With the demise of Google Play Music, well actually the move from GPM to YouTube Music, I would like to get my music through my own Plex server. YouTube Music sucks, for one thing, it stops playing when it loses the foreground. Instead, it pops up a notification saying “Want the music to continue to play? Subscribe”. Also, you cannot download songs from YouTube Music without the same extortion of “You must now subscribe!”. Similarly, Google Photos stopped offering space so rather than be extorted by the big tech I’d rather use my Plex server for such things.
But I’ve always kept my music locally too and it’s now on my Plex server. Ideally, I should be able to stream all my music to my phone when out and about. However, I often have little or no signal so I have downloaded or synchronized all of my music locally on my phone, but I should be able to configure the Plex player on my phone to download any song it is streaming so that subsequent playback will be local to the phone.
I’m also a big user of Android Auto. In an AA context, the Plex app only serves as a music media player and podcast player. Here are some of the problems I’ve been noticing:
When not connected via WiFi and not having a signal at all (Mobile Data off), if I select Music or Podcasts I see nothing. I do see thhttps://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-podcasts-rew-ff-and-aa/602059/6ese things under Downloads & Sync but when under AA there is no way to get to Downloads & Sync 'cept to use the phone which is frowned upon when driving and hard to do. I propose that when the user selects either Music or Podcasts that the app may attempt to connect to the server but it should first show anything from Downloads & Sync would show and it should show it immediately while it tries to contact the server in the background. IOW Downloads & Sync/Music should overlay the Music and Downloads & Sync/Podcasts should overlay Podcasts. It just makes much more logical sense that it operates that way and fits right in with AA.
I’ve asked for this before but it seems to constantly fall on deaf ears (See Plex podcasts REW/FF and AA - #6 by adefaria). Is there any development going on for the Plex app?!? I suggest that both skip-next-episode, skip-forward-x-seconds, skip-prev-episode, and skip-prev-y-seconds should be configurable for both podcasts, with both x and y being configurable and available from the Plex app on the phone, AA as well as responding correctly to prev-next taps on things like Galaxy Buds.
Search of Downloads & Sync doesn’t seem to work.
I’m aware of Plex Amp it is sorta clunky making you select only one source such as Music, Podcasts, etc. Also, there is no interface to AA. There are buttons for skip-next-x-seconds plus buttons for skip-next-song but not in the car view, which really doesn’t matter because it doesn’t interface with Android Auto anyway. skip-[next|prev]-[xy]-seconds is not configurable.
I would really, really like to have podcasts working in my car as well as everywhere I go. I listen to podcasts about 80% of the time with only 20% listening to music. Normally I use BeyondPod but it’s always a little flakey. I would love to have not only my podcasts handled well by Plex where I can keep one marker of where I am in a podcast. IOW let’s say I have a 2-hour podcast and I’m at 30:23 in. I go to my car and I run an errand or two while listening to that podcast using the Plex app on my phone through AA and get to 42:15 in. I come back home and jump on Plex in my browser, go to that podcast and start listening again. It starts as 41:45 seconds giving me a 30-second lead in to remember what was going on in the podcast when I stopped it. I listen to it from the browser and get to 1:10:32. Need to run another errand, jump into my car and fire up AA and it picks up at 1:10:02. Bonus points if the “where I’m at in the episode” gets relayed to Google so I can say "Hey Google, continue playing podcast " and it knows where I am. Obviously, podcasts are always downloaded and synced to the phone and old podcasts are discarded after listening to them (or if they age sufficiently).
I’d also be willing to attempt to help code this if that is at all possible.
So I tried the new Plexamp today. While it now sports interaction with AA my single biggest roadblock to adoption is that REW/FF still skips to the beginning/end of the podcast episode. For podcasts, this is essential for skipping past commercials and rewinding to hear what was just said. Rarely, if ever do I want FF to skip the rest of the podcast. The cell phone app itself does have REW/FF buttons as well as PREV/NEXT buttons. But my car’s steering wheel but REW/FF does a PREV/NEXT podcast episode. Also, my Galaxy Buds tap action for REW/FF does PREV/NEXT. This makes this unusable for me. Oh and make the REW/FF buttons configurable so I can configure it for REW to go back 10 seconds while FF is set to go forward 30 seconds. IOW I should be able to set the number of seconds a REW does and a FF does.
Also, there doesn’t seem to have a way to set the speed for playback per podcast. One podcast I listen to is musically oriented. I want that podcast to go a 1x speed. But I want all others to go at 1.5x. I can’t do that now. IOW unless set per podcast, a podcast will playback at the current speed. But if a podcast is hit that has a specific playback speed setting (e.g. 1x) then that podcast is played back at 1x but only that podcast. Others will play at the default current speed of 1.5x.
