Progress Bar Too Thin

[desmonk]

Checklist

• [x] I checked, but didn't find any duplicates (open OR closed) of this issue in the repo.
• [x] I have read the contribution guidelines given at https://github.com/TeamNewPipe/NewPipe/blob/HEAD/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md.
• [x] This issue contains only one feature request. I will open one issue for every feature I want to request.

Describe the feature you want

Bigger progress bar for watching experience.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it

Not more of a problem but dragging the slider on a really thin progress bar is a bad interface as it is hard to hold on to and see.

Additional context

NA

How will you/everyone benefit from this feature?

I'm sure a better and bigger progress bar will help sooth eyes on now made tremendously large screens with even wider aspect ratios. Not only this will make selection but also navigation through different segments of video an easy and pleasant experience for all to enjoy.

[iamthesenate1]

I think this should be optional, because, in my opinion, for smaller screens this wouldn't be so useful and it would look uglier. This could be implemented as a (for example) three sizes option (small, medium and large).

[Redirion]

@desmonk what device are you using? screen size and resolution would be interesting. Perhaps your device also has some sort of UI scaling active that scales everything down a bit? I don't think we need an option for this, maybe it can be fixed for your specific device properties by adding the height of the progress bar to a dimens.xml

[desmonk]

I'm testing on few different devices. Moto E, OnePlus 6 and 7T. Also Mi 9T Pro. Just out of curiosity, have you checked out Dailymotion recently? They made entire screen a navigation gesture enabled. Meaning we can slide without dragging a single point of the progress bar and use the whole screen!

[opusforlife2]

Making the entire screen area valid for horizontal dragging would interfere with the volume and brightness gestures. Maybe we could make only the progress bar and a little area around it responsive to horizontal drags. I'm thinking: the area below the seekbar until the bottom of the player, and an equal area above the seekbar, making it symmetrical, and putting the seekbar nicely in the centre of the drag area.

[desmonk]

I thought the same that this will interfere with vertical sliders for volume and brightness control. But after using Dailymotion, this actually made sliding horizontally an ease like buttery smooth.

Also, something interesting to note and I can be wrong here but volume and brightness gerures once set won't be used that frequently compared to tracking on the progress bar. This is an assumption. Not a fact.

This felt so easy to be honest as the whole screen itself became a seeking bar to jump to whichever position preferred! Did you try it?

Whatever implementation you choose or not to, I just wanted to share my findings. Nothing more.

[opusforlife2]

Let's wait for someone to open a PR. Then we can experiment with different sizes of drag areas and other UI tweaks to see what works best.

[avently]

@opusforlife2 vertical and horizontal sliders will not interfere with each other. I made this years ago and it's pretty good. Also you can see SkyTube which is an example of how gestures can coexist (also made by me).

About this issue. Noons needs to have tall seek bar. It can be as small as now but with larger touch area. So you can get thin line but it will react on a larger zone than now.

I hope someone will make it. Because current behavior is annoying. I tried to make touch area larger but it made the seek bar looking badly on Android 4.4. So now the easy way is too make the same thing but only for newest versions of android. Or to find a universal solution.

[opusforlife2]

@avently Well, the minAPI will have to be bumped from 19 to 21 at the end of this year due to okhttp, so that problem will go away on its own. 👍

[avently]

There is a thing called Touchable (android api) which may help here. Couple lines of code

[opusforlife2]

@Stypox ☝️

[teaalltr]

At least, one option could be increase the tappable area of the progress bar. The Touchable thing should be what it's needed

[SameenAhnaf]

What about this layout while showing the interface? Thumbnail preview could be shown while seeking only.

[opusforlife2]

How does this solve the thin bar problem?

[SameenAhnaf]

@opusforlife2 It will be possible to drag either the seek bar or the white popup. That way, users will get a bigger place to seek.

[Robin-Sch]

I have the same problem, it's basically impossible for me to skip sections of the video by using the progress bar. What could work is making the hitbox bigger, not necessary the progress bar thicker?