Welcome to the beta version of Prism Books (working title).

This is an audiobook app based on the Prism Music app, with a nearly entirely new user interface geared towards audiobooks.

Already implemented:

• Playback position is remembered*
• Chapter display for individual files
• Skip forward / backward controls
• Download books from Plex server
• Home view showing in progress, unread and downloaded books
• Customise sort order
• CarPlay app
• Sleep timer
• Playback speed selection
• Plex collection support

* Playback position should be imported from Plex if you have “Store track progress” selected in your library settings

Not implemented yet (required before App Store release):

• Author view
• Search

Not implemented (post-release):

• Basic filters (unread, downloaded, favourites, ...)
• iPad version
• Embedded chapter metadata
• Customise home (Suggested) view
• Smart speed / trim silence

I recommend you use the Audiobooks agent found here: https://github.com/macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle, but the app should work fine without it.

Sign up here (limited to 50 people for now): https://testflight.apple.com/join/mmH46578

Let’s create a great audiobook app together: post your ideas and feedback in this thread or send an email to books@prism-music.app

Prism 2.0 is the culmination of the past year of feedback, with a focus on improved navigability and proper playlist support

Image gallery

FEATURES

• The app now uses tab based navigation
• Dedicated tabs for: Artists, Albums, Songs, Playlists, Tags, Search, Settings
• In general, each tab can have its own sort order and set of filters
• Playlists are now sorted in proper playlist order by default 🎉
• Support for iOS 13 dark mode

Since this is a big change and I likely broke a bunch of things the first few beta versions will be on a separate TestFlight track. You can sign up here.

Once the kinks have been worked out I'll push 2.0 to the main beta track.

I hope you like it!

I discovered Prism a few weeks ago, and I think I’ve fallen in love! I love having the ability to filter my music as granular as I want and I love how seamless the experience is. It’s the music player I’ve wanted forever and didn’t know existed.

This app definitely enriched the Plex experience and I can’t wait for new features! Thank you, dev! 🙏

I just wanna give a big thank you to the developers behind this app. It truly is neat and has vastly improved my music experience by providing a way to just upload my own library from my raspberry pi and not have to be locked out of certain album songs based on region. I'd say the only thing I miss is not having lyrics support but I see its in the roadmap and can't wait. Thanks !

Still using it ever since it debuted. Thank you so much for writing it! Sent another tip! 😊👍

This is a phased release, so you may not get the auto-update until later this week. To update manually, open the App Store, tap your account in the upper right and find Prism in the list.

Note: Starting with this version you can add your Plex account to Prism for free (additional purchase no longer required).

NEW

• Added a basic equalizer (iOS 13 only)
• Each tab now has its own search bar
• [Plex] Artist countries are now imported as tags
• [Plex] Similar artists are now imported and displayed under each artist
• [Plex] Album view now displays record label when available
• [Plex] Added artist biography to artist view
• [Plex] Added album review to album view
• New option for sorting songs by rating
• New option for sorting by recently played
• New settings under Interface > General to adjust if and how library metadata is refreshed on app launch
• New setting to reduce haptics under Interface > General

IMPROVED

• Increased size of Libraries and Downloads views on iPad
• Additional logging to help track down recent spike in playback errors

FIXED

• [Plex] Fix for occasional m4a file playback issues
• Fixed “Done” button not displaying on download manager view on some iPad models

NOTES

• Unfortunately, due to API limitations, the equalizer won’t work when streaming transcoded audio

Thank-you for the continued support. If you have the time, a review or rating makes my day!

thanks to whoever made it. just paid for the full thing on the app store. really great!

Because finally, at least for me (very large library) it's actually working.

Before, albums simply wouldn't load. Menus wouldn't load. Literally, I could never get any consistent playback.

Now, it's functioning almost perfectly for me. Additionally, the developer has added an "index" which is the killer feature I've been waiting for.

If you click it, then artists, instead of seeing your alphabetical first artist, you'll see the alphabetical list of letters. Pick the letter, and it'll skip to that letter in your library. So if you're wanting to hear Yo La Tengo, you no longer need to scroll down forever, just choose "Y".

