[WIDGET][4+] Generic Music Controls

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

Media Utilities

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*** Public Open Beta ***

If you ever wanted to use a single widget or have a single place to control all of your media applications, then you are in luck. Media Utilities is designed to give you unified tools for all of your media applications.

Do you like Pandora or Spotify, but wish each had notification controls? Media Utilities provides unified notification controls that let you control the most recently started media application as well as easily jump to it.

Hate having to search for your media application just because you paused it? All of the controls keep track of the last running media application to let you easily resume or launch it.

There are several widgets available on the Play store that let you play/pause any media application. But few show you all of the meta data. Media Utilities gets all the meta data including cover art from your favorite media application (Pandora, Spotify, Songza, etc.) and displays it in a clean, unified widget.

Media Utilities provides several different widgets to satisfy your particular needs, from a classic, single row design to a larger widget that displays cover art with hidden controls for the ultimate in clean design.

Media Utilities is now in open beta. Feature requests and feedback are encouraged and would be greatly appreciated.

Widgets

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3x3
Large cover art controls on bottom.

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2x2
Large cover art, controls hidden in the cover art.

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2x2
Large cover art, controls hidden in the cover art. Clean version no title no current app.

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3x1
Highly configurable standard music controls

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1x1
Resizable coverart selecting the cover art launches current application.
Designed to be used with other widgets to design your own music screen.

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1x1
Designed to look like a desktop icon. Shows the current application. Selecting launches the current applications.
Designed to be used with other widgets to design your own music screen.

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2x1
Standard music controls. Highly configurable and resizable both vertical and horizontally.
Designed to be used with other widgets to design your own music screen.

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2x1
Just text, Title, track, album.
Hidden controls.
Designed to be used with other widgets to design your own music screen.

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4x2
Highly configurable standard music controls
Note: the lower one will be available in the next version

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3x1
Cover Art on the left large text on the right, hidden music controls under the text.
Highly configurable.
Note: available in the next version

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Example widget config page.
Current Configuration
- Optional Gradient
- Background color
- Background transparency
- Border color
- Border width
- Optional show current running music application
- Optional show your music application *NEW*
- Text color

lordpipa · Apr 11, 2013

Playstore? Where's the download link?

Sent from my Inspire 4G using xda premium

mhdsanto85 · Apr 11, 2013

sounds great...... but where is the DL link??

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

Sorry new to the forms can post links yet. Ill update with links in the next day or so.
Iam a recent convert from iphone to android just getting into all of the forms now.

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"Media Utilities"

mhdsanto85 said:
sounds great...... but where is the DL link??

mhdsanto85 · Apr 11, 2013

Ok... I'll be waiting!

Is it compatible with walkman app?

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

Not familier with "walkman app" is that built into the sony phones?
Will be interested to know if it works. I expect the controls to work, not so sure about the cover art though.

mhdsanto85 said:
Ok... I'll be waiting!

Is it compatible with walkman app?

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

mhdsanto85 · Apr 11, 2013

batesapps said:
Not familier with "walkman app" is that built into the sony phones?
Will be interested to know if it works. I expect the controls to work, not so sure about the cover art though.

Yeah, it is.. It works great on my cm10.1 rom, but the widget.... It works only with the Xperia launcher and I don't like it.... So it would be perfect if I could use a generic music widget...

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

arman68 · Apr 11, 2013

Great idea!

I tried it on my x86 motorola razr i, and it works fine.

MusiXMatch works well (album art, metadata, controls)

TuneIn Radio works partially: album art and metadata are ok, but when I pressed the controls while tunein was playing music, it controlled the previous player, musixmatch, instead.

I was testing the widgets with Launcher8 and there is a bit of the problem with some of the widgets getting truncated. Have a look at the screenshot below:

The widgets are from top to bottom: Big layout 1 (resized to 2x3), Big layout 2 (resized to 2x2), Layout 1 (resized to 4x1), Layout 2 (resized to 3x1).

Also, what impact does the scrolling text have on battery consumption?

One suggestion: it would be very useful if there was a way to go from the widget to the media player selection menu. Maybe another button; or if music is playing the button could jump straight to the player, and if not go to the player list (unless there is only 1 player available).

Another suggestion: transparent background option.

mhdsanto85 · Apr 11, 2013

Running flawlessly here! All that I needed... I'm using aosp launcher + walkman app.

Suggestions:
-a previous track button in a 4x1 or 4x2 widget.
-Artist name

Thanks

Sent from my SGH-I777 using Tapatalk 2

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

Thanks for all of the comments Ill go through them in detail tonight (On the east coast).

