added to the “visible” queue.
