Apple iOS improvements

Seconded. Ready access to volume (the iPhone or iPad controls ideally), pause, back and forward without unlocking is key. iPeng is a great, if somewhat feature rich (i.e. complex for some) example. An always on feature to prevent the device locking would be great too.

settings/setup/keep screen awake does this fine for me.

I got a Apple watch Series II yesterday. Would also like a app for my watch! :slight_smile:

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Thanks. Hadnā€™t seen that.

Agreed; something has to be done about the volume controls in iOS. It takes a minimum of three clicks to change the volume when you are already using the app? Iā€™d love it if the volume buttons controlled the active zone when Roon is open. Lock screen access would be nice, but at a minimum, how about a widget with volume and basic transport controls?

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Another standard convention I miss: being able to jump to the top by tapping the top of the screen.

  • If youā€™re flipping through an artist that has many pages of albums, pressing the ā€œbackā€ arrow returns you to page one instead of the page you came from. Frustrating when surfing around on Tidal reading blurbs of, say, a 50+ album catalog.
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First I know nothing about iOS construction, programming, or any of the other arcane arts of wifi, Ethernet, ip addresses, etc. I have no idea how difficult to program these things are.

Only know what Iā€™ve gleaned from this site and many others and suspect that some posters may not know any more than I when writing.

Even so Iā€™d ask for a couple of iOS woes to be addressed.

One.
ROON iOS should function and behave like any other iOS app. Iā€™ve used both ipeng and jremote and they seem to have set the standard. ROON should at least be there equals. And in all fairness ROON iOS does some things that they havenā€™t been taught as well.

And wouldnā€™t it be great if ROON had a theater view like jremote that would allow guests to view whatā€™s being played on a large monitor? And as I have several iOS devices that can run ROON the ability to hand them out to guests so they can both see whatā€™s being played on all the iOS devices at the same time plus each guest could take turns making selections as well. I know I can mirror the iPad to the monitor via Apple TV magic but thatā€™s far from the same as theater view.

Two.

Perhaps a static IP address (I keep reading this can solve some connection issues) may be needed to solve the ROON connection problem. To me, I shouldnā€™t have to wait while ROON iPad connects and finds the wifi connection each time I open the iPad and touch the ROON icon. I have my iPad Pro set to never sleep and still have issues.

I have no proof and no idea if the ā€œROON reconnectionā€ issue could influence the USB connection to your DAC causing gadgets like microRendu, Regen, HQPlayer NAA, LAN rover, tplink fiber, etc to act out and lose there connections but sensing that each program and gadget influence each other I would not be surprised.

Respectfully uninformed,
Steven

Please add the Focus and favorite menu items within Roon to the iPhone versions of the app. Works on iPadā€¦ Buy not my iphone 7+.

Mentioned in the initial post was local playback. I would love to be able to ask Roon to put select music from my collection on my iphone, macbook, or ipad, so when traveling or visiting, I can play back locally. At one point I thought there was that feature but I canā€™t find it in the user manual. Iā€™m sure I could grab the tracks I want in, say, itunes, but I do not use itunes much so I would much prefer using Roon.

As there were several requests in this thread related to the lack of native interactions - being a web developer myself - Iā€™ll try to explain the situation with the iOS app a bit - and why it probably wonā€™t change much in the short term.

Iā€™ve just started using Roon again, and after being in awe that it ignores pretty much all iOS UI and interaction conventions, I have started to appreciate the power that it gives me through this slightly wonkey interface. In balance, I think I can live with the trade offs.

The limitations in the iOS app are mostly a result of choices that have been made in the Roon architecture, which is exposed through a universal user interface. This has probably made it easier to roll out a full featured iOS app in a shorter timespan.

This universal interface is used for roon controllers on all platforms. It is basically a very complex website wrapped in a platform specific app layer so it can be distributed as a ā€˜nativeā€™ app.

What this means is that if roon would want to facilitate interactions like swiping, animation transitions, proper touch targets and delays, itā€™d have to emulate this. This is very time consuming and the whole UI would have to be redesigned to adhere to iOS (and Android) UI paradigms. On top of this it will cost more time to update the apps with every Roon and OS update.

