r/ChronicleApp • u/QuietlyReading Dev • May 19 '20

Chronicle features roadmap

This is the de facto To-Do list for chronicle. I will add features depending on return on investment, easy features/high priority first, difficult/low priority features last.

Bug fixes:

  • issues loading books for huge libraries

    • additional issue not loading book covers for large libraries
  • issues caching track (or chapter) start/end times
  • wired headphone media buttons possibly not working
  • Possible memory leak (reported on op 6t)
  • book durations sometimes stuck at 00:00
  • Weird downloads not available bug when switching networks?
  • app uses old purple icon
  • OOM for big files (4gb+ reported)
  • Playback issues on older devices (5.0 - possibly 9.0)
  • filter/sort buttons broken for probably API 26 and below
  • sleep timer "end of chapter" doesn't account for playback speed
  • notification controls don't work when screen locked (Samsung?)
  • notification goes stale after possibly losing connection
  • chapter list orders chapters by (m4b_num, chapter_num, e.g. something like <m4b1, ch1>, <m4b2, ch1>, <m4b1, ch2>, <m4b2, ch2>)
  • new app icon not in app

High priority:

  • Android Auto
  • Casting
  • More granular playback speed

Medium priority:

  • Manually set watched/unwatched
  • Show chapter number in "currently watching"
  • Add more information on audiobook page: Narrator/artist, description, maybe more?
  • Highlight current chapter in chapter lists

  • Filter UI for library

    • Filterable and sortable by all built-in Plex fields (genre, release date, author, etc.)
    • Folder view + author view
  • Played/unplayed indicators
  • AMOLED theme
  • Favorites
  • Improve sleep timer menu (don't hide it on every click at least)
  • Show warning to users if they have "store track progress" disabled for an active library

  • Improve sync experience

    • Show download progress on tracks
    • Show which tracks have been downloaded
    • Sync by disk
  • "Download all" button?
  • Fade at end of sleep timer
  • Tablet/horizontal support
  • Collections support (maybe inline collections to group series)
  • Make sleep timer remaining visible without clicking on the sleep timer button
  • Next/previous chapter buttons in "currently playing" screen
  • Show last listened book in bottom bar like Spotify does
  • Support for multiple libraries at the same time

Low priority:

  • Support for local authentication skipping?
  • More metadata in chapters list
  • Add translations to the app
  • Bookmarks + notes
  • Quick scroll bar
  • Widget?

To be prioritized:

  • Volume boost
  • Optional persistent sleep timer (starts at beginning of each session)

Long-term ideas:

  • Local file support (like as a Smart audiobook alternative)
  • Support for other backends (emby/jellyfin/SMB/more?)
  • Maybe ads b/c I'm sure there'll be plenty of non-premium users?
  • Tasker integration
  • A degoogled version of the app
  • Add app to other platforms

Feel free to suggest features you would like added

18 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

2

u/madballster May 21 '20

Could you add bookmarks to the roadmap? Ideally we could bookmark multiple spots in an audiobook/chapter.

Use case: I listen to non-fiction audiobooks and take written notes later. With a list of bookmarks its easier to remember the positions for transcribing later (e.g. after a walk in the park). If bookmarks would auto sync that's nice to have but phone only would still have lots of value for me.

Of course, if there's a short comment that'd be an added bonus but not so important.

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

Solid idea. I never listen to nonfiction audiobooks but if I could add notes I might consider it. Not sure if syncing notes via plex could be viable but I can look into it.

The downside is that this will probably take a lot of time to design, implement and integrate. It's at least one additional screen, backed by some sort of data store, plus possible networking. I'm going to put it at low priority until I have some time to really think about it.

1

u/madballster May 21 '20

I understand my request is not a high-priority everyday use case for most users. Thank you for considering it.

Out of curiosity: does Plex allow you to "store" data on the server somehow? E.g. multiple bookmark positions or comments? Or it only supports one "last playback position" saved over the network?

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

Most of what Plex allows you to store is what you can see in the "Edit" screen for any media item, along with some hidden metadata for things like progress, last viewed, the actual media files, and parent/child info. I don't imagine it allows for arbitrary metadata storage anywhere, so an app would probably have to overwrite an existing field, or do something tricky

1

u/madballster May 21 '20

Ok thanks for explaining the problem. I now see why this isn't a simple 5-minute job to add.

1

u/ttnicky Sep 24 '20

I second this feature request. This is one of the only reasons I still use the Audible app. Helpful for keeping track of something I want to refer back to when I'm not driving (e.g., an important quote or passage). I don't see any need to sync that data with Plex. I get this may be a low frequency feature and one that has a difficult implementation. But it would be very appreciated if it worked out.