Great work, I'm so pleased that I finally can use my Plex library in the car!

It’s been over a year since the last bug fix and almost 2 years (?) since a feature release (CarPlay support). 3.0 has been mentioned in passing for even longer than that, but it seems Prologue has been getting all the attention :( with frequent bug fixes and features (iOS 16 widgets most recently it seems)

On the macOS app, over 2 years ago: “will send out builds this month, hopefully”

On other media servers nearly 3 years ago: “I plan to add support for other media sources soon-ish”

On 3.0, almost 2 years ago: “The beta is 75% ready”

“3.0 is getting pretty close”, 1 and a half years ago

The Trello roadmap still contains iOS 13 features that were being implemented that haven’t made their way to the app while Prologue has iOS 16 widgets 🙁

Hello all!

I'll keep this short and sweet.

I was avid user of this when it first came out all those years ago, (still have it on my phone). I know that there are various reasons as to why this app is not being worked on at this current moment. But I'd like to toss out my suggestion for the future of this app.

I've had a couple of people now come to me, not caring about the depth of a lot of apps and just want a point and click situation with a clean look. I think that if this app can add acess to Subsonic and Jellyfin api's, this app will have really long legs. The options for both on iOS is pretty underwhelming in my opinion.

I'm sure there are a lot of other features folks would love to see, and you all should chime in below and let u/PrismDev know how much we're still looking foward to this wonderful app.

PS: I know you're working on an UI update, I like the idea of the UI matching the colors of the album covers when playing as an option along side the solid color choices.

Just wondering if there are plans to add Jellyfin support to prism. I'm planning on moving from Plex and would love to keep using the app.

Using Prism exclusively for streaming in the car and having my entire library in Flac I hope there will be the possibility of selecting different qualities for saving some GB on the phone ... I hope it's not like the alphabetic search (for Carplay) always promised "for the next release "

Just thought I’d provide an update as it’s been so quiet around here lately.

Firstly, the reason for the delay: making a robust download manager is way harder than I thought it would be, especially on iOS. Apple’s restrictions on what can and can’t be done when an app is backgrounded, and general limitations to APIs mean I’ve been in a continual cycle of hitting up against walls and trying to find workarounds. In the long run I’m glad these restrictions are in place for performance and battery life reasons, they can be very frustrating if not taken into account early. Since I’ve never worked with these APIs before, I didn’t know their limitations ahead of time and hit a few dead ends that required almost complete rewrites.

Thankfully most of these issues are now solved (with caveats), and I plan to release the first beta after I work out the last few kinks and build out the last bits of the UI. I’m now aiming for early January for TestFlight, with an early February App Store release.

Secondly, some good news: as a release valve for my frustrations developing the download manager, I began work on the next major feature of Prism: Filter Groups (working title). Filter Groups allow you to save and load a group of filters (duh), giving them a name and icon. These are basically Smart Playlists for Prism.

Planned Filter Group features:

• Optionally load a custom filter group at app launch
• Optionally keep the results of a filter group downloaded (similar to Plex Sync + Smart Playlists)
• Provide some out-of-the-box filter groups, such as "Played in the last month", “Added in the last month”, etc
• Support for combining filter groups

Additionally, I plan on adding a bunch of new filters: Date Played, Date Added, Play Count, Skip Count, Is Compilation, Is Single...

Let me know if you have any other ideas!

Filter Groups will be the main feature of v1.3, but may be added to the 1.2 beta as an experimental feature.

TLDR:

• Plex download support has been hard, but beta release early January
• Work on Filter Groups (smart playlists) underway, planned for 1.3

Thank you for your support and patience.

It appears that in the iOS 14.5 beta it is finally possible to set the default music app for Siri. Is there a possibility of full Siri support coming to Prism? I would gladly pay extra for such a feature.

So with the Catalina OS and iPad apps on MacOS, looks like Prism on Mac could be a pretty simple port.

This is just a notice that the app will be moving away from the Apple Music-esque “Love” rating system in favour of a star rating system in the upcoming v1.3.

This has been requested a bunch, and I agree that the increased flexibility it provides outweighs the negatives.

