Manual queue handling issues

musicadi

Hi again,

Here's some more issues I found when turning off Automatic Queue Handling. Gonna be a long list of related issues:

Build 1884
iOS 26.0.1
iPad Air 3

tapping the first song in the song list or in a playlist has no effect. Tapping it twice adds it to the queue.
tapping on any other song highlights it with the "Tint color" and after 5 seconds, the highlight is removed (song is not added to the queue)
tapping the same song again after the background is gone has no effect
tapping the first song after you tapped any other song highlights it as described above
double tapping a song adds it to the queue and it's marked as current song, ready to be played. Here, I think it would be way more intuitive to use one tap, as I love this behavior in ST3. Maybe an option could let you choose whether to use single or double tap to add songs to queue?
if more than two songs are added to the queue, you have no permanent feedback in the song list as to what song you already added. Perhaps a third background color could be used to highlight songs 4,5 etc. Who knows, maybe a position number in the same spot the "Play" and "Next" tags are placed?
double tapping a song that is already in the queue will add it as many times as you double tap. Maybe it would be more intuitive to remove it from the queue instead?
when the same "Next" song is added, the Queue highlights all instances of that songs with the "Next" label/background
in a playlist, the "Current" and "Next" songs are not highlighted at all

Suggestions and thoughts about the queue

Honestly, I'm not using it at all, but I do think some sort of "pre-planning" in the song list is good. For me personally, it would be enough if only current and next songs are handled, as I usually decide mid-song which song I will play next, depending on the mood.

So in the scenario I most often use, I absolutely love it how ST3 behaves:

tap Song 1 = selected as "current"
tap Song 2 = selected as "next" if playback is active, selected as "current" if playback is stopped.
tap Song 3 = replaces Song 2 as "next"

In scenarios where you use a given playlist, the only change that I think would make sense is to load the whole playlist to the queue as soon as you tap the first song, and you're ready to go. Or just play the songs from the playlist in the order they are placed.

I honestly don't get the logic behind using the queue and that's why I never use it. Are others using it? How do you guys use it exactly? Wouldn't things be more straightforward if it was only kept as a background mechanism? I mean, we can turn it off altogether, and that's how I use it, so this is just a thought and a suggestion for maybe improving performance by removing things that could break 🙂

musicadi

UPDATE: I just realized that having "Automatic queue handling" turned ON behaves just like ST3, so forget my comment on that.

However, I wonder whether the visible lag when tapping a song happens due to the fact that 100 songs are automatically added to the queue? It seems that in ST3, only 55 songs were added, but I don't see the need for adding more than 2 songs in the queue when you tap one specific song.

peter

The lag is not only caused by that, but it certainly is a factor. When you are in a playlist and tap on a song, that song and the rest of the playlist is queued. But what exactly should happen in the song list? Do you really expect only the current song and the next to be queued up? What should happen when these two songs finish? Wouldn't you normally expect to just continue playing the list after that?

musicadi

peter No, I personally don't need to have the app queue the next 100 songs from my song list, since I usually decide which song I'll play next while the current song is playing. Okay, maybe I will have a gig where I kinda see where the mood is going, and I'll know the next 3-4 songs, but I certainly won't need 100 songs to be lined up waiting to be played.

So, for people without fixed playlists, populating the queue with 100 entries every time a song is selected makes no sense. For people who have fixed playlist, it's logical to load it in the same order, but then again, you already have your playlist in your wanted order, so having a queue feels like it's not needed here either.

Damir

musicadi as I said before why are we confusing ourselves with QUEUE , why not yous have SONG AND PLAYLIST MODES AND A WAY TO SWITCH FROM NORMAL OR QUEUE MODES THE PLAYLISTS USE , simple , if you prefer your playlist to work like queue mode simply go to settings and choose that way of operating, if you don’t need queue TUN IT OFF and the playlists behave normally as we know it in ST3 .
Why is it so hard to understand as is?

Damir

musicadi No, I personally don't need to have the app queue the next 100 songs from my song list, since I usually decide which song I'll play next while the current song is playing

I agree you are doing double the work, this is what gets me with Queue , you have to go somewhere to get more songs , why not just have all the songs you need in Queue and simply grab them as needed just like playlist mode except the behaviour of this playlist works like queue mode and at the end of the gig hit a reset button to start over again using the same playlist order you setup in STOP MODE , anything rearranged in stop mode gets remembered anything gets rearranged in play mode is temporary , once the gig is over hit reset and all the songs are back in the original stop mode setup , that way we can simply choose in settings how a playlist behaves, no need to keep loading queue , just choose a playlist and go for it, to us users we don’t care what is playing the song as long as it’s reliable , what we care about is which way do we want the playing behaviour to act, and that should be a simple choice in settings, we don’t need to know what engine is providing the actual audio , and all the other technicalities , just give us SONG, PLAYLIST and an option which way a PLAYLIST BEHAVES, that’s it.
I’m SOOOO GLAD THE QUEUE BUTTON IS GONE I never saw the need for it.
Thanks to all that supported that!

peter

When tapping on a song in the song list, only 32 songs will be loaded. That should be enough and does not pose any performance penalty.