Appreciate the widget feedback, The ones I created so far are mostly designed to get feedback to see what people with better design sense then me think.
The transparency comments looks like a common thread so Ill look at adding that soon.

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

It nice to see what everyone is using for media players, havent tried a lot these before.

For musixMatch make sure you configure it to use "Native ICS lockscreen" instead of its own custom, never seen that before. That should get you cover art etc.

Looking into why it played the wrong media application, pretty sure its because TuneIn aggressively unregisters itself and musixMatch never unregisters. I have a few ideas Ill try.

Never seen widgets with borders before, I use the Nexus 7 and a GSIII. Ill see about adding a border to mitigate that.

The scrolling shouldn't really affect the battery, it should only scroll if the widget is visible, you should notice that its always starting to scroll when you unlock or go back to the home screen. This may be different for different launchers so if thats not the case get back to me.

Was thinking the same thing about launching different media applications instead of just the last one. Thought that might just be me though so good to see other people thought the same thing. Really like your suggestion with different behavior for paused vs playing, not really necessary for most widgets since selecting the cover art does the same thing.

arman68 said:
Great idea!

I tried it on my x86 motorola razr i, and it works fine.

MusiXMatch works well (album art, metadata, controls)

TuneIn Radio works partially: album art and metadata are ok, but when I pressed the controls while tunein was playing music, it controlled the previous player, musixmatch, instead.

Love the transparent idea, Ill see about creating a few that are fully transparent as a short term fix until I get the configurability working. Any specific Ideas you have on widgets are helpful. Iam really really really (did I say really) terrible at visual design.

I was testing the widgets with Launcher8 and there is a bit of the problem with some of the widgets getting truncated. Have a look at the screenshot below:
View attachment 1875393
The widgets are from top to bottom: Big layout 1 (resized to 2x3), Big layout 2 (resized to 2x2), Layout 1 (resized to 4x1), Layout 2 (resized to 3x1).

Also, what impact does the scrolling text have on battery consumption?

One suggestion: it would be very useful if there was a way to go from the widget to the media player selection menu. Maybe another button; or if music is playing the button could jump straight to the player, and if not go to the player list (unless there is only 1 player available).

Another suggestion: transparent background option.

arman68 · Apr 11, 2013

Yours are not the only widgets affected by the extra borders from launcher 8. It really annoys me, and I wish the launcher had a way to configure the borders or eliminate them completely for widgets. I stick with that launcher though because apart from that small annoyance, it is great, looks fantastic and i love it.

Some widgets are able to cope very well with the borders, so I know it should be possible to handle. One that does it in a very unique and clever way is AIX weather: have a look at its calibration function.

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

Thanks Ill take a look at that. Should not be that difficult once I add configuration for the widgets.

Things that need configuration so far:
- Transparency
- Border
- Background color
- Other ????

Does "launcher 8" support resizable widgets? Ill grab it give it a try myself as well.

arman68 said:
Yours are not the only widgets affected by the extra borders from launcher 8. It really annoys me, and I wish the launcher had a way to configure the borders or eliminate them completely for widgets. I stick with that launcher though because apart from that small annoyance, it is great, looks fantastic and i love it.

Some widgets are able to cope very well with the borders, so I know it should be possible to handle. One that does it in a very unique and clever way is AIX weather: have a look at its calibration function.

batesapps · Apr 11, 2013

launcher 8 is sexy I can see why you like it. Ill add a few quick widgets and post an update (mostly for me).

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batesapps said:
Thanks Ill take a look at that. Should not be that difficult once I add configuration for the widgets.

Things that need configuration so far:
- Transparency
- Border
- Background color
- Other ????

Does "launcher 8" support resizable widgets? Ill grab it give it a try myself as well.

arman68 · Apr 12, 2013

batesapps said:
Ill add a few quick widgets and post an update (mostly for me).

I have tried the new update. You added a lot of widgets! I guess this is just for testing, to see what works and what doesn't. So after testing them, here are my comments; first screenshot of the widgets I think are worthwhile:

Top left: album art only. Looks good, but no useful functionality. Not for me, but I can see why some people would want it.

Top right: album art with controls. This is my favorite. I love the design and hidden functionality. I think it could be improved though: when nothing is playing, instead of darkening the album art, how about displaying only the album art in standard colours (no title, no shortcut to mediaplayer), and having all the touch events launch the mediaplayer selection (or mediaplayer if only one)?

Second row: transparent controls only. Resizes well down to 2x1. Simple and functional, there is a use for it.

