v0.15.2 - New looks, Optimization, and Fixes

Adam

v0.15.2 is now available on all platforms! The big one is a new look called Mono, on phones, tablets and desktop. Mono lets you choose a Primary color from presets (including a true-black OLED) or pick your own, and an accent that follows the album art, comes from a preset, or is any color you like. Desktop also does a lot less work in the background, plus there's a round of bug fixes and feature requests. The next planned release is v0.16.0, which bundles a lot of new features and improvements. As always, the full notes are below.

Android open testing is still under review at Google, so new testers can't join just yet. I've reached out to Google and will post any updates here. If you already have Lagu on Android, you'll get 0.15.2 as usual. It should show up as an update within the next couple of hours.

What's new in 0.15.2

A new look, and a round of your forum requests. Settings › Appearance is rebuilt on iPhone, iPad, Android and desktop: choose Bloom or the new flat Mono look, a Dark, Light or System window, a Primary color for Mono (including a true-black OLED option), and an accent of your own or one that follows the album art. Alongside it come a ⋯ button on the phone player, a Radio tab you can hide, playlist reordering on Android, artist and album links on the desktop player bar, a mini player that can sit beside the main window, and the fixes from your reports.

iPhone, iPad, Android and desktop

A new Settings › Appearance (feature request). Look is Bloom or Mono, and Appearance is Dark, Light or System, which follows your device as it changes. Mono drops the glow and builds every surface from a Primary colour you pick, with your accent tinting it slightly. Your old theme carries over: Daylight (Bloom Light on Android) becomes Bloom in a light window, Forest becomes Mono in Forest's own green, and the desktop's Auto becomes System.
Primary colours come in pairs. Graphite, Slate, Midnight, Forest, Plum, Espresso, Ink, Olive and OLED each have a dark and a light twin, so with System the app stays in one colour family day and night.
OLED. A true-black Primary for Mono: the background is exactly black, cards step up from it and text is a neutral white.
Accent: your colour or the album's. Album art, the new default, takes the accent from the playing cover. Auto keeps the look's own colour, or pick Coral, Amber, Lime, Mint, Sky, Indigo, Violet, Rose or any colour. Accents are checked for contrast, so Coral stays coral in a light window.
Dynamic color is now Bloom's glow switch. It makes the glow follow the album art. Picking an accent no longer turns it off. It is hidden on Mono, which has no glow.
Rating style (feature request). Settings › Appearance › Rating style: Stars or Hearts. With Hearts, Lagu shows one heart instead of five stars. A heart is a five-star rating in Plex; tap it again to clear.
Rate from the song menu. Open a song's menu (long-press on a phone or tablet, right-click on desktop) and choose Rate: the rows are the stars themselves, with your rating marked. With Hearts it is a single Love or Unlove.
Show Radio (feature request). Settings › Appearance › Navigation. Turn it off and Radio leaves the tab bar or sidebar; Home keeps a way in.
Filter long lists. With more than 12 playlists, Add to Playlist shows a filter field at the top that narrows the list as you type. New Playlist always stays in the list.

iPhone, iPad and Android phone

A ⋯ button on Now Playing (feature request). It sits at the top of the player, opposite the dismiss chevron, and opens the same song menu as a long-press on the title (Add to Playlist, Go to Artist or Album, Start Radio, Rate). Long-press still works.
Show audio quality on Now Playing (feature request). A new switch in Settings › Playback, on by default. Turn it off to hide the quality badges under the title; the artwork grows into the space.
Show volume slider (feature request). Also in Settings › Playback, on by default. Off hides the slider while music plays on the phone, and the volume buttons set the level. It stays while you control another device with Lagu Remote or play to AirPlay or a network speaker.

iPhone and iPad

Custom Primary colours. Custom opens the system colour picker, and Lagu works out the other twin.
Dynamic color also tints the iPad's window colour from the album art.
The cover spans the full width of the iPhone player, with or without the audio quality badges.
With Hearts, the lyrics header shows one heart too. Rate in the song menu offers Clear Rating once a song is rated, and it works whatever Rating controls is set to.
Show Radio tab off: Downloads takes the Radio tab's place and a small Radio row appears at the bottom of Home. On iPad, Radio leaves the sidebar.
Playlist and album headers show the total length next to the song count.
Settings search finds Accent when you search "album art" or "dynamic", and Dynamic color when you search "glow". Opening a result puts the keyboard away.

