Lagu has reached its Open Beta! Thank you to everyone who has submitted feedback, bug reports, and used the app, it means a lot!
As always the full release notes are below, along with some of my favorite highlights and some information on Google Play and Amazon Fire devices, I do recommend reading the full changelog for your platforms to see what is new!
The Google internal test is officially full, meaning new beta testers will be required to purchase the app for $1.99 through open testing. Open testing will be available soon (if it is not already), it is just waiting on the final review from Google Play. On some releases during the beta I plan to drop a limited # of codes to make the app free. As a reminder the open testing purchase will roll over to the full launch of Lagu once the app is released in full. See the bottom of this post 😉
Fire TV is also now available and has been tested on device, the Fire OS beta works via invite due to the nature of Amazon Testing and to keep the beta free. After confirming your email you will receive a second email from Amazon once you have been added to our testing list. Fire Tablet is also open for testing. Vega OS is not available at this time.
All downloads and links are available at: lagu.fm/download/
Some of the key new features in v0.15.0:
- Lagu Remote on the lock screen (iOS and Android)
- On-device Loudness Levelling (For unanalyzed tracks)
- AutoEq Headphone Profiles
- Offline lyrics
- Android home screen widgets
- Watch improvements (Apple Watch app + Android native functions)
- Two new visualizers (Tide and Orbit)
- Desktop re-styling + an Intel Mac Build
As always, thank you to everyone who has continued to use Lagu and submit feedback! The full release notes are below:
What's new in 0.15.0
This is the open beta. The headline is sound: tracks your Plex server has not analyzed are now leveled on your device, a first play no longer blasts your ears, and the equalizer learns your headphones. Lyrics work offline, the desktop app gets a fresh coat and its light mode back, your phone's lock screen can drive a computer or TV, and the Apple Watch app grows up. Under the hood, the security audit's findings are fixed.
Sound (desktop, iPhone and iPad, Android phone)
- Level unanalyzed tracks. Settings, Playback, Level unanalyzed tracks, on by default. A track your server has no loudness for is measured on your device from audio Lagu already has, such as downloads and the next tracks it loads ahead, and plays at the same level as everything else. Your server's own values always win.
- No ear-blast on a first play. When a track has never been measured, Lagu reads three short pieces of the file before it starts and plays it at that level. It only ever turns a track down and never changes the level in the middle of a song. If the pieces do not arrive in time, the track starts 8 dB down instead. On Wi-Fi, opening an album, playlist or artist page quietly measures the songs on screen, so your first tap is already leveled.
- Preload on cellular (iPhone, Android phone). One switch replaces "Cache upcoming tracks": off, the default, keeps one track ahead on mobile data (gapless and crossfade need it) and never fetches loudness samples there; on allows two tracks and the samples. Your old choice carries over. Android now loads the next one or two tracks ahead too, also with crossfade on.
- Headphone profiles. Settings, Playback, Equalizer, Headphone profile. Search about 2,900 measured headphones from AutoEq (oratory1990, crinacle, Rtings) and apply one. While it is on, the bands follow the profile; Unlock keeps the curve for you to adjust, and Clear puts back the equalizer you had. Star a profile to keep it at the top.
- Your own EQ presets. Save as names the current curve and preamp. Up to 12 per device; rename or delete with a long press, or a right-click on desktop.
Lyrics
- Lyrics work offline, everywhere. Downloading a song now saves its lyrics beside it, synced or plain, so a downloaded album shows lyrics in airplane mode. Downloads from before this update fill in by themselves. The next song's lyrics also load ahead, so a skip opens with them ready.
- Copy and share lyrics (desktop, iPhone, Android phone). Long press a line, or right-click on desktop, to pick up to six lines in a row. Copy them, or make a share card with the cover, title and artist.
- Lyrics beside the visualizer (desktop, Apple TV, Android TV). In the fullscreen visualizer, press L on desktop, or Down on the remote, to put synced lyrics next to it.
Everywhere
- Plex Collections (desktop, iPhone and iPad, Android phone, Apple TV). Library, Collections, each with Play and Shuffle. Android TV browses them too.
- View Artist, View Album and View Playlist on Home tiles. On the TVs, hold Select on a tile for these and for Play Next and Add to Queue.
- Radio, Build your own (desktop, iPhone, Apple TV). Artist Mix, Sonic Adventure and your recent mixes get their own section. Apple TV gains Artist Mix and Sonic Adventure.
- Two new visualizers, Tide and Orbit. Tide is the spectrum as one rolling surface; Orbit is the voice as a glowing core with five rings around it. Nova is retired; if you had picked it, Radial takes its place.
