The favourite (heart icon) is greyed out when a song is playing from a playlist in ‘Roon Arc. I am unable to select it to make it a favourite song. It’s quite annoying when I’m driving and can’t favourite a song I like. Is this able to be fixed? I’m sure I’m not the only person to have this issue for such a fundamental feature.
Describe your network setup
Roon Arc using mobile phone coverage and Apple Roon Arc app on iPhone 12
In Roon, being in your library is not the same thing as favoriting. Favoriting literally means making it a Roon favorite with the icon. And you can only do this if the track (or the album that a track comes from) is already in your Roon library.
Note that this is different to favoriting something in the Qobuz or Tidal app. Favoriting an album in these apps is equivalent to adding in to the Roon library. And then Roon gives you the option on top of it.
He’s saying (same as I did) that you can’t favorite a song that’s not yet in your Roon library. (But it can be on a playlist even if it’s not in your library. It’s just that you then can’t make it a Roon favorite yet).
It indicates that this really is a favorite of yours. You can then later select only albums or tracks that you have favorited.
Though in the end it’s up to you to decide what meaning you ascribe to it. (For instance, I apply the heart if I have some personal bond with the album/track/artist. As opposed to the star ratings, which I use for slightly more objective quality judgements).
Personally, this granularity is really important to me. I.e., albums that I want to remember are added to the Roon library, but that doesn’t mean that every one of them is a favorite of mine. (I hated in the streaming service apps that everything that I wanted to remember had to be a favorite in their logic, so I couldn’t find my actual favorites anymore)
On the other hand, it really can be inconvenient, like in the case you described, that one can’t simply favorite any track (and thereby implicitly add the album/track to the Roon library as well). This comes up fairly often and there is an open feature suggestion for that:
Many thanks for your reply. It was so informative and answered my question perfectly. I get it now. I’ve been using the Listen Now to add songs I’ve been wanting to add as it’s easier than multiple clicks. I like the Listen Now feature, but as you say it’s all about making your own system that works for you. I do like your system though and may start doing it that way, unless I get sick and tired of first adding to library and secondly favouriting it. (a 2 step process)
icon. And you can only do this if the track (or the album that a track comes from) is already in your Roon library.