UX design on wide tablet

Hi. I’m running the Android client on a Samsung S6 Lite. As you can see below…

...the Room UI only works in landscape mode (is this intended?). This makes screen real estate usage pretty inefficient on this device (2000x1200 screen), as almost half the screen is taken up by the 'hey user this is what's been going on' header block. Is there any way to get the UI to work in portrait on this device, or if not could we have an option to not display the header with the profile picture etc so we get to the useful stuff more quickly?

Thx

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Tell me about it…

Hopefully assuming 1 for a value some tablets return as null for a property that goes into the ui’s logic to determine if it can support rotation (see the end of the thread) is on their backlog. No confirmation tho.

ah so it’s meant to support rotation? havent tried it on another device as yet. given the rest of the experience is pretty slick, i’m guessing this is a bug indeed related to some system flag or similar. annoying. in the very short term, being able to turn that chunky header off would help – it doesn’t really add anything to the experience and takes up a lot of pixels

Way before this, I had a debate / disagreement [?] with some representatives of Roon that their penchant for leaving large white margins is counter productive and we pay the price with an unsatisfying UX. Take the DSP page. In the mobile phone UI mode (only runs in portrait, not landscape, no rotation) there is -no- support for the EQ configuration panel. So they show nothing. However, on that same phone I can use the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, login to my Roon Core, run the Roon UI, and configure a DSP to my heart’s content, with rotation.

This is the same story on the very hi-rez Fire HD 10 tablet. Roon App runs fully enabled, not in the semi-disabled mobile mode, but only in Landscape as you note and the subject of this thread. Instead, run the Microsoft Remote Desktop app on the Fire HD 10 tablet, login to the Roon Core, start the UI there, you get the exact same UI & UX as the android app, BUT it supports rotation and is fully and perfectly usable without any caveats.

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Not really. That check was to decide which UI to present. The Portrait UI as used on phones is not the same as the standard UI used on PC’s and Tablets in landscape; it has less functionality, no editing, no DSP, etc etc.

Then how do you account for the other hi-rez tablets out there that do support rotation, with a fully enabled UI? Some Android tablets do give their users the full UX in either portrait of landscape.

I had the same problem on my Android tablet. I got round it by downloading a free app from the Google Playstore called fullstartup. Once installed you can use it to force screen rotation to any way you wish. Works well for me and now I can use Roon in portrait mode.

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Do you have any public vote on feature requests? There seems to be a quite active and articulate community here… and issues like this would seem to affect quite a few of us… On this specific issue, have to say I’m surprised, after using other well-crafted android media apps like bubbleupnp, that Roon hasn’t implemented a similar strategy for tablet rotation. It’s pretty painful as it is. If you haven’t looked at how bubbleupnp adapts to various form factors and orientations, it’s worth learning from.

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Ok so I couldn’t find that app, but I’ve used a thing called Rotation Control before (also on the Play Store), and with that, I can force Roon to follow the device rotation without further intervention…

That’s a step in the right direction but even in portrait, can we please get rid of all that wasted space at the top? I know who I am, what I look like and how bloated my music collection is! I don’t need to be told first up every time I load this up :roll_eyes:

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I find this overview screen pretty useless as well. I usually jump straight to the “Albums” view. Would be good if this could be made the default.

If you set “allow for more covers” under Settings --> General, you get a reasonably dense screen population

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Roon opens up on the last page you used, at least it does for me. So, if I didn’t want to see the Overview page, I would never navigate back there after the initial program opening.

That being said, I love the Overview page and how its laid out. And completely disagree with changing the top Banner.

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FYI, if you were to go into the tablet’s developer settings and experiment with different DPI display settings you would likely come up with one that puts Roon into portrait mode. I have done something similar on two models of Samsung tablets, only in the opposite direction—trying successfully to get Roon to show in landscape rather than portrait mode. Since you’ve already arrived at another solution I won’t bother with details (which I’ve mostly forgotten, anyway), although if you’re interested you’ll find past discussions about this in this community.