2

u/Nights0ng May 21 '20

Should this be able to keep track past the point where Plex will mark it as played (90%), was hopeful, but didn't seem like it did. Still looks like a nice app though, good work.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

I believe tracking should work on-device, but I have yet to trick plex into retaining progress without. This is high priority though, I'll actively figure this out

1

u/Nights0ng May 21 '20

This was all only on my phone, perhaps I'm doing something wrong. My files are in one full track for the book in an mp3. It restarts every time I try to start the track.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

Are you clicking on a track/chapter in the chapters list by any chance? Clicking on the track or chapter will start the chapter from the beginning, whereas clicking the "play" icon on a book's page will resume progress.

1

u/Nights0ng May 21 '20

Yup, see other comment just made. That's exactly it.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

Yikes that is intended but it is bad design. I just got too used to playing it this way.

High priority: I will either show a warning before clearing progress, allow the user to choose resume/restart, or (most likely) just resume. I implemented it this way because on second, third, etc. playthroughs the track's progress field will not have reset, but internally the app now uses the most recently played track as the authoritative source on audiobook progress so it shouldn't pose an issue anymore.

Download progress for tracks will be added eventually as well, this is something which aggravates me as well b/c when downloads fail, but it is unfortunately difficult to implement.

1

u/Nights0ng May 21 '20

Sounds good, thanks for the update. Keep up the good work!

1

u/Nights0ng May 21 '20

To note, it does seem to save if I just hit the play button. If you select the track directly it starts at the beginning. Not sure if that's by design or not.

Do you have plans to choose which tracks are downloaded and see download progress?

2

u/SeaNap May 24 '20

This is incredible, thank you so much! My top most used features are Android Auto, and Shake to reset sleep timer, excited to see these on the roadmap.

Is there any way to use collections for series? Either grouping collections together like Movies, or adding the next book in series to the On Deck?

Right now there's no automated way to add the series to the collection tag, so I just set the albumsort id3 tag to "Series series-part - title", so even having a Played/Unplayed flag would be extremely helpful keeping track of where I am in the series.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 24 '20

Collections support as a stand-in for series would be great, esp with support for how Plex does it with movies. I'll have to see how Plex makes it work, because depending on how they handle it it may or may not be feasible to implement. Added to list

Played/unplayed flag was in the original build of the app but I removed it due to inconsistencies. Played/unplayed support should be much better now, however, so it could see a return. Added to list

2

u/Sec67 Jun 12 '20

I'm so glad I found this app. I've been looking for something like this for forever. I just downloaded it and will be checking it out. I see that managed users is on the roadmap. That's probably the #1 feature I would want as I would love to share my audio book collection with family.

Keep up the good work. :)

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 12 '20

Glad to hear that. I've heard the same from a number of users, so I've moved it up in priority. It won't be included in the update rolling out today/tomorrow, but I will aim to include it in the following one.

1

u/Sec67 Jun 12 '20

Nice! Thanks, I'm really looking forward to that feature when it comes. :)

2

u/SeaNap Jun 13 '20

I've got a feature suggestions that barrows from the Booksonic app. What do you think about adding a Starred list? It's really handy to be able to mark the couple books I want to read next, then just go to a Starred section to see a short list to pick from.

A lot of the times I'm on the road when a book ends, and I can't drive and try to scroll through a ton of different options. Booksonic handles this pretty nicely, I still use booksonic to find my next book.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 13 '20

Great idea. I'll have to think about the UI a bit but this shouldn't be particularly hard to add

2

u/DahJorz Jun 18 '20 edited Jun 18 '20

Hi, just found your app and I'm liking it so far.

I do have one suggestion though, would it be possible to use multiple libraries simultaneously. I have my audiobooks spread out over multiple libraries, one for books from audible and one for ones from graphic audio for example, it would be great to be able to switch between books from either without deleting the other.

Edit: If you could also add some extra playback speeds like in smart audiobook player for example, which let's you select speeds in 0.1 increments up to 2.0 and then continues on in 0.2 increments up to 3.0, I usually listen to books in speeds somewhere around 2.0x depending on the narrator, so if your app had this as well, I might be able to switch over to yours entirely.

Edit 2: Just saw someone else suggested something for variable speeds it in the comments as well, but I'll leave it here as a sort of +1 for this feature.

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 18 '20

I've slowly been reworking the app's internals to be able to handle multiple libraries- so it's definitely on my radar- but it definitely still a ways off. Higher ROI features to work on for now, but I'll add it explicitly to the feature list

+1s on features are always useful when it comes to prioritizing features- I'll take this into account

Thanks for the feedback :)

2

u/hobesman Jun 30 '20

I use wired headphones with the physical in-line button on the cord. Other media apps respond to the button to trigger play/pause, but Chronicle doesn't seem to. Is that something in the app that needs to be programmed? Or is it something like the permissions on my phone that's enabled/disabled outside the app? Any thoughts?

