Mach Music Player

The music apps I've found for Android have been laggy and / or constantly nagging you to like them on Facebook, so my first attempt at an app is making a music player that does its job efficiently and doesn't get in your way.

This app is now available on the Google Play store at

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.andrewkiluk.machmusicplayer

This project started from an example at http://www.androidhive.info/.

Version 1.1.1:

• Many miscellaneous behavior fixes.
• Shuffle now remembers its history.
• Repeat now has 3 modes: Off, Repeat playlist, and Repeat song.

To do: Allow the user to change the order of the songs in the current playlist by dragging. I found a library which should hopefully make this not terrible. I'll also add the song lengths to the playlist view, and maybe also to the playlist builder. This should be the last thing before it hits the Play Store!

Version 1.1:

I gave the UI a much-needed overhaul, and fixed a few weird behaviors that would occur when the player was started with an empty playlist. The current song and position are now stored upon exit, so you don't lose your place.

Also, the player should now support most screen sizes. I think it's ready for the Play Store after some more testing. Hm, maybe Version 1.0 was a bit premature... but it's in actual working shape right now as far as I can tell.

Version 1.0:

I've finished all of the main goals, plus all of my reach goals, plus some other things I thought of. This thing is now looking really good:

• It has selectable Big Picture Style notifications showing album art.

• It scans the storage for music files on the initial run, then reloads its memory of the library from a JSON String saved in the preferences. The library can be rebuilt by pressing a button in the settings. It's a little unsatisfying to have to manually reload, but it makes boot time super short, and a primary goal of this project was to built something that feels as lightweight as possible.

• It supports playlists.

There are some cosmetic things I might do from here -- I'll get some opinions on the interface design and what kinds of things I should add to the settings. But that's all pretty minor.

Version 0.9.4:

The system notification now has controls for audio playback. The notification is set whenever the service is in the foreground, which is user-configurable in the settings menu. The default is 5 minutes of inactivity.

Version 0.9.3:

There are now system notifications displaying the song currently playing! It would be nice to get control buttons into the notifcation, but that will require creating a custom layout, so not today.

Also the audio focus handling was not behaving properly, so there are now some checks in place to prevent crashing. I think it's working, but I'll need to do more testing to be sure.

Version 0.9.2:

There is now a service which holds the MediaPlayer object! This required some massive reworking of the control flow, but it means that music playback won't halt after 15 minutes when the operating system puts the activity to sleep. It's also a necessary step toward adding notifications to control playback, which I think would be a nice feature.

Also, now if headphones are unplugged the player will pause. This is very good for not bothering other people.

I still have not completed any of the goals laid out in the Version 0.9 statement below, but I've made good progress toward two of them, and the other one is probably the easiest of the three anyway.

Version 0.9.1:

Added some framework for a playlist system. There's are now classes for songs/albums/artists, and there's a tab-swipe UI for selection. Loading the fragments into that framework is not yet working.

Minor fixes:

• Program no longer crashes on exit.

• Previous button has been changed to return to the beginning of the song if the progress is past three seconds. This is more in line with expected behavior.

Version 0.9:

More general UI improvements, and the ability to change the directory which is searched for mp3 files via the settings menu. The remaining tasks:

• setting up a playlist / queuing system

• changing the directory picker to a GUI rather than having it text-based

• implementing the player as a service, to have it show up in the notifications tray

As is, it's pretty useable, at least if you like listen to the same album over and over like I do.

Version 0.8.1:

A few things have been fixed. The player looks better overall, with some color and icon changes, and the slider has been switched to one I like more. Album art retrieval is now working correctly.

Repeat and shuffle are working, but only if songs terminate naturally, i.e. not with previous and next buttons. This is not worth independently fixing, as it should be fixed as part of a more robust queue / playlist structure I'm planning.

Another goal is to add a presence to the notification pane which allows the user to pause / next / previous during playback.

The next task is definitely distinguishing between a current playlist and the entire library, which should require some very serious structural shifts.

Version 0.8:

The player is mostly working, but with the following issues:

• Repeat is not working. I'm not sure what's causing this.

• Buttons for shuffle and repeat need to look pushed down when activated. This is just cosmetic.

• Album art does not change with the song. This probably requires copying some code to a different class.

• The player only loads music from the directory /sdcard/media/audio/mp3. This is the big issue. It needs to, at the minimum, also scan subdirectories. Eventually the user should be able to specify directories to scan.

I think once these issues are addressed it will have earned the version 1.0.