From my short experience with the app, I think fitting it in a native iOS/Android mold would mean that they lose some of their strengths: roonā€™s current interface exposes a LOT of useful information and controls that would have to be moved away or obfuscated. On top of that you would have vastly different experiences on different platforms, whereas with the current universal UI, the learning curve is much smaller, and there is 95% feature parity.

So these are all trade offs. When I first tried roon half a year ago I discarded the whole platform after my first experience with the iOS app, which felt very alien. But now, after giving it a second chance, Iā€™ve found something so nice and wel thought out underneath it, that I can understand and accept the choices made.

A clear public explanation of the choices made would benefit roon, I think.

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So no statement from the developers? Itā€™s a bit disappointing for a premium product.

Well, the App is not bad on my iphone, but I also miss some basic iOS gestures like scrolling horizontally through those collapsable album views or to get access to off-screen buttons when Tidal is enabled.

I donā€™t like Roon to behave exalty the same on every device, it should adapt and benefit from the OS and different input methods. My finger is no mouse. :wink:

I think the common approach is right, even without implementation considerations.

In the 90s, we all used the Windows paradigm. Mac had 3% market share, there were no smartphones or tablets, and the internet was just for trivial browsing. It made sense to think of the user interface standard as an important thing.
But today, there is no prevailing standard. Not just Windows (which is moving fast in multiple directions), and MacOS, and iOS, and Android with lots of vendor customization. And while Linux is not big as a desktop OS, there are lots of Linux-based appliances with custom user interfaces (my thermostat, my car). And most importantly, we use the internet, and internet based apps, for more and more.

So it isnā€™t really relevant to focus on a user interface standard. We all have a plethora of things, and it is diversifying at a furious pace.

I think Roon is doing the right thing by being a well-designed general system, adhering to the modern ā€œmeta standardā€, if you will.

(That said, there are some good ideas here and there that could be adopted, not because they are iOS but because they are good. For example, I have asked for horizontally scrolling between albums when Iā€™m in an album page, just like many news readers allow me to page horizontally between articles, vertically within an article.)

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While the iOS app is really nice and also, to great lengths, similar to other controllers iā€™d like to know if there are any plans to improve these specific ā€œfeatureā€™sā€.

The connect time from background mode is around 3-5 seconds. And itā€™s quite annoying that itā€™s responsive enough to let you activate some parts, but then blacks out and resets ā€¦ Yes, i know this is hardly a problem but nevertheless itā€™s still a ā€œless than perfectā€ scenario.
We are getting ever more used to instantaneous response times from other media players/controllers like BluOS app, JRemote etc

Portrait mode for iPad (other than 12.x" Pro)
Same situation as the previous ā€œissueā€, browsing the web, Reading mail etc. I use my iPad 90% of the time in portrait mode. Every time i want to make a different music selection i have to twist the iPad 90 degrees.

Perhaps there are remedies (or planned) for these issues already?

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I have exactly the same needs. Roon is the only App that uses landscape

Mike

You can use the bluOs widget for instant response of play commands as this will show whatā€™s playing in roon. The roon app has never felt like a native ios app. Hopefully the planned redesign will change all this.

Thanks, i have seen that the BluOS widget does some Roon-duties when playing via any Bluesound unit. I appreciate and use the stop/play/fwd commands available. :slight_smile:

Portrait mode for iPad is by far on top on my wish list for Roon. Having to switch the orientation of my iPad when switching apps is a UX nightmare to be honestā€¦

Iā€™m very confident that this change will come thoughā€¦

This is one of my top annoyances. Agree on portrait. Can we also get rid of the left-right scroll bar that exists for a tiny bit of scroll real estate, yet creates a solid blue line across the UI (9" iPad Pro).

I like that itā€™s not native iOS UI, i think it would fit a lot less information on the screen. Keep the framework, just take it to the next iteration to include portrait and true scrolling, not paging.

Rob.

Portrait mode - YES

Split screen multi tasking - YES