- Your last queue answers your headphones (iPhone, Android phone). After a relaunch, a Play from AirPods, Galaxy Buds, the car or the lock screen starts it where it stopped. Opening Lagu or connecting headphones still plays nothing by itself.
- Lagu Remote from your lock screen (iPhone, Android phone). Settings, Remote, Lock-screen Remote control, on by default. The lock screen, Control Center or the notification shade, and your headphone buttons drive what the computer plays. On iPhone, other audio pauses while it is on. CarPlay, Siri, widgets and the watch start music on the computer too.
- Lagu Remote: pairing a phone again replaces its old pairing, so a computer or TV no longer collects duplicate rows.
Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux)
- The window wears the album's colour. The page, sidebar, title bar and player bar take a contrast-guarded tint of the playing art. Settings, Appearance, Window colour, on by default; it needs Dynamic color.
- Bloom Light and Auto are back in Settings, Appearance; Auto follows your system's light and dark switch. Type is crisper and the frame tighter.
- Select many songs. Cmd or Ctrl click, Shift click, or Cmd or Ctrl A on albums, playlists and Songs, then Play Next, Add to Queue, Add to Playlist or Download.
- Keyboard shortcuts: press ? anywhere for the full list. Your computer knows what's playing: Windows taskbar buttons, a macOS Dock menu with the controls and Love, an optional notification when the track changes (Settings, Appearance, Desktop), and on Mac a Menu bar player, off by default.
- Album Artwork view. With the visualizer off, Now Playing shows a large cover, beside the lyrics when they are open.
- Remove one downloaded song from any downloaded track row, and Verify downloads in Settings, Downloads, which re-downloads any damaged file.
- Starts without Plex. If Lagu cannot reach Plex at launch it opens on your Downloads with Retry. While sign-in waits for your browser, you can now open the link again, copy it, or cancel.
- Experimental: Google Cast. Settings, Playback, Google Cast, off by default. Play to a Chromecast, Google TV or Nest speaker. Your Plex sign in never reaches the device.
iPhone and iPad
- Select many songs on albums, playlists and Songs, with Select All covering the whole list. iPad: Window colour tints the sidebar, page and player bar in landscape, a selection bar sits above the player, and an open playlist lights its own sidebar row.
- Cover art loads faster and retries when a server is slow, and Siri says what it is playing instead of "Now Playing Lagu".
Android phone
- Play and Shuffle on album and playlist pages, as you asked.
- "Hey Google, play X on Lagu" works on the phone, not only in the car.
- Long titles scroll on Now Playing, the mini player and the playing row, and Settings, Appearance, Row density offers Compact rows.
- Home-screen widgets: Now Playing, Quick Play for your recent albums and playlists, and This Week with your top artist and song.
- Recently Downloaded shows albums you downloaded only some songs from, and Show complete album opens the full album when you are online. Desktop has this too.
- Galaxy Watch and Wear OS show your real Up Next, and Samsung Modes and Routines and Galaxy Buds can pick Lagu as your music app. Music that stopped when headphones or the car disconnected resumes when the same kind of device comes back within 30 minutes, unless you paused.
Apple Watch
- Complications: Now Playing, and Lagu Remote straight from the watch face.
- Keep on Watch on a playlist keeps it downloaded and in step with your server, and lists open instantly, then refresh.
- Up Next, Artists and Stations, plus Go to Artist and Go to Album from a long press.
- Start music on a locked iPhone. If the iPhone does not answer in 15 seconds, the watch offers to play on the watch instead.
Apple TV and Android TV
- Year filter on Albums and Songs, and hold Select on a song, album or playlist for Play Next and Add to Queue.
- Level unanalyzed tracks. Settings, Playback, on by default. A track your server has not analyzed starts 8 dB down.
- Visualizer Off with lyrics shows the centred lyrics view. On Apple TV the visualizer on Now Playing is focusable, and Settings, Playback, Confirm before leaving Lagu asks before Back leaves the app while music plays.
- Android TV: Back at a tab root while music plays asks "Exit Lagu?" Exit keeps your queue for next time. Fire TV explains how to allow the microphone when it shows no prompt.
Security
- Desktop: a current Electron and Chromium, a window that only ever shows Lagu's own pages, your Plex sign in in the system keychain, signature-checked Linux updates, no developer tools in release builds, and crash info with your sign in and user name removed.
- Android: the now-playing art no longer carries your Plex sign in, plex.tv and scrobbling services refuse plain http, and logs no longer print it. A network speaker is never handed your server's address with your sign in attached.
- iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Apple Watch: your Plex sign in stays on this device and out of backups, so restoring onto a new phone means signing in again. Logs no longer print it.
Fixed
Desktop, iPhone and iPad, Android phone
- Home downloaded your whole library on every launch to show 18 albums: several megabytes and about 5 seconds per shelf. A shelf is now a few kilobytes.
- A server that went down could leave Lagu stuck on an address it never reached, with empty shelves and no message. It now says "Can't reach your server right now. Your downloads still play.", retries by itself and reconnects when the server answers. When plex.tv itself is down, desktop goes straight to your server.
- Coming back online could leave the account name empty, show the Plex Pass hint to a Plex Pass member, or switch a library you had turned off back on.
- Going offline left ghost sessions in Plex and Tautulli. The stop is now sent when you are back online. Signing out on iPhone ends the session too.
- The equalizer distorted the bass on loud masters with a bass-raising preset (your report). It now makes room automatically, and a safety limiter runs while the equalizer is on.
- Lyrics: desktop could show the previous song's lyrics after a failed fetch, and iPhone and Apple TV said "No lyrics" on a network error. A real failure now reads "Couldn't load lyrics" with Retry.
- The first moment of a track could play louder, then step down, with Loudness leveling on. Android TV's leveling switch never took effect at all.
- Crossfade sometimes landed part-way into the next song on Android (your report), and Smart Fades cut long, soft endings short (your report). On iPhone and Apple TV a seek dropped the crossfade or gapless join, and Android TV's Smart Fades never got the song's loudness.
- Spectrum and Oscilloscope snapped to their idle shimmer between beats, and Oscilloscope tangled on busy mixes.
Desktop
- Lagu uses far less of your computer while playing: about 3 % CPU on an album page instead of 13 %, and about 40 % less memory.
- Your chosen Plex server is remembered across a quit, instead of the first one every time.
- A double-click on a track loaded it twice, a double-click in Search fell through to the page underneath, and a click just after a track change landed on the new track's seek bar.
- With Plex unreachable, an album page did nothing; it now plays the downloaded songs on screen or offers Try again.
- Now Playing stays readable on bright covers, and one Escape in the fullscreen visualizer no longer closes Now Playing too. Hover hints showed nothing; they are back. Switches, the player buttons and the equalizer now have names and states for screen readers.
iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch
- A rejected server token signed you out. Lagu now gets a fresh one from plex.tv. Sign-in also no longer flashes "network error" each time you come back from Safari.
- Offline: a song that was not downloaded spun forever, the offline banner never showed with a VPN set up, and an album or playlist opened from Home failed instead of playing its download.
- A call or the car switching off could leave a crossfade waiting to start.
- Apple Watch shows what the iPhone plays, and playback no longer jumps to the wrist while the iPhone is playing.
Android phone
- A Galaxy Watch lost the title and art after 0.14.2, and downloaded songs now show their cover on the notification and lock screen.
- A pause saves your place, so a phone that closes Lagu in the background resumes where you paused. A new streaming quality cap reaches the next track, and a cancelled converted download stops its conversion on your server.
- Disconnecting from a paused computer no longer starts the phone's own music two seconds later. Play works after a Stop from headphones, and TalkBack reads the Shuffle and Repeat state.
Apple TV and Android TV
- Android TV: Back from a tab root stopped the music. It now keeps playing in the background.
- Song info stays readable over pale covers, and a long title in the fullscreen visualizer scrolls on one line instead of printing over itself.
- Android TV: the fullscreen visualizer runs smoother on low-power boxes, a held seek key no longer falls short, menus keep the remote inside them, and an album opened from Home or Search goes back there. Fire TV and other boxes with a fixed output no longer show a phone a volume slider that snaps back.
Known limits
Google Cast is desktop only and experimental: no gapless, no downloaded files, and no equalizer or leveling while casting. A first play is measured from FLAC and MP3 files; other formats start 8 dB down until they are fully measured. Exclusive output on Windows is planned for 0.15.1.
This is still a beta, so please keep the reports coming. Thanks, as always: a lot of this release began as one of your requests.
If you've made it this far thank you! If you are already using Lagu please leave the codes for new-users or share Lagu with a friend!
Downloads are available: Here
Lagu Android Codes (Please leave a reply when claiming a code so I can note it 🙂):
For instructions to claim a Google Play promotional code click here
- 1SLM381L9BG1CRH0HXDPAXL
- 576AFNFRQ0UZFQ212CCCS26
- WEEBUDZ70SMEYYQDBP44KXF
- MB0T27NWVDG6C679SWQHKJ8
- VUBN8JWJ92C9D4BF2VMSJ1E
