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OxygenCobalt / Auxio

A simple, rational music player for android
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Offer "Folders" view tab when "Include folders" option is used #848

Closed lineinthesand closed 3 months ago

lineinthesand commented 3 months ago

Description

I read that a Folders view goes against Auxio's tag-based design principle, but hear me out.

When I use the "Include folders" feature, thus consciously deciding from which locations I want my music sourced, such a view could just introduce one higher level when compared to the Artists view, i.e. the levels would be:

  1. List of folder sources (as specified in the Include folders settings option), e.g. two folders specified /path/to/flac, /path/to/sdcard
  2. Artists
  3. Artist's albums
  4. Tracks on album

So, in essence, that would be just another "Filter" for displaying the music by source on storage media.

Problem solved

I have most of my music organized in a hierarchical folder structure, Artist > Album, but when I browse by Artist view, I get a lot of artists because of compilations and music in folders that are not organized in such a hierarchical manner, which kind of "spams" the Artist view, thus making it harder to actually find the artist/album/track I want.

Other implementations

In AIMP I have the category "Folders" in addition to the tag-based views of the library (Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genres) but this is more like a file browser which only shows the specified folders and the subfolders it found music in, so, though fulfilling my needs, it is a different approach from what I suggested in this issue.

Benefit

Well, granted, it's not everyone benefitting from it, but people having a similar hierarchical folder structure or are switching to Auxio as a tag-based player from a player where they were used to browsing by a Folder view.

Yeah, it's my opinion, but I think it would provide a reasonable benefit, while not making the UI/settings page much more complicated (which we want to avoid, right?).

Duplicates

OxygenCobalt commented 3 months ago

I think even a more dynamic folder view isn't ideal and is possibly worse due to its obsfucation. I think your fundamental problem (Clutter from compilations) can be solved by enabling Hide collaborators in Settings -> Content, care to try that out @lineinthesand?

lineinthesand commented 3 months ago

You are right; regarding the compilations, that does make things a little bit better.

However, I suggested that enhancement because I also keep single tracks that I bought (where I don't like the whole album) in a separate folder, as well as music from sources other than my ripped CDs (e.g. whole albums that are only available in digital form). Also, the music in the SD card is different from the one on the internal storage (e.g. lossless and lossy formats, respectively).

As I mentioned, this additional root level should only be (optionally) accessible when you specify more than one "Include" folder. For that case, there could also be a meta folder "All music" in addition to the proposed individual folders.

So in essence, you would have a means to "filter" by individual "sub-libraries", or view all tracks combined from all folders.

This does not necessarily have to be accomplished by new root level folders in the views but could e.g. be selected by pulling down a kind of menu with these "library/folder selection options" when you are in the library view, which currently does not have a pull-down action (e.g. pulling down on the Auxio caption).

lineinthesand commented 3 months ago

Sorry, wrong button

OxygenCobalt commented 3 months ago

I think I get what you mean, but I don't currently see the appeal of this. It seems quite niche and confuse a lot of users who think there is a folder view but really isn't. I don't think I'm going to go forward with this right now, sorry.