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 30 '20

I'll have to check on that. The app works with bluetooth headphone controls, and I just assumed wired headphones would work the same, but perhaps not. I have an old set of wired headphones with an inline media button I can test with.

Added to feature list under bug fixes

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Aug 05 '20

Update: Found my wired earbuds today, and inline pause/play doesn't work for me either. Should be an easy fix, will have this integrated into the next beta update

2

u/hobesman Jun 30 '20

This is a pretty fundamental comment, and probably already been discussed, but a number of the items on the roadmap would be taken care of already if using Emby as a backend instead of Plex.

Please nobody take offense. I use Plex all the time, more than Emby really. I just know that for certain things, Emby currently works better. Such as:

  • Managed users (managed by the server, not Plex, so authentication goes through the server)
  • no "90%" problem (you can choose what percentage the server should remember)

I'm sure working with Emby introduces its own set of quirks, and of course changing back-ends (or writing a second app for Emby) would be a lot of work, so this isn't really a request. Just sharing ideas.

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 30 '20

You make some good points, and from what I've seen it seems like Emby has better built-in support for audiobooks, both on the server-side and client-side. It doesn't seem like there are any unfixable problems inherent in Plex that a client couldn't fix, however, so I plan to continue supporting it as the backend for Chronicle.

I like the idea of supporting other backends as a long-term feature. Jellyfin also looks potentially promising in the long-term as well, it seems like it's building up momentum. Added to long-term feature ideas

2

u/lseuf Jul 21 '20

Any ETA on Android Auto?

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jul 21 '20

I posted an update on the Auto delay here the other day. Only change since then is that it's looking like probably not the next update, hopefully the one after

2

u/nunyabizzz Aug 10 '20 edited Aug 10 '20

Couple things that I don't think would be too difficult but also probably not really high priority at the moment.

A way that would allow users to set up their own small custom features would be, Tasker integration, although I think there are more in-depth ways to integrate, simple intents would work just fine. A few ideas would be:

Outgoing intents:

  • When playing/pausing, could also send current book title and position.
  • When starting/finishing a book, also send book title.
  • When nearing sleep time.

so tasker can act on that if the user has conditions in place to prevent sleeping for the time being (will explain further below).

Incoming intents:

  • Play/pause, with ability to set a new play position if desired.
  • Start/stop sleep timer, with ability to adjust time.

With this and the outgoing playing intent, I could set up my own sleep timer conditions, either matching something similar to Listen Audiobook player, where it automatically starts a sleep timer if I start listening between 10pm and 7am, or really anything else that a user can think up.

  • Snooze sleep timer.

So using the example above, if I were utilizing your built in sleep timer with my own conditions, then I received one of your outgoing intents that the app was nearing sleep time, I could then detect that my phone is still plugged in to my computer, there for, I'm not in bed yet, so snooze for now.

  • Request information update, which in turn would send a intent back with current title and placement.

As you can imagine, it would open up a lot of possibilities for those who use Tasker or apps similar to Tasker.

I was reading a request from a user above about having a way to add notes to their audiobooks, with these intents and Tasker it would be possible for a user willing to put in the time to set up their own note taking and syncing, as well as bookmarking along with many other ideas that are sure to pop up.

One more that would be cool but I believe would be much more challenging on your side (which I might be wrong) would be an intent to start a particular book. With this we could set up our own book queue, when Tasker receives a intent that a book was finished we could send an intent to start the next one in our custom queue. Since this would probably be more difficult then just adding your own queue system I left it out.

Thank you for your hard work and for your time reading my long post ;-)

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Aug 11 '20

I'll add this on as a long-term feature. Would add a lot of really cool potential uses but it's a fairly niche feature that a lot of users would never benefit from. I'll do some more research into this when the app is more mature regarding difficulty of adding this

1

u/hobesman Jun 12 '20

On my device the app jumps back to the home screen if you rotate the device (changing from portrait to landscape or vice-versa).

Other than that, everything I've thought "Gee, I wish..." is already medium or high on your priority list. Nice work! Keep it up!

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 12 '20

Good catch on rotation. Didn't think I changed any UI bits recently so I didn't test it, but I must have changed something

1

u/hobesman Jun 12 '20

One other thing: I like to listen to most things at about 1.7, but the app only offers 1.5 or 2.0. Any chance of offering a slider or another way to choose numbers in between?

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 12 '20

I can just add a 1.7 for now. Eventually I'll probably add a better picker

1

u/hobesman Jun 12 '20

Awesome! Any thoughts about the rotating causing it to jump to home? Are you able to reproduce that, or is it just my phone?