Third and fourth rows: transparent metadata with controls and shortcut, but no album art. Resizes well to 3 wide, but not 4 wide. 1 high looks kind of squished. 2 high looks too spaced. Shortcut icon looks a bit out of place (stands out too much, and clashes with the clean design).

Fifth row: album art, metadata, controls and shortcut. Ideal width is 4, 3 looks squashed. Same comment as the previous widget for the height. I wish it was transparent.

I think what you need is combine the last 2 widgets (3rd,4th + 5th row) into a single 4x1 widget, with the following features:

Album art on the left, resize to fit in a square with 100% of widget height. Touch event should launch the mediaplayer or selection menu.
Only show song title, to give more space to the controls.
Previous, Play/Pause, Next buttons
No mediaplayer shortcut, since this is already handled by the album art. I was hesitating whether an indication of which player is active would be useful, but actually the album art already kind of perform this function since it shows what would play.
Transparency option.

You could also expand the above into a 4x2 widget, with bigger album art (of course) and more metadata shown (artist and album).

There is one more widget which is worth keeping as well: it is the other big layout, with the controls at the bottom.

batesapps said:
launcher 8 is sexy I can see why you like it.

Yes. I think Microsoft designers did an awesome job on that tile interface for phones. It looks good, provides good user customisation options, and is very functional. Here is another picture showing how well one of your widgets fits in it:

batesapps · Apr 12, 2013

With launcher 8 is there a way to show number of unread emails?

arman68 said:
Yes. I think Microsoft designers did an awesome job on that tile interface for phones. It looks good, provides good user customisation options, and is very functional. Here is another picture showing how well one of your widgets fits in it:
View attachment 1877470

arman68 · Apr 12, 2013

batesapps said:
With launcher 8 is there a way to show number of unread emails?

OT but here is the answer anyway:

Launcher 8 has built-in mechanism for call and sms counter, but not gmail. There is a way to show it for gmail though, and since I prefer the way it looks, I also use the same method for calls and sms.

You need to setup a SMS Unread Count widget, either with a custom image (if you do not want the default one), or a blank image, and then setting the widget image from the launcher 8 properties. See the screenshot below for details and example:

drakenabarion · Apr 12, 2013

Trying this out and its very nice so far. I cab resize the 2x2 app to 1x2 which would work best for me anyway. Like a few already mentioned, transparency would be nice.

I would also be interested in disabling cover art on some instances of the widget and enabling it on others (kinda like displaying the art in one part of the screen while having more invisible controls on a different part of the screen).

As for bugs, when I start up the music from the widget, it defaults to Google music and re adds it to the media players lists and it does this even when I remove Google music from the media player lists (I want it to default to Mort player). If I launch Mort player from the app drawer, the widget controls the player as expected.

I noticed no other but at this point.

Edit: I just noticed there is a widget that has just controls and one that has just album art. That is mostly what I like.

But perhaps on the widget without the art, still have the track title scrolling. It scrolls nicely on the album art+controls widget.

Sent from my Nexus⁴ running CM10.1 (JB 4.2.2) using XDA premium app

drakenabarion · Apr 12, 2013

Sorry for double post but apparently I can't add images to post edits.

Here is a screenshot which the 2x2 cover art+controls widget resized to 1x2. It works nice with pause/play on the left side of the image and next track on the right, but no visual button. Its not I like it.

What I am suggesting is a widget like that with no cover art and transparent background but keeping the title scrolling and being controlled by pressing the relevant side of the widget without the buttons. I think it would be nice and functional. However even with the cover are as it is, it's very good. Nice to Control like this.

Sent from my Nexus⁴ running CM10.1 (JB 4.2.2) using XDA premium app

batesapps · Apr 12, 2013

Interesting idea.
So just just the title, album etc with hidden controls and no coverart?
Would probably remove the current media application as well in view, would clutter up the text?

Visible
+-------------------------------+
| Track
| Artist - Album
+--------------------------------+

Hidden
+-----------------------------------+
| Previous | Play | Next
| | |
+-----------------------------------+

drakenabarion said:
Sorry for double post but apparently I can't add images to post edits.

Here is a screenshot which the 2x2 cover art+controls widget resized to 1x2. It works nice with pause/play on the left side of the image and next track on the right, but no visual button. Its not I like it.

What I am suggesting is a widget like that with no cover art and transparent background but keeping the title scrolling and being controlled by pressing the relevant side of the widget without the buttons. I think it would be nice and functional. However even with the cover are as it is, it's very good. Nice to Control like this.

Sent from my Nexus⁴ running CM10.1 (JB 4.2.2) using XDA premium app

[WIDGET][4+] Generic Music Controls

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