Should be able to set multiple sources. In fact, by default, it should be all sources that are not videos. This would include podcasts, audiobooks, spoken word, whatever - just not videos.
I looked in downloads - all I saw was one album I purposely downloaded. What about podcasts? By default, IMHO, podcasts should be downloaded - or at least the last x episodes of a podcast (configurable per podcast). This insures if you are say driving or hiking and there’s no signal around, you know you can list to your podcasts.
Feel free to ping me when you have new releases and I’m willing to beta test and offer my findings. Andrew@DeFaria.com
REW/FF seems like such a simple fix and easily coded yet it’s neglected. Will you also make it configurable?
Question: Will you also implement REW/FF on music? Most music players don’t do this but as a guitarist, I often want to skip back and re-listen to that wonderful guitar lead or bass part, etc.
Another question: Why the split? Why the Plex app and then Plexamp? Why not just fold Plexamp into the Plex app?
Oh and another question (sorry), why the input sources of Music or Podcasts. Again, why not just everything that is not videos. I don’t want to be switching input sources from podcasts to music just to listen to music.
Thanks for responding. People have been real silent about this.
Oh, just thought - is there a beta channel for Plexamp? Can I get on it?
Because that doesn’t make any sense. The Plexamp philosophy is a lightweight focused experience, and simply making it a part of another app would be a swiss-army-knife experience; we’re trying to be a razor sharp chef’s knife.
The vast majority of our users have a single library of music. It didn’t make sense to us to try to optimize for the rare case. As I’ve said before, the app doesn’t try to be a great Podcasts app (yet, at least).
We occasionally pick people from the forums who we observe being helpful/thoughtful across a period of time.
Configurable REW/FF - please consider this. I find a lot of podcasts advertise in 30s or 1 min. Some longer. So setting FF to 30 would make sense, but not always. Other podcasts or just music might want a different setting. Seems pretty simple to add it to settings.
REW/FF on music: Sweet! Set. Thanks.
Multiple input sources: Why not simply allow the user to select multiple input sources with the default of a single input source of Music? That way I could add on an input source of Podcasts in my case and the vast majority of your users can use the single input source of Music.
Plexamp vs. Plex app: I find it confusing that I can listen to music on either app and that they are different experiences. Maybe remove them from the Plex app and when the user tries to listen to music/podcasts, etc. then show a “Install the Plexamp companion app. You’ll love it!”. Perhaps you don’t have the power to influence the Plex app people… (I guess you can say I prefer the swiss-army-knife" approach myself).
But really my biggest beef is the inability to skip forward/backward while under AA as well as say when on my phone and using my Galaxy Buds. I can double-tap to FF and triple tap for REW. But with Plexamp when I do either I go to the end or beginning of a 2-hour podcast and lose my place. I can’t use it that way.
Regarding podcasts: I think it would be helpful if you clearly delineate what podcast episodes have been listened to and which you haven’t heard yet. Make it easy for the user to create auto lists of all unheard episodes and allow them to order them.
Also, make it easy for the user to tell if the episode has been downloaded locally on the device or will be streaming from the internet. Allow the user to configure their podcasts to download and keep episodes locally. Episodes that have been fully listened to can be removed from the device.
Finally, you’ll need someplace to store the info about what episodes have been heard. It’d be great if that place could be coordinated with your Plex account. It’d be great if I could be out and about listening to podcasts, come home, fire up Plex in a browser tab and go to Podcasts and pick up exactly where I left off. And all the episodes I’ve finished while out and about are marked as already played.
there is nothing “simple” about that. you’d have to merge or consolidate or something else the home screen, library, etc.
i would love to know how Android apps are supposed to handle this sort of thing (someone else said double tap was supposed to be , but it was just pausing and resuming).
Well, BeyondPod, Podcast Addict, and I believe a few others handle it as I said, double-tap does FF and triple-tap does REW. This is only for small devices like Galaxy Buds that don’t have room nor physical buttons for FF/REW. IOW, the double/triple taps are just mapped to the FF/REW functions that say a wired set of earbuds might physically have on the wire.
That said I must say the Galaxy Buds tapping thing is hit or miss, often with trying something like a triple-tap to reverse and the Buds only sensing a double-tap so instead of rewinding you’re going in the wrong direction. Or you double-tap to skip ahead and it just registers a single tap and playback stops. But it usually works fairly OK.
