I have a music library set to “Store Track Progress,” so it’s treated as an audiobook library for my books.
On the desktop version of Plexamp, there’s a waveform that makes it easy to seek within tracks. However, on the Android app, I only see a straight, flat bar line for seeking. The waveforms appear on regular music libraries on Android however.
Is this a bug on the Android app or is there any chance the Android app might get a waveform feature for audiobook libraries in a future update?
You’re absolutely right—I realized I had long-form controls enabled on the Android app, but not on the desktop version.
It seems like enabling long-form controls gives you features like “skip silences” and “speaker volume boost,” but you lose the waveforms in the process.
It’s a bit of a shame because with waveforms, you can tap anywhere to seek within the track, and it’s easier since the waveform is thicker. But with long-form controls, you can only seek by holding and dragging the seek ball, which is less precise and harder to control, especially on a smaller mobile screen.
Is there any way to keep the waveforms while using long-form controls?
There is not, mostly because the waveforms didn’t seem helpful on that sort of content as far as we could tell. What are you seeing that makes you think otherwise?
I prefer the waveform style for a few reasons. It’s thicker, which makes it easier to tap around different parts of the track to seek, and it clearly shows where a narrator pauses or changes voices. Plus, it displays both the elapsed and remaining time in minutes and seconds.
With the long-form controls, where there’s just a single line, you have to hold and drag the trackball to seek, which is less precise, especially on smaller screens. It only shows the remaining time in whole minutes with elapsed time removed, so it’s harder to see how far I am into a chapter without going back to the track listing.