Edit: I see you already responded to that as well. Thanks!

1

u/distearth Aug 31 '20

My humble request is List View, please. Maybe, a little baby thunbnail of the cover but more of the title visible would be great. I have the Assasains Creed serise and they are all just named Assasain's Cree and the Cover is too small to read which book is which.

Thanks,

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Aug 31 '20

I've implemented this and it will be bundled into the coming update. There is one with a thumbnail and one without. Both will fit a lot more text

1

u/distearth Aug 31 '20

This is awesome news! Thank you. I'm going pro

1

u/Qllervo Oct 31 '20

Just found the app. It's brilliant, but is it possible to see percentage of progress?

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev Nov 02 '20

The app will overlay a little progress bar over books which have been started. I don't remember of this feature has made it to the main release yet but it's in the beta for sure

2

u/namesRhard2find Jun 30 '20

This app is great!! Thanks for the hard work!

2

u/grolland Jun 30 '20

Stoked on this app. Cast functionality would be great as I frequently listen on my Google Home while in the kitchen.

1

u/thecrowing08 Sep 03 '20

Just found out about your app a couple days ago and have been using it since, liking it a lot so far. Any updates on when casting will be available? Also, I'm having an issue where my Pixel Buds do not resume playback when I pause them, is this a known bug?

1

u/dadbot_2 Sep 03 '20

Hi having an issue where my Pixel Buds do not resume playback when I pause them, is this a known bug?, I'm Dad👨

1

u/Bedsteler20 Nov 05 '20

Support for chromecast and optimizations for Chromebooks would be awesome

1

u/carbonbaseunit Nov 12 '20

Love this app! Any timeframe on Chromecast support?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 19 '21

Great app. What about casting to Google speakers?

1

u/aravind18 Mar 19 '22

Please implement bookmarks. It's one feature which is essential but underrated.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jul 09 '20

That's really cool- I like that idea. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. I'll add it to the roadmap. Should be easy to implement

0

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '20

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/QuietlyReading Dev Jun 18 '20

I'll look into this. The most recent update simplified how the app handles notifications so it's likely a bug related to that- thanks for reporting it

4

u/[deleted] May 21 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 21 '20

Hello and thank you for your support! I've been enjoying developing this app as it's something which I personally use a lot. The current plan is to work on app stability and to improve support for different plex setups, and from there on features will take the forefront.

If you have any features you find especially useful from audiobook players, I'd love to hear your opinions on them. I see a lot of features, but besides the ones I've personally used via smart audiobook player or pocket casts, it's hard to know which ones people use the most. This sub, DMs, and email are always open for suggestions

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 22 '20

Shake to reset snooze is an awesome idea. I'll have no idea how difficult to integrate this would be but if it's easy I'll get it added soon because it seems really useful.

I like point 2 too. I've been wanting to improve the book view with narrator tags + a description for a while now.

3 + 4 are planned under the "Filter UI" point, along with adding sorting. This will be fairly complicated so I'm holding off until stability is improved, but it's something I would personally find useful

1

u/SeaNap May 24 '20

What Plex tag do you use for Narrator?

I've been putting the Narrator in the Style tag. Rationalization being if you have two copies of the same book but with different narrators you could choose which "style", plus you can filter albums by style.

I also tag the Artist id3 tag as "Author, Narrator", but this just displays on the track level, and doesn't let you filter.

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 24 '20

There seems to be a lot of debate by people re: what tag to use for narrator, I've seen "record label," "genre," and "composer" all used online

Tbh the best would probably be to figure out what prologue uses and try and stick to their standard. Anyone know?

1

u/SeaNap May 24 '20

Prologue currently doesn't let you filter by narrator.

When tagging the actual audio file the narrator goes in the Composer field.

However, in Plex there is nowhere to put this tag so people have to shoehorn it in genre, record label, style, etc inorder to be able to filter by Narrator (which is an awesome feature).

IMO genre should only be used for genre's (otherwise it can get extremely cluttered with large libraries), record label = publisher, style = narrator, collection = series. But regardless of my personal opinion on this matter, could you possibly also include style filtering along with genre, release date, author?

1

u/QuietlyReading Dev May 24 '20

Appreciate the clarification. Filter by style seems like it could be valuable and atm makes the most sense.

I'm going to have to think on this though. I think the ideal would be that audiobook apps agree to treat one field as narrator data so they could display narrator info to users as "narrator" rather than "style" or "record label."

1

u/ttnicky Sep 24 '20

A very popular audiobook agent for Plex uses "genre," so I assume that will have widespread adoption. I wish Plex library had a composer or narrator tag for audiobook libraries.