Android phone

Home-screen widgets follow your Look, Appearance and Accent.
Lagu's own colour picker. Custom opens a picker with a hue strip, a shade square, a hex field and a preview of the colour as the app will use it. The app changes as you drag; tap outside to keep the colour, or press Back to put the old one back.
The ⋯ button in landscape sits on the corner of the art, or on the lyrics or Up Next header.
Reorder songs in a playlist (feature request). Long-press a song and drag it, as on iPhone, or choose Reorder Songs from the playlist's menu for drag handles and a Done button. The new order is saved on your server. Smart playlists keep their own order.
Show Radio tab off: Downloads takes the Radio tab's place and Home keeps its Radio shelf. On a tablet, Radio leaves the sidebar. Radio opened from Home's Explore Radio tile now has a title and a back button.
Rate in the song menu replaces the old row of heart and stars there; tap the marked star again to clear.
A rating shows everywhere at once. A rating set from a song's menu now shows on Now Playing straight away, and the other way round.
Add to Playlist with no playlists explains why and offers New Playlist instead of an empty box.
Add Songs to a playlist opens at full height with the Add button always in view, marks your picks with ticks, and adds them through the playlist's own server.
Menus, dialogs and sheets wear Lagu's colours instead of Android's default lavender.
A playlist that holds the same song twice no longer crashes its page.

Desktop (macOS, Windows, Linux)

The window cross-fades when you switch Look or Appearance, and Dynamic color makes the Window colour follow the album art too. While Game Mode is on, the Dynamic color row says it is paused.
Lagu's own colour picker. Custom opens a picker with a hue strip, a shade square, a hex field and a preview of the colour as the app will use it. Click outside to keep the colour; Escape puts the old one back. It replaces the system colour well.
The player bar links the artist and the album (feature request). The names under the title open the artist and the album pages, and the title still opens Now Playing. Right-click the song for its menu, with the song shown at the top.
Rate from the player bar (feature request). A rating sits at the start of the controls on the right: stars from a 1311 px wide window, a heart (with Rating style set to Hearts) from 1096 px. Narrower than that, rate from the right-click menu. It follows Rating style and Rating controls.
Menus show the song at the top.
The mini player can sit beside the main window (feature request). Turn on Settings › Appearance › Desktop › Keep main window open, and the mini player opens without hiding the main window.
More in the mini player (feature request). Click the title to open its album or the artist to open their page, both in the main window. Rate under the artist name. Right-click the song for Play Next, Add to Playlist, Radio, Go to Album and Go to Artist. The mini players follow your Look and Accent, and open in the right colours from the first frame.
Show Radio off: Home's Radio & Stations shelf starts with an All Stations card.
The Add to Playlist list scrolls (user reported). With more playlists than fit in the window, the rest were cut off and the list could not scroll. It now scrolls, shows a scrollbar, and the arrow keys keep the highlight in view.
Type to filter any long list. Every list with more than 12 choices gets the filter field; the arrow keys and Enter work on the matches, and Escape clears the filter.
The window buttons show over Now Playing in a light theme (Windows and Linux). Minimise, maximise and close were invisible there.
Escape closes a rename or new-playlist box while you are typing in it.
Settings search finds Accent by "dynamic", "album art", "colour" or "color", Dynamic color by "glow", and Rating style by "stars" or "hearts".
Screen readers and the keyboard. Space picks a colour swatch, the Stars or Hearts and Rating controls choices say which one is selected, and a track's rating is read out ("4.5 of 5 stars").
The mini player card's seek bar is visible again and sits inside the window.
A Game Mode badge in the title bar. While Game Mode is on, a small controller icon sits beside the Lagu name, so you can see at a glance that it is on.
Lighter in the background. A few seconds after you switch to a game or another app, Bloom's glow rests on its last frame, and it picks up again the moment you come back. Visualisers on a second monitor and the playing song's equaliser bars keep moving.
Now Playing with synced lyrics uses about half the CPU it did, with the same look and timing.

Apple TV, Android TV and Apple Watch ship the same version with no changes of their own.

Thanks for the reports: most of the items above began as one of your forum posts.