Hi,
I’ve built a custom synced-lyrics display system for my home using the Roon Extension API. It works great locally: my server subscribes to
subscribe_zones, detects the active zone, fetches the matching LRC file, and streams the synchronized lyrics to iPad, iPhone and TV clients via
WebSocket.
The problem: when I listen remotely via Roon ARC, the ARC playback zone is completely invisible to the Extension API. My server receives no zone events,
no now_playing data, nothing — even though Roon Remote on desktop does show the ARC zone.
I’m aware that Roon ARC has a built-in lyrics view, but it only occupies a small portion of the screen and cannot be expanded to full-screen. On a small
device like an iPhone mini, this makes it very hard to read lyrics comfortably while the text is scrolling. My custom client solves exactly this — it’s a
full-screen, large-font, auto-scrolling lyrics display optimized for small screens — but it only works locally because of the API limitation above.
My question / request:
- Is there any current way to receive now_playing events for ARC playback via the Extension API or any other local/remote API endpoint?
- If not, would it be possible to expose the ARC zone to subscribe_zones in a future update? Even read-only access (track metadata + seek position)
would be enough — no playback control needed.
This would allow third-party extensions to provide features like synced lyrics, scrobbling, or any “now playing”-aware tool to work seamlessly with ARC,
which currently feels like a blind spot in the extension ecosystem.
Thank you for considering this.
Gabriele