I also have a set of Bose buds that are larger but have great bass sound and are good for music. I keep it in my car in case I forget my Galaxy Buds. It too has the double/triple tap options for FF and REW.
In any event, unless the default action of FF/REW can be easily accessed and used (physical buttons on my car’s steering wheel, double/triple taps on Galaxy and Bose buds) I can’t use Plexamp because 95% of the time I simply want to FF/REW and not skip to the next episode and unlocking my phone to use the phone’s interface is not practical while driving or while my phone is in another room.
This was a bittersweet find tonight but better than wondering if anyone at Plex is listening.
In many ways, Plex has the guts of a near-perfect podcast player. It would appear that much work was put into podcast support and then all development that could improve that podcast experience seems to have been at least temporarily abandoned.
Thanks, @elan for providing guidance on where Plex’s priorities are when it comes to podcast support.
Another thing I noticed yesterday - as I said before I generally listen to podcasts at 1.5x and I had been trying to use Plexamp to play podcasts in my car. Yesterday I decided to try just playing some music. Ideally, I’d have all my music downloaded locally but I don’t even know how to do that with Plexamp. Since I was driving it was difficult and distracting to have to open my phone and get to Plexamp to switch my “input source” from podcasts to music but I managed to do that. I couldn’t do it from the AA interface as there was no option to do that.
When I finally got some music playing I noticed it was at 1.5x speed! I attempted to dive back into Plexamp’s interface on the phone but I couldn’t find how to change the speed as I am still not that familiar with the app and it was becoming way too distracting to do while driving.
I did find a setting for Music Playback Speed and all it says is “Allow adjusting playback speed for music”. I toggled it on. It didn’t seem to change anything though. Oh, I see if toggled on then I can change the music playback speed by tapping that super-secret tap the song title to get to that menu and adjust the speed.
Oh and I found this under Downloads:
So the way this works is you download a bunch of music and then buy a van. Any van will do but bonus points for an Airstream or a Kombi. Then make an Instagram account and use the hashtag #vanlife a lot. But the point is, when you’re off-grid, you can listen to your downloaded music.
Very professional…
There is a section in settings under downloads but all it talks about is quality, download on cellular, prefer downloaded media and refresh download. Not a stitch about actually how to download.
You know I do like the sweet fades but could care less about the visualizer. How about ya just get the basic functionality down before you add sparkle and snarky comedY?
I do not think it’s unreasonable to expect an app that says it supports playing podcasts to include such essential functionality as skipping forward or back within the current episode as the default actions for FF and REW, do you? Elan mentioned that podcast support is not that flushed out yet. And VonBrick seems to agree with me. Do you think it wrong of me to ask for functionality for playing podcasts while this section is apparently still in development?
Also, Plexamp does support Android Auto yet lacks essential functionality such as setting the playback speed or switching between music and podcasts (a seemingly arbitrary divide) while driving, risking an accident, or having to pull off the road to fix your media player.
Personally, I don’t care if Plexamp gets better podcast support or Plexapp get’s better podcast support - I just want a better podcast player, hopefully, one that integrates into my whole “I run a Plex Server at home and it handles all of my media desires”. Having two different apps for that seems silly to me, I’d rather it just be one app, but I’d take either Plexamp or Plexapp (and the Plexapp people weren’t responding). If you look at the thread title here I mentioned both. It was Elan who suggested I try out Plexamp again as things were updated there. I was really hoping the REW/FF issue was addressed but it wasn’t. For the life of me, I don’t understand why. It seems like such a simple and quick fix to make. The other issues I pointed out would take longer but this one missing piece of functionality kills it for me.
For kicks, here’s another issue. As mentioned I run a Plex Server at home. I often view it from a browser tab. I’ve configured my Podcasts there. As I said before, I would like to be able to listen to podcasts in my car, while I’m cooking, while I’m on a hike - all largely through my cell phone, and while I’m sitting at my desk through the browser tab. Since all places point to Podcasts in Plex through my Plex account, I would like it all to be synchronized. IOW if I listen to an episode while out shopping on my phone when I get to my desk, perhaps refresh the tab, I should see that that episode was played.
I just tried this using Plexamp. When back to the browser tab, refreshed. It didn’t notice that I listened to that episode. Repeated this using Plexapp. OMG, it worked. It marked the episode played! Now can we just hotwire the REW/FF buttons properly?
Don’t disagree, but I think to be a truly first class Podcast app, a good amount of work would be needed specific to that type of media in the interface/experience realm.
, but it was just pausing and resuming).