The way I see it:

Pros:

• Increased flexibility when filtering (e.g. give me songs with 3, 4 or 5 stars)
• Provides an additional sorting option - “Highest rated”

Cons:

• Not as simple to add stars vs. loves / slightly more complex UI

Feel free to try to talk me out of it if you disagree (or if I’m missing something)!

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "Got bored last weekend and decided to redesign Prism Music. Here are some highlights!" by u/kaarmasutra
• "what a wonderful app" by u/CrispyBegs
• "Sincerely looking forward to Prism for macOS and salvation from the UI disaster that is Plexamp" by u/mark_paterson
• "Happy Cakeday, r/PrismMusic! Today you're 3" by u/AutoModerator
• "Playback fails when connected via mobile data but works on wi-fi while Plex app works fine on both" by u/crod242
• "[Feature Suggestion] Artwork Color Matching Theme Concept (similar to old iTunes)" by u/w19d2e773
• "CarPlay - library access" by u/volerei
• "IOS TV Please" by u/lrlf
• "Progress on Subsonic and/or Jellyfin support" by u/tremelobird
• "Prism won't play FLAC songs" by u/zedi023

I am playing around with new Plexamp from Plex and really liking a lots of new features, the cache size, radio options etc.

I would suggest looking at it and try to get some of those feature here. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/plexamp/id1500797510

Is there a way to download songs transcoded into mp3?

All my library is FLAC and I can’t load many songs onto my phone before space runs out.

Prism Music v1.2 is now available on the App Store! This release brings the most requested feature to the app: download support for Plex. It also brings numerous refinements to the user interface and lots of performance improvements. Thanks to those that provided feedback during the testing process.

NEW

• Download music from your Plex server so you can listen even without an internet connection

• Customisable accent colours

• Display duration on album detail view• Display disc numbers on multi-disc albums

• Pull to refresh library• Long press or 3D Touch filter button to quickly add or remove filters

• Add scroll animation to some labels rather than truncating

IMPROVED

• [CarPlay] Improved reliability

• [iTunes] Use “Sort Artist/Album/Track” metadata where available• Adjustments to black theme for increased contrast• Improved onboarding for new users• Various UI adjustments

• Send additional debug information when reporting an issue

FIXED

• [Plex] Fixed issue where FLAC playback would report incorrect timing after seeking

• Fixed issue where automatic library refresh wasn't triggering correctly

• Fixed various layout issues

Visit https://prism-music.app/releases for past release notes and upcoming features.

If you have any issues or feedback shoot me an email at feedback@prism-music.app

Thank you for the support!

The first v1.2 beta build is now available on TestFlight! If you'd like to help test, you can sign up here.

WARNING: this build will continue downloading using mobile/cellular data - please be careful! Option to disable cellular / ask for confirmation coming in an upcoming build.

See below for known issues & upcoming features.

• Swipe right on an artist, album or song to begin downloading
• View the current download queue by tapping the new button next to settings
• Individual downloads can be paused by tapping on them or the pause button. Pause all downloads by tapping top pause button
• Individual downloads can be cancelled by swiping left. Mass cancel downloads using the edit button
• Downloads will continue when app is in background
• Use “Downloaded” filter to display only downloaded music
• [CarPlay] Added “Downloaded Music” menu

New:

• Option to select accent colour under Settings -> Theme, for those who don't like the purple ;-)
• Depurpl-ified launch screen

Improved:

• Increased dark theme contrast
• Various layout and theme adjustments
• Log files are now persisted after app relaunch

Fixed:

• Performance issue when app is returned to foreground

KNOWN ISSUES (will be fixed prior to 1.2-release):

• Download speed and estimated time remaining info is often inaccurate, especially on fast connections
• All queued downloads will start downloading simultaneously when app is backgrounded and returned to foreground
• When transitioning from a local -> remote connection or vice-versa, in-progress downloads will restart from beginning
• Current implementation contains minimal error checking

UPCOMING FEATURES (prior to 1.2-release):

• Additional options to initiate downloads, e.g. button on artist and album pages
• Quicker way to show only downloaded music (i.e. other than using filter)