Roon: Toasted: wrap Roon in your own look, plus a hotkey player, now-playing toasts and a taskbar widget

[Lukas_Michalek]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been working on a side project for a while and it’s finally ready to share. Roon: Toasted is a free, lightweight Windows app that pops up a now-playing toast whenever the track changes, can put album art and play controls right on your taskbar, and gives you a full player at the press of a hotkey, all without switching to the full Roon app. I know there are already some great apps like this out there. I mainly built Toasted as a companion to Roon: Dialed Up, my Stream Deck plugin, so the two work together seamlessly, but it works just as well on its own.

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Here’s what it does:

The Toaster

A small player that opens from the tray or a hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+Z by default) and goes back to the tray when you’re done.

• Playing, Queue, Browse and Search tabs for any zone, with playback, volume, shuffle, repeat, Roon Radio and a zone picker.
• Quick search: a second hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+S) opens it ready to type.
• Hearts & Library (experimental): heart the playing track or album, or add a song or album to your library.
• Audio quality light (experimental): Low Quality, CD Quality or Hi-Res, as Roon receives what’s playing.
• Auto-Hide: it tucks itself away when you click elsewhere, or stays on the taskbar if you prefer.

Toasts

A “now playing” toast whenever the track changes. Click one to open the Toaster.

• Pick the corner, the monitor and how long it stays (2 to 30 seconds).
• They stay out of the way of full-screen games.

Taskbar Widget (experimental)

A mini player on your taskbar with album art, title, artist and play controls.

• Choose the side, position, width and one or two lines of text.

Everywhere

• Album Art colors: everything can take its colors from the album that’s playing.
• Main artist only: tracks with a long list of supporting artists show just the main one.
• Tray menu with quick switches for the Toaster, the Wrapper, the Taskbar Widget and Toasts.
• Updates itself: new versions show up in Settings, one click to install.
• Starts with Windows and finds your Core automatically, with a manual IP and port if your network needs it.

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Download: Releases · Vulkandr/roon-toasted · GitHub

I’m also putting together a website soon, and the downloads will be available there too once it’s up.

Stream Deck users: Roon: Dialed Up has two buttons that open the Toaster, either as a player or straight into search. More on the plugin in its own post: Roon: Dialed Up, a Stream Deck plugin for Roon

A few things to know:

• Windows only for now (tested on Windows 11)
• It isn’t code signed yet, so SmartScreen may warn you the first time you run the installer
• Roon’s extension API has its limits, so there’s no signal path or audio quality info, and the queue can’t be reordered
• The experimental features use parts of Roon that aren’t officially supported, so they could stop working after a Roon update. If they do, they hide themselves rather than break anything

For developers: the hearts and library features come from roon-library-controls, a small open-source TypeScript package (MIT) I made so other Roon apps can heart tracks and add to the library too: GitHub - Vulkandr/roon-library-controls · GitHub. Toasted runs its own Rust version of the same code, so if you want to see what it can do before using it, Toasted is the easiest way to see it in action.

It’s still early days, so there are plenty more updates to come. Feedback, bug reports and feature ideas are all welcome, here or on GitHub, no matter how small. Hope some of you find it useful!

[Lukas_Michalek]

Update: 1.2.0, introducing Roon: Wrapped (experimental)

The biggest update yet. Roon: Wrapped puts the Roon desktop app inside a Toasted window, so you use it as Roon itself, but with a look you design.

It isn’t a remote or a stripped-down player. It’s your actual Roon app, running inside. Browse, your library, Qobuz and TIDAL, Roon Radio, DSP, settings: everything Roon does is right there, exactly as you’re used to. What changes is everything around it.

Now Playing, your way

Click the album art in the player bar and Now Playing fills the window. Hit the pencil and it’s yours to design.

[Image: Now Playing, full window]

• Move and resize every piece: album art, track info, controls, seek bar, volume, zone and the audio quality light, anywhere on the screen.
• Fonts, icons and colors: a font for each piece (bundled, or any font on your PC), five icon packs, outlines or glows for text and icons, and colors from the app, from the album that’s playing, or your own.
• Animated bars for seek and volume: Wave, Spectrum, Beam, Glow line, LED meter, Ribbon, Neon tube, Mountains, Particles, Plasma and Album art, plus the classic Line, Thick, Hairline and Segments.
• Real waveforms: for local files, the seek bar can show the song’s actual waveform from Roon, in six looks, optionally bouncing near the playhead and colored by loudness.
• Audio quality and file format: a light showing Low Quality, CD Quality or Hi-Res, and the format next to it, like FLAC 96kHz 24bit 2ch.
• Profiles: save your layouts and switch between them, or start from the presets.

[Image: a couple of different looks or profiles side by side]

How it works

• Switch it on in Settings > The Wrapper, then open it from the tray, with Ctrl+Alt+W, or from Settings.
• Closing it keeps Roon running out of sight, so it reopens instantly, and it opens at the size and place you left it.
• Return Roon gives Roon its own window back anytime, and an Enable Wrapper button in Roon’s title bar wraps it up again.
• Only want the Wrapper? Switch the Toaster off, and the hotkeys, links and your Stream Deck open the Wrapper instead. Search in Roon makes the Search hotkey open Roon’s own search.

Also in 1.2.0

• Main artist only: tracks with a long list of supporting artists show just the main one, everywhere.
• New look: a new Toasted icon, a Roon: Wrapped logo, and a changelog that opens after each update.
• Tray switches for the Toaster, the Wrapper and the Taskbar Widget.
• Faster update checks.

Good to know

The Wrapper is experimental. It works with Roon’s own window rather than through an official API, so a Roon update could change how it behaves. If something looks off, Return Roon button at the top left always gives you plain Roon back. Waveforms, the quality light and Hearts & Library use unsupported parts of Roon and are experimental too.

Get it: if you’re on 1.1.0 or later, open Settings > Updates and press Install. Otherwise grab the installer from GitHub Releases.

As always, feedback, bug reports and ideas are welcome here or on GitHub.

Example Images